Gaetano Mosca (; 1 April 1858 – 8 November 1941) was an Italian

political scientist Political science is the science, scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of politics, political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated c ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and

public servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

. He is credited with developing the

elite theory In political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and poli ...

and the doctrine of the

political class Political class, or political elite is a concept in comparative political science, originally developed by Italian political theorist Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941). It refers to the relatively small group of activists that is highly aware and active i ...

and is one of the three members constituting the Italian school of elitism together with

Vilfredo Pareto Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto ( , , , ; born Wilfried Fritz Pareto; 15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923) was an Italian polymath (civil engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher). He made several important contribut ...

and

Robert Michels Robert Michels (; 9 January 1876 – 3 May 1936) was a German-born Italian sociologist who contributed to elite theory by describing the political behavior of intellectual elites. He belonged to the Italian school of elitism. He is best know ...

Life

Mosca earned a degree in law from the

University of Palermo The University of Palermo ( it, Università degli Studi di Palermo) is a university located in Palermo, Italy, and founded in 1806. It is organized in 12 Faculties. History The University of Palermo was officially founded in 1806, although its ...

in 1881. In 1887 he moved to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

and took a position as editor of proceedings of the

Chamber of Deputies of Italy The Chamber of Deputies ( it, Camera dei deputati) is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Senate of the Republic). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical funct ...

. Having taught occasionally at

Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...

and

, Mosca became chair of constitutional law at the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an impo ...

in 1896. He would hold this position until 1924, when he settled permanently in

to occupy the chair of public law at the University of Rome. Mosca held several other academic positions throughout his life. He was skeptical towards democracy, and placed his lifelong liberalism in direct opposition to mass democracy. In a 1904 interview, he stated:

I can certainly call myself an anti-democrat, but I am not an anti-liberal; indeed I am opposed to pure democracy precisely because I am a liberal. I believe that the ruling class ought not to be monolithic and homogeneous but ought to consist of elements which are diverse in regard to origin and interests; when, instead, political power originates from a single source, even if this be elections with universal suffrage, I regard it as dangerous and liable to become oppressive. Democratic Jacobinism is an illiberal doctrine precisely because it subordinates everything to a single force, that of the so-called majority, on which it does not set any limits.

In 1909 Mosca was elected to the

, in which he served until 1919. During this time, he served as Under-secretary for the Colonies from 1914 until 1916. During this time, Mosca also worked as a political journalist for the ''

Corriere della Sera The ''Corriere della Sera'' (; en, "Evening Courier") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average daily circulation of 410,242 copies in December 2015. First published on 5 March 1876, ''Corriere della Sera'' is one of It ...

'' of

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

(after 1901) and the ''

Tribuna ''Tribuna'' (russian: Трибуна) is a weekly Russian newspaper that focuses largely on industry and the energy sector. History Tribunas published its first publication in July 1969. Until 1990, the newspaper titled the ''Sotsialisticheska ...

'' of

(from 1911 to 1921). In 1919, Mosca was nominated life senator of the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to ...

. He served actively in this capacity until 1926. In 1925 he signed the

Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, sanctioned the irreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of B ...

. On numerous occasions, the elderly Mosca took to the floor to speak against bills endorsed by

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

which intended to curtail political rights and parliamentary institutions. Mosca explained his opposition to these bills not only by referring to his own faith in political liberties as values worth preserving, but also by appealing to the "development and progress" that accompanied those nations where political liberties had been safeguarded through representative institutions. Parliamentary regimes were able to protect civil and political liberties because they provided an independent source of authority through which to limit the power of the rulers. Mosca's speeches in support of civil liberties and parliamentary government, as well as his steadfast refusal to compromise with the fascist regime, exerted an important influence on members of the intellectual opposition to Mussolini's dictatorship such as

Gaetano Salvemini Gaetano Salvemini (; 8 September 1873 – 6 September 1957) was an Italian Socialist and antifascist politician, historian and writer. Born in a family of modest means, he became an acclaimed historian both in Italy and abroad, particularly in ...

and

Piero Gobetti Piero Gobetti (; 19 June 1901, Turin – 15 February 1926, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was an Italian journalist, intellectual and radical liberal and anti-fascist. He was an exceptionally active campaigner and critic in the crisis years in Italy after ...

. Mosca is most famous for his works of political theory. These were ' (Theory of Governments and Parliamentary Government), published in 1884; ' (The Ruling Class), published in 1896; and ' (History of Political Doctrines), published in 1936.

Political thought

Mosca's enduring contribution to

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

is the observation that all but the most primitive societies are ruled in fact, if not in theory, by a numerical minority. He named this minority the

. That means that every society could be split between two social classes: the one who rules and the one which is ruled. This is always true, for Mosca, because without a political class there is no rule. Although his theory is correctly characterized as ''elitist'', its basis is different from ''

The Power Elite ''The Power Elite'' is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in ...

'' described, for example, by

C. Wright Mills Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962) was an American Sociology, sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills published widely in both popular and intellectual journ ...

. Unlike Mills and later sociologists, Mosca aimed at developing a universal theory of

political society A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory. There is no undisputed definition of a state. One widely used definition comes from the German sociologist Max Weber: a "stat ...

. His more general theory of the ''Political Class'' reflects this aim. Mosca defined modern elites in term of their superior organisational skills. These skills are especially useful in gaining political power in modern

bureaucratic The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...

society. Nevertheless, Mosca's theory was more liberal than the elitist theory of Pareto, for example. In Mosca's view, elites are not always hereditary, as peoples from all classes of society can theoretically become elite. When this happens, the reproduction of power is defined as democratic; in contrast, when the members' turnover remains inside the elite, the reproduction of power is defined as aristocratic. He also adhered to the concept of the circulation of elites, a dialectical theory of constant competition among elites, with different elite groups alternating with each other repeatedly over time. This concept originated from his materialist idea of history as a conflict between classes (

Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...

), from the conflictual nature of politics considered as a fight for acquisition and deployment of power ( Machiavelli), and finally from the non-egalitarian, hierarchical structure of society. Unlike Marx, Mosca has not an arrow concept of historical time, but a circular one, as in classical political theory, which consists in a perpetual condition of conflict and recycling of the elite. For Mosca, the dichotomous structure of society would not be solved by a revolution.

Works in English translation

*
''The Ruling Class,''
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1939. *
"On the Ruling Class."
In Talcott Parsons, ed., ''Theories of Society; Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory,'' Vol. I, Part Two, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.
"What is Mafia."
M&J, 2014. Translation of the book "Cosa è la Mafia," Giornale degli Economisti, Luglio 1901, pp. 236-62.

Notes

References

* Albertoni, Ettore, ''Mosca and the Theory of Elitism''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (1987). * Carlo Lottieri, ''"Un Élitisme Technocratique et Libéral. L'Autorité et l'État Selon Mosca",'' L’Année Sociologique, 1994; now this article is also in Raymond Boudon - Mohamed Cherkaoui - Jeffrey C. Alexander (eds.), ''The Classical Tradition in Sociology. The European Tradition, vol.II (The Emergence of European Sociology: II - The Classical Tradition 880-1920'', London: Sage Publications (1997). * Martinelli, Claudio
''"Gaetano Mosca’s Political Theories: a Key to Interpret the Dynamics of the Power,"''
Italian Journal of Public Law, Vol. I, 2009. * Meisel, James H. ''The Myth of the Ruling Class: Gaetano Mosca and the "Elite,"'' University of Michigan Press, 1958. * Meisel, James H. ''Pareto and Mosca,'' Prentice-Hall 1965. * Sereno, Renzo. ''"The Anti-Aristotelianism of Gaetano Mosca and Its Fate,"'' Ethics, Vol. 48, No. 4, Jul., 1938.

External links

* Britannica.com
Gaetano Mosca
* What is Mafia
"What is Mafia."
M&J, 2014. Translation of the book "Cosa è la Mafia," Giornale degli Economisti, Luglio 1901 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mosca, Gaetano 1858 births 1941 deaths 20th-century Italian philosophers Deputies of Legislature XXIII of the Kingdom of Italy Deputies of Legislature XXIV of the Kingdom of Italy Elite theory Historians of the Sicilian Mafia Historical Right politicians Italian classical liberals Italian male journalists Italian political philosophers Italian political scientists Italian sociologists Journalists from Palermo Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals Members of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy Politicians from Palermo University of Palermo alumni University of Turin faculty Writers from Palermo