Raymond Aron's "Machiavellian" Liberalism.

Hugo Drochon

doi:10.1353/jhi.2019.0034

Abstract

Recent interest in Raymond Aron has focused on his "Cold War Liberalism," but he is neither a neo-liberal nor a Hayekian libertarian. Instead, this article will argue that Aron is a "Machiavellian" liberal - that his democratic theory is underpinned by an engagement with Pareto, Mosca, and Michels. First, it will reconstruct Aron's dialogue with Pareto. Second, it will explore his overlooked sociological writings on the ruling classes. Third, it will extend the thesis of a postwar French "Machiavellian Moment" to the Centre Raymond Aron, and ask in conclusion whether his theory of democracy can still shed light on today.

Highlights

That characterization of Aron is undeniably true, but it leaves open a large space within which to place him
Judith Shklar identified as the “liberalism of fear”: what needed to be avoided first and foremost was cruelty.[2]
What we identify as neoliberalism developed later, in the 1970s, and is associated with the rising influence of Milton Friedman, Gary Becker’s Chicago

Summary

II: Divided and unified elites

In the second chapter of Démocratie et totalitarisme, entitled “From philosophy to political sociology,” Aron questions the relation political philosophy, which he defines as the exercise of judging political regimes, entertains with sociology, which comprises a factual study of different regimes.[46]. Oligarchic character of the Constitutional-Pluralist regimes.”[77] And the ideas developed in his sociological studies provide the bedrock upon which Aron constructs his own democratic theory: Mosca’s political personnel, the “fact” of oligarchy and the further political questions its raises, government for rather than by the people, even ruling class conspiracies surrounding Jesuits, Free-Masons or petrol companies make an appearance.[78] His conclusions are the same too: he attributes directly to Mosca the thought that a divided “Constitutional-Pluralist” regime provides the “best guaranties for the governed.”[79] As he explains in his Introduction à la philosophie politique lectures, if human nature, as the Machiavellians had pointed out, should be understood pessimistically, democracy is the least worst regime because it legally regulates competition between groups, leading to what Audier terms the “conflictual balance of social forces:”[80] if one is looking for a “realistic” regime, democracy, being the best of the worst regimes, is the best regime possible.[81] Yet keeping to his idea that extremes are to be avoided, if Aron had expressed fears about a too unified elite, he in Démocratie expresses concerns about a too divided elite, one which would be too dispersed, unstable and inefficient to be able to rule in an effective manner.[82] Democracies have to find the right balance and not fall into demagogy.[83].

III: The “Machiavellian Moment” and the Centre Raymond Aron

Conclusion