of things, a radical infirmity in all human contrivances.”
The Federalist defended the
American Constitution of 1787 as conforming to the passionate nature of human beings
as moved by ambition and avarice and thus not to be trusted with absolute power over
others. “What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If
men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Barry Goldwater began The
Conscience of a Conservative by declaring that “the first obligation of a political thinker
is to understand the nature of man.” He praised the American Constitution, with its
system of limited and separated powers, as conforming to “the imperfect nature of man,”
because it recognizes “the corrupting influence of power, the natural tendency of men
who possess some power to take unto themselves more power.”
The utopian vision of human nature is manifested throughout the history of leftist
thought. Karl Marx identified “the human essence” as “the ensemble of the social
relations,” which suggests the possibility of changing the “human essence” by changing
the “social relations.” “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various
ways; the point, however, is to change it.” The greatest revolutionary change would
come with the rule of the proletariat, which would bring about a classless society and thus
the end of all domination of some over others. Against Marx, the anarchist Mikhail
Bakunin warned that Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” would actually become a
new “despotism of a governing minority.” “He who doubts this,” Bakunin insisted,
“simply doesn’t know human nature.” Marx responded by ridiculing Bakunin’s
“hallucinations about domination.”
6
Edmund Burke, Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Daniel E. Ritchie (Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund, 1992), 15; Burke, Burke’s Politics: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed.
Ross J. S. Hoffman and Paul Levack (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 54.
7
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist, ed. Edward Mead Earle (New York:
Random House, Modern Library, 1937), number 51, p. 337.
8
Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1990), 5,
11, 13.
9
Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2
nd
ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 145, 545-46.
4
Convention