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Power and Personality: The Appeal to the “Right Man” in Democratic States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David Spitz
David Spitz
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

At least from the time of Socrates, in whose ideal state philosophers would be kings, the appeal to the right man has played a major role in systematic reflections on the control of power. For if the right man does rule, Socrates argued, neither institutional nor other controls—e.g., law—need to be employed. Because he is the right man, he will do the right things: he will rule wisely; he will establish or, where already established, he will perpetuate, that order in human affairs that best approximates or achieves justice and secures liberty.

The problem, then, for those who hold this view in democratic states, is not whether the right man should rule, but how he is to be discovered and how he can be assured the reins of political power. Or, to formulate the problem in negative terms, how can we identify and exclude from power those who are the “wrong” men, those who are likely to rule badly and unjustly, those who—because they are, for example, “authoritarians” at heart—may if they achieve positions of power violate the very principles of the democratic state and thereby endanger its existence?

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1958 , pp. 84 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 For an analysis and criticism of the various forms of this aristocratic appeal, see my Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought (New York, 1949), chs. 4–9Google Scholar, and MacIver, R. M., The Ramparts We Guard (New York, 1950), ch. 5 and pp. 130–133Google Scholar.

2 Eccles. 7:20.

3 Santayana, George, Dominations and Powers (New York, 1951), p. 413Google Scholar.

4 Mannheim, Karl, Freedom, Power, and Democratic Planning (New York, 1950), especially chs. 7–9. The quotation is on p. 231Google Scholar.

5 Lasswell, H. D., Power and Personality (New York, 1948), pp. 110, 108, 115–118, 146, 187, 108Google Scholar.

6 As Else Frenkel-Brunswik, one of the authors of The Authoritarian Personality (see note 8 below), elsewhere put it: “Since every individual possesses features of the authoritarian as well as of the democratic personality, though in varying proportions, such objective factors as economic conditions and such psychological factors as feelings of dissatisfaction, helplessness, and isolation may decide the issue in a particular overall situation.” “Interaction of Psychological and Sociological Factors in Political Behavior,” this Review, Vol. 46 (1952), p. 63Google Scholar. See further her paper, “Further Explorations by a Contributor to ‘The Authoritarian Personality,’” in Christie, Richard and Jahoda, Marie (eds.), Studies in the Scope and Method of “The Authoritarian Personality” (Glencoe, Ill., 1954), especially pp. 227 ff.Google Scholar

It ought to be observed in passing that what is true of personality is true also—in this respect at least—of society: for no society completely fits into one or the other of these rigid categories of the psychologist; every society contains both “democratic” and “authoritarian” elements. Mannheim occasionally pauses to recognize this point, both in relation to personality and to society (see, for example, op. cit., p. 208), but his argument generally ignores or minimizes the importance of this consideration.

7 Escape from Freedom (New York, 1941), pp. 163–164, 168, 236Google Scholar.

8 Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, Levinson, D. J., and Sanford, R. N., The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950), p. 228 and passimGoogle Scholar. See also Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, “Environmental Controls and the Impoverishment of Thought,” in Friedrich, C. J. (ed.), Totalitarianism (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 171–202Google Scholar, and her papers cited in note 6 above.Cf. further Maslow, A. H., “The Authoritarian Character Structure,” Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 18 (1943), pp. 401–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allport, G. W., The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, 1954), ch. 25Google Scholar; and Saenger, Gerhart; The Social Psychology of Prejudice (New York, 1953), ch. 9Google Scholar.

9 Mannheim, op. cit., pp. 173–180.

10 For some of these and other criticisms as applied to The Authoritarian Personality, see Kecskemeti, Paul, “Prejudice in the Catastrophic Perspective,” Commentary, Vol. 11 (1951), pp. 286–292Google Scholar, and Christie and Jahoda, op. cit. These findings are summarized in Glazer, Nathan, “New Light on ‘The Authoritarian Personality,’” Commentary, Vol. 17 (1954), pp. 289–297Google Scholar.

11 Lasswell, “The Selective Effect of Personality on Political Participation,” in Christie and Jahoda, op. cit., especially pp. 220–224.

12 Thus A. H. Maslow, who finds it impossible to avoid using the term, admits that “the concept ‘democratic personality’ is simply not a scientific concept; there is no agreement whatsoever on its meaning.” “Power Relationships and Patterns of Personal Development,” in Kornhauser, Arthur (ed.), Problems of Power in American Democracy (Detroit, 1957), p. 94Google Scholar. Other recent attempts to describe these traits—e.g., by Lasswell, in his Democratic Character (published in The Political Writings of Harold D. Lasswell [Glencoe, Ill., 1951], pp. 465–525)Google Scholar and by Allport, op. cit., chap. 27—are quite unconvincing when read in the light of such strictures as those by Kecskemeti and Glazer (works cited above, note 10) and by E. A. Shils (“Authoritarianism: ‘Right’ and ‘Left,’” in Christie and Jahoda, op. cit., pp. 24–49) on the definition of the democratic personality employed in The Authoritarian Personality.

13 Cf. Bendix, Reinhard, “Compliant Behavior and Individual Personality,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 58 (1952), pp. 292–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riesman, David, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, 1950), pp. 172, 178Google Scholar, and passim, and Wrong, D. H., “Riesman and the Age of Sociology,” Commentary, Vol. 21 (1956), pp. 331–338Google Scholar.

14 Cf. Shils, op. cit., pp. 42–49.

15 Mill, John Stuart, Representative Government (Everyman's, ed., 1910), ch. 8, p. 291Google Scholar.

16 Quoted in Wittke, Carl, The Utopian Communist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling (Louisiana State University Press, 1950), p. 234Google Scholar.

17 In this respect Santayana does no more than barely overstate a basic truth when he argues that “all living creatures become wicked under pressure. Absolute singleness of purpose cannot but be ruthless; it is ruthless initially, because it has no eye for any contrary interest; and it becomes ruthless again deliberately in the end, because all contrary interests seem odious and sinful to its fanaticism.” Op. cit., p. 436.

18 Cf., for example Radcliffe, C. J., The Problem of Power (London, 1952), Lecture VGoogle Scholar.

19 D'Avenant, Charles, An Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Balance of Trade (London, 1699), p. 270Google Scholar. And compare de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (Bradley, ed., Vintage Books, 1954), I, 270Google Scholar: “Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion. God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice are always equal to his power. There is no power on earth so worthy of honor in itself or clothed with rights so sacred that I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority. When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under other laws.”

20 The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI, ch. 4.

21 This is one of the reasons why extreme radicals and reactionaries, when out of power and with relatively little chance of getting into power, are so often men of inflexible principle. They are incorruptible because, in part, no one seeks to corrupt them. They are inflexible because, in part, no one seeks to compromise their differences in order to enlist their support.

22 Cf. Mill, op. cit., ch. 6, pp. 252–253.

23 It ought perhaps to be added that if by an authoritarian personality is meant one who is congenial to totalitarianism, a distinction must be drawn between the kind of personality that seeks totalitarianism (e.g., a rebel or non-conformist) and that which remains under it (e.g., a conformist). Cf. Albert Lauterbach, “Totalitarian Appeal and Economic Reform,” in Friedrich, op. cit., p. 288. Unfortunately, those who most vigorously press the notion of the authoritarian personality rarely pause to note this distinction, much less to consider what it means.

24 I except, of course, children and the insane.

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