Not so many years ago the conquest of power was the central theme of all left-wing social theory oriented to political activity. Today, in the light of the consequences of totalitarian rule, concern with power is primarily with its abuses, its destruction of life and corruption of the spirit. The naivete of the messianic reformer has given way to weary skepticism. The Young Davids of radicalism seem to have laid aside their slings for the Book of Ecclesiastes—or for a safe berth with the New Deal. For most of the disillusioned the main political task is conceived as preventing fascism from coming to power, not by winning power for socialism, but by strengthening liberal capitalism. Suspicion of the excesses of all power makes easier the acceptance of the customary abuses of existing power.

This new attitude toward power is revealed more in moods than in explicit argument, though theoretical formulations have not been lacking. But it is to books of an earlier day that we must turn to find the weightiest critiques of political power. Mosca, Pareto, Michels, writing in an age when optimism was as general as pessimism is today, raised all the crucial problems which have now come to the fore. They fortified their conclusions on the nature of political power with a mass of historical material and a nicety of analysis which commands respect even when it does not elicit agreement.

The translation into English of Gaetano Mosca's The Ruling Classes offers an opportunity to evaluate both the strength and the weakness of this recurrent philosophy of political power. Like most doctrines that catch hold easily, the basic thesis is simple and recommends itself with a high initial plausibility to anyone who has had some political experience. It asserts that political power never rests upon the consent of the majority, that irrespective of ideologies or leading personalities all political rule is a process, now peaceful now coercive, by which a minority gratifies its own interests in a situation where not all interests can receive equal consideration. As Mosca him-self puts it: "Political power always has been, and always will be, exercised by organized minorities, which have had, and will have, the means, varying as the times vary, to impose their supremacy on the multitudes." In peaceful times, the means are public myths and secret frauds; in crisis—force. Whichever side wins, the masses who have fought, bled, and starved are made the goat. Their saviors become their rulers under the prestige of new myths. The forms change, but the essential content remains. This is put forth as a "law" of all social life which can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone except the dull, the pious, and candidates for political leadership. It is a law accepted by every political partisan as obviously true for other organizations but as a slander when applied to his own.

The reactions to this position in recent discussion have been astonishing. They tend to confirm some corollaries Mosca has drawn from his thesis about the distribution of political intelligence. One group does not argue the truth of the theory on the evidence but asserts that since its acceptance makes for defeatism it must be wrong. Another group applauds Mosca's theory or some variant of it and deduces therefrom the comforting view that revolutions are never justified; this despite Mosca's contention that revolutions do not depend upon any theory of political power. Some contest the truth of his findings on the nature of political power because on some other unrelated points he is clearly mistaken. The most sophisticated opponents of the thesis first state it in such a way as to suggest that according to it all power is necessarily evil and should never be employed. They then have little difficulty in showing that this leads to a reductio ad absurdum, for men must act, and this involves a choice between alternatives all of which demand implementation by some power.

In the interests of clear analysis we must distinguish between Mosca's descriptive generalizations of the actual uses and abuses of political power in the past and present, and the theoretical explanation he offers of them. As descriptive generalizations, Mosca's conclusions are valid, once differences in the form of political rule have been properly noted. It is true that every political organization is in effect run by a minority. It is true that vital illusions, chicanery, and naked force have been three important props of all political rule. It is true that every successful mass movement—even with a democratic ideology—has compromised some of its basic principles, on occasions all of them. The history of Christianity, of German Social Democracy, of the Russian Communist Party indicates in a dramatic and focal way all this and more. But in explaining these phenomena and in predicting that the future must always be like the past Mosca falls back upon a psychological theory of human nature considered independently of its social context. Almost every one of his explanations and predictions involves an appeal to an original nature conceived as essentially un-alterable despite its varying expressions. Mosca's antiquated terminology can be brought up to date by translation into the language of dynamic psychology or psycho-analysis. But the controlling assumptions are the same no matter what the terms. The laws of political power are frankly characterized as psychological. They flow from fixed and unchangeable elements in the nature of men. Mosca has no hesitation in sometimes referring to them as "wicked instincts." It is from this conception of original sin that Mosca's dire prophecies flow.

The fact that the argument from human nature must be invoked to support the thesis is prima facie evidence that the entire position is unhistorical. Everything Mosca says may be granted except when he speaks in the future tense; for the genuine problems of power are always specific, are always rooted in the concrete needs of a particular people at a determinate time. Any conclusion based on his findings about the futility of social change and struggle is therefore a non-sequitur; it betrays political animus, and if grounded at all, is derived from other considerations. The belief that there is an invariant core of properties which constitutes the "essential" character of human nature rests on gross data drawn from history and on a faulty technique of definition. Habits, traditions, and institutions play a much more important role in political behavior, and are more reliable in predicting the future, than any set of native impulses. By isolating the latter from their objective cultural setting, selecting from among them an alleged impulse to dominate, fight, love, or flee, the pattern of human nature can be cut to suit any current political myth.

Despite the fact that Mosca's "laws," when presented in psychological dress, have no empirical warrant, they can be reformulated so as to bear relevantly on particular situations in which intelligent choice between different modes of power is possible. They then function as "cautions" or "guides" to possible dangers that attend transference of power from one group to another. The task then becomes one of devising safeguards—an occasion for experiment not for lamentation. And most safeguards do not make accidents impossible; they make them less frequent. Sufficient evidence has been assembled which indicates the probable sources of future corruption and oppression. It would require a treatise to explore this theme, but in a preliminary way we can indicate the spheres of social life in which conflicts will arise, necessitating safeguards against oppression.

The first sphere of conflict and possible oppression is obviously economic. Most socialists grant this readily enough for the past but deny that it holds for collectivist society. Yet it is apparent that under no system operated by finite creatures in a finite world can all men be equally served in everything and, what is just as important, equally served at once. That there will probably be some differences in standards of living, no matter what the level of productive forces, none but a Utopian will deny. But there are differences and differences. Conflicts there will be, but their kind, generality, and intensity will de-pend upon the specific mechanisms adopted to reflect and negotiate the interests of different groups of producers and consumers. Socialists have always asserted that there is no genuine political democracy without economic democracy. In a collectivist economy the converse is even more emphatically the case.

The second sphere of possible abuse of authority is administrative. Every administrator intrusted with responsibility for making decisions that may affect the jobs, pleasures, and life careers of other human beings may function as a tyrant. The greater the area of administration, the greater the danger. Especially when efficiency is the goal is it easy to palm off injustice as a necessary evil. Here too the situation is one that must be met, for better or for worse, by contriving checks and reviews with a maximum of publicity.

Finally there is the undeniable fact that many people love the exercise of power. For some it is a compensation for frustration; for others it is a way of acquiring prestige, glory, a sense of vitality or importance; for almost every-body it is a temptation to prefer those we like and to overlook those we despise. Everyone has his own list of people whose absence he thinks would be a boon to the world. But what follows from all this? Nothing that need dismay anyone who is not a saint or a fool. Here as everywhere else, once we surrender the dogmas of an unalterable human nature or inevitable laws of organizational progress or corruption, we can do something to mitigate and counteract, and to establish moral equivalents.

Whether we are talking of pain or injustice or power, there is no such thing as the problem of evil except to a supernaturalist. There are only evils. The more we know about the pathological lust for power, the conditions under which it thrives, the instruments it uses, the myths behind which it hides—and the more public we make that knowledge—the better can we cope with the problem of taming it. Skepticism is always in order; but no more than in science need it lead to paralysis of activity. More knowledge is always desirable, but we know enough to make at least a beginning. And if we are interested in democratic socialism, by keeping our eyes on both Ger-many and Russia we certainly know what to avoid. De-spite the swelling chorus of disillusion there still remain alternatives to the insanity of uncontrolled myth and the inhumanity of uncontrolled power.