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Conversations with Bill Kristol Conversations with Bill Kristol Guest: Harvey Mansfield, Professor of Government, Harvard University Taped June 19, 2019 Table of Contents I: Liberal Democracy as a Mixed Regime (0:15 – 55:52) I: Liberal Democracy as a Mixed Regime (0:15 – 55:52) KRISTOL: Hi, I’m Bill Kristol, welcome to CONVERSATIONS. I’m pleased to be joined again by Harvey Mansfield, Professor of Government at Harvard University. MANSFIELD: Always a pleasure, I have to say. KRISTOL: I thought we would discuss today your excellent essay, which made a big impression on me when I read it when it came out when I was in graduate school, “Liberal Democracy as a Mixed Regime.” It appeared in The American Spectator, which was then called The Alternative before it became more mainstream, I guess, and became The American Spectator. And, was republished in your excellent book from 1978, I think, The Spirit of Liberalism. So people should look at the essay. But I thought it’s not – the book is out of print, unfortunately and disgracefully, really. A terrible statement about the publishing profession, that that’s the case. MANSFIELD: Well, that’s Harvard Press – all right. KRISTOL: Things have declined at Harvard. And the essay, I was reminded of it, and looked at it recently and was struck by how interesting it is. And though people can look at it online, it’s not as accessible as some of your other works, so I thought worth really walking people through it. And we had a discussion recently about it, and I thought other people also were, at a seminar and other people, as you know, were very struck by the formulation. So I mean, “mixed regime” – sounds like Aristotle and classical political philosophy. And liberal democracy sounds like modern liberalism. So what’s the – MANSFIELD: That’s the idea. The title is a kind of paradox. I could say at the beginning that I was working from the – with the advantage of the understanding of Aristotle that I got from the PhD dissertation of my late wife, Delba Winthrop, whose dissertation, which is called Aristotle: Democracy and Political Science has recently been published. So this is a kind of simplified version of some of the things which she says on the basis of a much closer examination of Aristotle’s text. But yes, “mixed regime” is Aristotle. “Liberal democracy,” that’s us. And it doesn’t seem to be a regime which is mentioned or featured even in Aristotle’s Politics, his book on politics. 350 WEST 42ND STREET, SUITE 37C, NEW YORK, NY 10036 So what’s on? I could begin by stating a problem in our understanding of liberal democracy, which I think is – and which I try to address through Aristotle. So first this problem. If you look at liberal democracy, which we live in right now, it seems to be divided into people who run things and who have ambition and who desire to be outstanding in some way and people who don't. Sometimes known in the political science literature as “ordinary voters,” a somewhat condescending designation. “Ordinary voters.” And “ordinary voters” sit back and they choose the rulers who then rule them, only it’s not called ruling; it’s called representation. And so the ordinary voters are, so to speak, given the impression that this is their government; they’re in fact ruling. But if you look at it, it isn’t. The people who are doing the ruling are these ambitious types. I teach at Harvard and I see a lot of Harvard students that are full of this ambition. They like to use the word ‘impact.’ KRISTOL: Right. MANSFIELD: An ugly word. And that’s what they want to have on the world, an impact on the world. And that’s ambition and it can, of course, can take many different forms. But they all seem to sort of coalesce in a single type, so that our liberal democracy is divided into the liberals, and I’m going to call them that, the ambitious ones. And they are fewer than the ordinary voters, many fewer. And then the ordinary voters who are the many and who don't see the point in being ambitious. They want a secure life and they don't, they sort of think of themselves as in a niche. They don't want to – they may want to improve their standard of living, but they don't seek to be on top and run things in a way that the others do. So that our liberal democracy seems to be divided between the few and the many. And that’s what Aristotle would say, and what I think somebody just coming to our politics and looking at it without knowing much about its principles would say, too. And the trouble is that the division between the few and the many on the basis of ambition is not the way liberal democracy looks at itself. Not at all. And the big difference is that the liberals, the ambitious types, look on themselves as democrats. They don't all belong to the Democratic Party, but the Republicans too among them, also think of themselves as democrats, as part of the people and who are selected by the people and not rulers over the people. And you see this in American political science, which is also, reflects the self-understanding of liberal, a democracy. They refer, as I said, to “ordinary voters” and they also refer, they use the word ‘elite,’ a very common word. Everybody knows that there are elites, which exist. The only trouble is that the elite doesn’t look on itself as an elite. And the elite spends a lot of its time attacking elitism as if there were kind of an ism that went with being on top that was unattractive and shameful. Not something you say, “I’m a member of the elite, thank you.” So that’s something not to be and an impression not to give. So political science conveys this with its notion of a causal mechanism. Now we’re going to get into how Aristotle comes in. KRISTOL: Yeah, because I think so far one could say – sociologists, Marxists, Machiavellians – I mean all of them would understand that society consists of the many and the few, more or less. I mean, there’s either the exploited, à la Marx, or in Machiavelli’s case, of an interesting sort of character. Sociologists study elitists – MANSFIELD: Well, some of those, like the Marxists, who look forward to a totally equal democracy way off in the future. But it’s true. It’s not uncommon to see this distinction between the equals and the unequals, but in such a way that the ascendency of the unequals is not justifiable. KRISTOL: Right, whereas Aristotle gives us – 2 MANSFIELD: It’s justifiable. And that it’s also a form of rule and not just representation. Now if the political science talks about these causal mechanisms which means that a thing is caused by its preceding cause – a cause precedes the effect. In the famous case of billiard balls – when you strike a billiard ball, it moves according to the motion that’s been given to it. And it hits according to the laws of motion, hits what it hits – other balls, and goes in the pocket. And so that’s sort of what Aristotle would call efficient causation and this is what, the kind of causation that you get in modern natural science. So that this political science looks at science as natural science and it doesn’t make a distinction with human things. And therefore the notion of intention is lacking from its causal mechanism. A thing doesn’t happen because you intend it to happen. That isn’t how you explain the behavior of a billiard bill. You don't need that. But how do you understand ambition as being caused by something outside it? Well, you just say that ambition is just a thing which improves your career and your career gives you more of what – of satisfaction. It’s a kind of quantity. It gives you more and they don't want to really specify what the more is more of. And so they usually don't talk about ambition, but when they do, it’s always in the form of careerism as if it were a kind of self-promotion. But if you look at an ambitious person, they don't understand themselves as yes, I want to be in on it, but I want to have an impact on the world, remember? And that means you have, your concern is not merely or even mainly with yourself, but it’s on the rest of the world. And you want to extend yourself to the rest of the world and that’s beginning to give you the idea of ruling. So now let’s turn to Aristotle. And Aristotle, when he looks at politics, looks at it fundamentally from the standpoint of the few and the many. That there is always that difference between the few who want to rule and the many who also want to rule, but differently. And the few want to rule to justify their fewness, or whatever it is, and the many – their many-ness. And this usually takes the form of money or wealth. That the many represent or are the poor because it just works out that most people are poor and a few people are wealthier.
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