Michels’ iron law of oligarchy
I never heard of this guy. Now I have to read up on him!
humanities.mq.edu.au
At this time Michels may have thought that this bureaucratization was the result of German cultural patterns, something that could be reversed by effort. But soon he came to think that it was an inevitable result of organization, and that organization was an inevitable result of the attempt to be effective - in other words, that any group of people who try seriously to achieve any social purpose will end up serving a complex organization become an end in itself. This is true even if (as was the case with the SPD) their original or ostensible purpose was to establish democracy: their own organization will become an oligarchy ('rule by the few') - bureaucracy being a kind of oligarchy.
This train of thought took him out of the SPD, and shortly after he left he published Political Parties (1911). The book is based mainly on his experience of the SPD, but it puts forward general conclusions supposed to hold of all political parties, indeed of all organizations. The argument for generalizing is that if even an organization dedicated to the establishment of democracy cannot help becoming itself an oligarchy, a fortiori other organizations will go the same way. The (questionable) assumption is that an organization dedicated to establishing democracy is less likely than organizations with other purposes to be undemocratic: if it can be shown in this most unlikely case that oligarchy is inevitable then it is safe to generalize and say that every organization must be an oligarchy.
In the book Michels shows in detail how oligarchy develops out of a desire to be effective. For good reasons (the division of labour) the members look for leaders and organizers, these people specialize at various tasks, and their specialized knowledge and skill makes them indispensable - they can threaten resignation if the organization seems to be on the point of making a wrong decision. The 'rank and file' (significant phrase) leave it to the officials: they do not attend meetings - in fact supporters often do not bother to join the organization, being confident that it is good hands. Members and supporters develop attitudes of gratitude and loyalty to the leaders, especially those who have suffered for the cause. Among the leaders megalomania develops, and this even reinforces their power: 'This overwhelming self-esteem on the part of the leaders diffuses a powerful suggestive influence, whereby the masses are confirmed in their admiration for their leaders, and it thus proves a source of enhanced power.' Once the organization becomes large enough to have income and accumulated funds, it appoints full-time officials and establishes newspapers, training schools and so on. This means that the party leaders have patronage - power to appoint people to paid jobs. The appointees are their heirs apparent. And they are a conservative element: they are not in favour of risky experiments, or of anything that might lead to a clash with public opinion or with powerful interests, because this might lead to the destruction of the party's power to pay their salaries. The possibility of a career within the party attracts the interest of a less idealistic kind of person. And so on. |
