K počátkům formování pluralistické teorie v americké buržoazní politologii – A. F. Bentley

A.F. Bentley (1870–1957) is one of the founders of modern American non-Marxist political science and at the same time one of the pioneers of the pluralist theory of the political process. From both these aspects his theories – which have not yet been analyzed in Marxist literature – deserve a more thorough interpretation and assessment. A good opportunity is offered for this purpose by the 70th anniversary of publication of Bentley’s key work, The Process of Government, which we mark this year. According to Bentley, the essence of politics in the struggle between groups for the realization of their interests and needs. Therefore, the primary task of political science is not the study of constitutions and other legal regulations, of the statutes and declarations of political parties, of statements by politicians or of the formal aspects of political institutions, but the study of the actual political activity of individuals, of their political behaviour. This methodological instruction alone makes Bentley at the same time also one of the founders of the subsequent politological behaviouralism. Bentley’s methodology of political science must be viewed in confrontation with the methodology of 19th century political science which – with the exception of Marxism – laid stress precisely on formal, institutional and legal aspects. Therein is manifested its rationalism and to some extent also its ties to Marxism. However, in his understanding of the essence of politics Bentley is anti-Marxist and even tries to criticize Marxism. He erroneously views the Marxist theses of politics as a struggle between classes as “simplifying and insufficient”. Both these aspects of Bentley’s theory of politics and political science had a pronounced impact on the subsequent development of the American bourgeois theory of the political process, which of course – in contrast to Bentley – has arrived no longer at a realistic view of the political system of capitalist society, but at its ever more pronounced embellishment.