Maurice Finocchiaro (Emeritus, Philosophy) has just given approval to The Commercial Press Ltd. in China to publish a Chinese translation of a 40-page chapter from one of his books. The chapter is titled, “Mosca’s Political Science: Democratic Elitism and Balanced Pluralism,” from the book (Yale University Press, 1999).
This translated chapter will be included as a foreword to the Chinese translation of Gaetano Mosca’s The Ruling Class (1939). In turn, Mosca’s book is a classic of political science and philosophy, originally published in Italian in 1896 as Elementi di scienza politica (meaning literally “elements of political science”). For this work, Mosca is commonly regarded as a patron saint of the Right. However, Finocchiaro’s book argues that Mosca is primarily an advocate of democratic elitism, which is an approach and doctrine that was also significantly advocated by Antonio Gramsci, even though the latter is commonly regarded as a patron saint of the Left. Finocchiaro researched this topic mostly in the academic year 1991-92, with the support of a UNLV research leave and of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.
