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One of the most banal commonplaces which get repeated against the elective system of forming State organs is the following: that in it numbers decide everything,⁷¹ It may be and that the opinions of any idiot who knows how to write (or in some countries even of an illiterate) have exactly the same weight in determining the political course of the State as the opinions of somebody who devotes his best energies to the State and the nation, etc.^N But the fact is that it is not true, in any sense, that numbers decide everything, nor that the opinions of all electors are of "exactly" equal weight. Numbers, in this case too, are simply an instrumental value, giving a measure and a relation and nothing more. And what then is measured? What is measured is precisely the effectiveness, and the expansive and persuasive capacity, of the opinions of a few individuals, the active minorities, the élites, the avante-gardes, etc. — i.e. their rationality, historicity or concrete functionality. Which means it is untrue that all individual opinions have "exactly" equal weight. Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion — a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality. The counting of "votes" is the final ceremony of a long process, in which it is precisely those who devote their best energies to the State and the nation (when such they are) who carry the greatest weight. If this hypothetical group of worthy men, notwithstanding the boundless material power which they possess, do not have the consent of the majority, they must be judged either as inept, or as not representative of "national" interests — which cannot help being decisive in inflecting the national will in one direction rather than in another. "Unfortunately" everyone tends to confound his own "private interest"⁷² It may be with that of the nation, and hence find it "dreadful", etc. that it should be the "law of numbers" which decides; it is better of course to become an élite by decree. Thus it is not a question of the people who "have the brains" feeling that they are being reduced to the level of the lowest illiterate, but rather one of people who think they are the ones with the brains wanting to take away from the "man in the street" even that tiniest fraction of power of decision over the course of national life which he possesses.

These banal assertions have been extended from a critique (of oligarchic rather than élitist origin)⁷³ It may be of the parliamentary system of government (it is strange that it should not be criticised because the historical rationality of numerical consensus is systematically falsified by the influence of wealth) to a critique of all representative systems — even those which are not parliamentary and not fashioned according to the canons of formal democracy.⁷⁴ These assertions are even less accurate. In these other systems of government, the people's consent does not end at the moment of voting, quite the contrary. That consent is presumed to be permanently active; so much so that those who give it may be considered as "functionaries" of the State, and elections as a means of voluntary enrolment of State functionaries of a certain type — a means which in a certain sense may be related to the idea of self-government (though on a different level). Since elections are held on the basis not of vague, generic programmes, but of programmes of immediate, concrete work, anyone who gives his consent commits himself to do something more than the simple, juridical citizen towards their realisation — i.e. to be a vanguard of active and responsible work. The "voluntary" element in the whole undertaking could not be stimulated in any other way as far as the broader masses are concerned; and when these are not made up of amorphous citizens, but of skilled productive elements, then one can understand the importance that the demonstration of the vote may have.^O   [1933-34]

The proposition that society does not pose itself problems for whose solution the material preconditions do not already exist. This proposition immediately raises the problem of the formulation of a collective will. In order to analyse critically what the proposition means, it is necessary to study precisely how permanent collective wills are formed, and how such wills set themselves concrete short-term and long-term ends — i.e. a line of collective action. It is a question of more or less long processes of development, and rarely of sudden, "synthetic" explosions. Synthetic "explosions" do occur, but if they are looked at closely it can be seen that they are more destructive than reconstructive; they remove mechanical and external obstacles in the way of an indigenous and spontaneous development. Thus the Sicilian Vespers⁷⁵ It may be can be taken as typical.

It would be possible to study concretely the formation of a collective historical moment, analysing it in all its molecular phases — a thing which is rarely done, since it would weigh every treatment down. Instead, currents of opinion are normally taken as already constituted around a group or a dominant personality. This is the problem which in modern times is expressed in terms of the party, or coalition of related parties: how a party is first set up, how its organisational strength and social influence are developed, etc. It requires an extremely minute, molecular process of exhaustive analysis in every detail, the documentation for which is made up of an endless quantity of books, pamphlets, review and newspaper articles, conversations and oral debates repeated countless times, and which in their gigantic aggregation represent this long labour which gives birth to a collective will with a certain degree of homogeneity — with the degree necessary and sufficient to achieve an action which is coordinated and simultaneous in the time and the geographical space in which the historical event takes place.

Importance of utopias and of confused and rationalistic ideologies in the initial phase of the historical processes whereby collective wills are formed. Utopias, or abstract rationalism, have the same importance as old conceptions of the world which developed historically by the accumulation of successive experience. What matters is the criticism to which such an ideological complex is subjected by the first representatives of the new historical phase. This criticism makes possible a process of differentiation and change in the relative weight that the elements of the old ideologies used to possess. What was previously secondary and subordinate, or even incidental, is now taken to be primary — becomes the nucleus of a new ideological and theoretical complex. The old collective will dissolves into its contradictory elements since the subordinate ones develop socially, etc.

After the formation of the party system — an historical phase linked to the standardisation of broad masses of the population (communications, newspapers, big cities, etc.) — the molecular processes take place more swiftly than in the past, etc.   [1931-32]

[N] There are numerous formulations of this, some more felicitous than the one quoted — which is due to Mario de Silva, in Critica Fascista, 15 August 1932. But the content is always the same.

[O] These observations could be developed more amply and organically, stressing other differences as well between the various types of elective systems, according to changes in general social and political relations: the relation between elected and career functionaries, etc.

[71] See, for example, Mussolini: "The war was 'revolutionary' in the sense that it liquidated — in rivers of blood — the century of democracy, the century of number, of majority, of quantity", in Which way is the world going?, 1922; or again, "Fascism is against democracy which levels the people down to the largest number, bringing it down to the level of the majority", in The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932.

[72] The Italian word here is "particulare", a term used by Guicciardini, who suggested that the best refuge from the trials of public life was one's own "particulare" or private interest. De Sanctis criticised this "egoism".

[73] i.e. of conservative origin (concerned to restrict political power to a traditional ruling stratum — Mosca's "political class"), rather than élitist in the strict sense of the word (élite = chosen) — i.e. meritocratic, Pareto, fascist ideology, etc.

[74] i.e., presumably, soviets

[75] See note 81 in section 15.

Brief Notes on Machiavelli's Politics
Machiavelli and Marx
Politics as an Autonomous Science
Elements of Politics
The Political Party
Conceptions of the World and Practical Stances
Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Economism
Prediction and Perspective
Economic-Corporate Phase of the State
Analysis of Situations.   Relations of Force
On Bureaucracy
The Theorem of Fixed Proportions
Number and Quality in Representative Systems of Government
Continuity and Tradition
Spontaneity and Conscious Leadership
Against Byzantinism
The Collective Worker
Voluntarism and Social Masses