weal(1576), influenced Western political thought for
200 years after its publication. His idea that humans
are part of a “great chain of being” who are connected
to all other beings in the universe contributed to MOD-
ERN(e.g., Madisonian) notions of balancing different
elements and groups through moderation and CHECKS
AND BALANCES.
Further Readings
Bodin, J. Method for the Easy Comprehension of History(1566),
B. Reynolds, transl. New York: Columbia University Press,
1945.
———. The Six Books of a Commonweal,R. Knolles, transl., K.
D. McRae, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1962.
———. Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime
(1841), M. L. D. Kuntz, transl. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1975.
Denzer, H., ed. Jean Bodin.Munich: C. H. Beck, 1954.
Franklin, J. Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory.Cam-
bridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
King, P. The Ideology of Order: a Comparative Analysis of Jean
Bodin and Thomas Hobbes.London: Allen & Unwin, 1974.
Lewis, J. U. “Jean Bodin’s ‘logic of sovereignty’,” Political Studies
16 (1968): 202–22.
Parker, D. “Law, society and the state in the thought of Jean
Bodin,” History of Political Thought 2(1981): 253–85.
Rose, P. L. Bodin and the Great God of Nature. The Moral and
Religious Universe of a Judaiser.Geneva: Droz, 1980.
Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, first viscount
(1678–1751) British statesman, historian, philoso-
pher, and writer
Lord Bolingbroke is best known for his development
of the classic British REPUBLICANtheory. In this theory, a
healthy, virtuous English republic is dependent on a
sturdy, independent citizenry, especially yeoman
“County” gentry tied to the land, agriculture, and rural
values and traditions. The British Parliament and the
king should reflect this virtue of farmers and patriots.
Corruption of this republic comes from a highly cen-
tralized government that is tied to business, com-
merce, paper money, the stock market, banks, and
appointed administrators. Bolingbroke saw the long
ministry of Robert Walpole as embodying such antire-
publican corrupt government with its high taxes, pub-
lic debt, standing army, and imperial pretensions.
Much of Bolingbroke’s “civic republicanism” influ-
enced the American Revolutionaries Thomas JEFFERSON
and James MADISON. The American resistance to the
British Empire was seen as preserving the “virtuous
republic” of yeoman farmers against the corrupt finan-
cial and military “Court” of Great Britain under King
George III. This “republican ideology” continued in
the United States under the Jeffersonian Republicans
and agrarians who opposed the political centralization,
patronage, and financial manipulation of Alexander
HAMILTONand the FEDERALISTS. Bolingbroke’s ideas dif-
fered from the Americans in their faith in a “Patriot
King” preserving traditional British values and in a
socially CONSERVATIVE “gentleman’s” republic that is
opposed to social EQUALITY. Bolingbroke’s republican-
ism is more aristocratic than its American derivative: It
opposes banking and commerce from a nostalgic
“rural gentry” perspective; this becomes a romantic
English Tory outlook later that is associated with
Edmund BURKE.
Adopting the CLASSICALrepublican ideas of ancient
Greek and ROMAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, Bolingbroke’s
republicanism sees history in terms of the cycles of
birth, growth, decline, and death of a republic. The
healthy “adult” republic emphasizes civic VIRTUE, the
common good, self-sacrifice, and so on, while creeping
corruption tempts with private interest, economic
gain, and personal immoral conduct. Once a state is
corrupted by financial intrigue and power politics, it
can only be revived by a return to original republican
principles of public virtue, devotion to the common
good, patriotism, and duty.Further Readings
Bolingbroke, H. St J. Political Writings,I. Kramnick, ed. Arling-
ton Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1970.
———. Historical Writings,I. Kramnick, ed. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1972.
———. The Idea of a Patriot King,S. W. Jackman, ed. Indi-
anapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.
Dickinson, H. T. Bolingbroke: Tory Humanist.London: Consta-
ble, 1970.
Hart, J. Viscount Bolingbroke: Tory Humanist.Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1965.
Kramnick, I. Bolingbroke and His Circle.Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1968.Bolshevik
The Marxist COMMUNIST Party formed in Russia in
1903, led by V. I. LENIN, and gaining political power in
the October 1917 Russian revolution that established
the SOVIET UNION. It is contrasted with the MENSHEVIK
Party by advocating a small, minority, revolutionary,
“vanguard,” communist, working-class party that
would guide the proletariat in overthrowing the exist-
ing government and establish SOCIALISM. This tightly36 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, first viscount