Robert Michels

Robert Michels (9 January 1876, Cologne, Germany — 3 May 1936, Rome, Italy) was a German sociologist who wrote on the political behavior of intellectual elites. He is best known for his book Political Parties, which contains a description of the "iron law of oligarchy." He was a student of Max Weber and moved from the Socialist Party to become one of the Italian Fascists.

He moved to Italy where he became a revolutionary syndicalist.

Biography

Michels studied in England, in Paris (at the Sorbonne), and at universities in Munich, Leipzig (1897), Halle (1898), and Turin. He became a Socialist while teaching at the University of Marburg, and became active with the radical wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany; he left the party in 1907. At the University of Turin, he taught economics, political science, and sociology. In 1914, he became the professor of economics at the University of Basel; where he taught until 1926. His last years were spent in Italy teaching economics and the history of doctrines at the University of Perugia.

Work

The Iron Law of Oligarchy

The Iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1915 book, Political Parties. It states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies.

Robert Michels was disturbed to find that, paradoxically, the socialist parties of Europe, despite their democratic ideology and provisions for mass participation, seemed to be dominated by their leaders, just as the traditional conservative parties.

Studying political parties, he concluded that the problem lay in the very nature of organizations. Modern democracy allowed the formation of organizations such as political parties, but as such organizations grew in complexity, they paradoxically became less and less democratic. Michels formulated the "Iron Law of Oligarchy": "Who says organization, says oligarchy."[1]

At the time Michels formulated his Law, he was an anarcho-syndicalist. He later became an important ideologue of Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy.

Michels stressed several factors that underly the "Iron Law of Oligarchy."

Any large organization, he pointed out, is faced with problems of coordination that can be solved only by creating a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy, by design, is hierarchically organized to achieve efficiency — many decisions have to be made daily which cannot efficiently be made by large numbers of people. The effective functioning of an organization therefore requires the concentration of much power in the hands of a few.[2]

This process is further compounded as delegation is necessary in any large organization, as thousands - sometimes even hundreds of thousands - members cannot make decisions using participatory democracy; this has been dictated by the lack of technological means that would allow large number of people to meet and debate, and also the issues related to the crowd psychology. The delegation however leads to specialization: the development of bases of knowledge, skills, and resources among a leadership, which further serves to alienate the leadership from the 'mass and rank' and entrenches the leadership in office.

Bureaucratization and specialization are the driving processes behind the Law. These create a specialized group of administrators in a hierarchical organization. Which, in turn, leads to the rationalization and routinization of authority and decision-making, a process first and perhaps best described by Max Weber, and to a lesser and more cynical extent, by the Peter Principle.

The organizational characteristics that promote oligarchy are reinforced by certain characteristics of both leaders and members of organizations. People achieve leadership positions precisely because they have unusual political skill; they are adept at getting their way and persuading others of the correctness of their views. Once they hold high office, their power and prestige is further increased. Leaders have access to, and control over, information and facilities that are not available to the rank-and-file. They control the information that flows down the channels of communication. Leaders are also strongly motivated to persuade the organization of the rightness of their views, and they use all of their skills, power and authority to do so.[3]

By design of the organization, rank and file are less informed than their "superiors." Finally, from birth, people are taught to obey those in positions of authority. Therefore the rank and file tend to look to leaders for policy directives and are generally prepared to allow leaders to exercise their judgment on most matters.

Leaders also have control over very powerful negative and positive sanctions to promote the behavior that they desire. They have the power to grant or deny raises, assign workloads, fire, demote and — that most gratifying of all sanctions — the power to promote. Most important, they tend to promote junior officials who share their opinions, with the result that the oligarchy becomes self-perpetuating. Therefore the very nature of large-scale organization makes oligarchy within these organizations inevitable. Bureaucracy, by design, promotes the centralization of power in the hands of those at the top of the organization. [4]

The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to social viscosity in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.

An example that Michels used in his book was Germany's Social Democratic Party.

The size and complexity of a group or organization is important to the Iron Law as well. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Green Party of Germany made a conscious effort to try and break the Iron Law. Anyone could be or could remove a party official. There were no permanent offices or officers. Even the smallest, most routine decisions could be put up for discussion and to a vote. When the party was small, these anti-oligarchic measures enjoyed some success. But as the organization grew larger and the party became more successful, the need to effectively compete in elections, raise funds, run large rallies and demonstrations and work with other political parties once elected, led the Greens to adapt more conventional structures and practices.

Writings of Michels

Syndicalisme & socialisme ... (1908)
Proletariato e la borghesia nel movimento socialista italiano (1908; 1975)
Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (1911, 1925; 1970). Translated, as Sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna : studi sulle tendenze oligarchiche degli aggregati politici, from the German original by Dr. Alfredo Polledro, revised and expanded (1912). Translated, from the Italian, by Eden and Cedar Paul as Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (Hearst's International Library Co., 1915; Free Press, 1949; Dover Publications, 1959); republished with an introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset (Crowell-Collier, 1962; Transaction Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0765804697)
Grenzen der Geschlechtsmoral. Italian translation, Morale sessuale; versione dal tedesco del dott revised and expanded by Alfredo Polledro (Fratelli Bocca, 19-?). Translated as Sexual Ethics: A Study of Borderland Questions (Walter Scott, George Allen & Unwin, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914); republished with a new introduction by Terry R. Kandal (Transaction Publishers, 2001-2, ISBN 0765807432)
Probleme der Sozialphilosophie (1914)
Imperialismo italiano, studi politico-demografici (1914)
Amour et chasteté; essais sociologiques (1914)
Organizzazione del commercio estero (1925)
Sozialismus und fascismus in Italien (1925)
Storia critica del movimento socialista italiano : dagli inizi fino al 1911 (La Voce, 1926)
Corso di sociologia politica (1927). Translated, and introduced by Alfred de Grazia, as First lectures in political sociology (University of Minnesota Press, 1949; Arno Press, 1974, ISBN 0405055153)
Sittlichkeit in ziffern? Kritik der moralstatistik (1928)
Patriotismus, prolegomena zu seiner soziologischen analyse (1929)
Einfluss der faschistischen Arbeitsverfassung auf die Weltwirtschaft (1929)
Italien von heute ; politische und wirtschaftliche Kulturgeschichte von 1860 bis 1930 (1930)
Introduzione alla storia delle dottrine economiche e politiche (1932)
Boicottaggio, saggio su un aspetto delle crisi (1934)
Boycottage international (1936)
Verelendungstheorie; Studien und Untersuchungen zur internationalen Dogmengeschichte der Volkswirtschaft, witha foreword by Heinz Maus (1970)
Elite e/o democrazia (G. Volpe, 1972)
Antologia di scritti sociologici; edited by Giordano Sivini (1980)
Works on paper, 1918-1930 (Barbara Mathes Gallery, 1984)
Critique du socialisme : contribution aux débats du début du XXè siècle; articles selected and presented by Pierre Cours-Salies and Jean-Marie Vincent (Editions Kimé, 1992, ISBN 2908212439)

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

"Robert Michels And the "Iron Law of Oligarchy"," chapter 12 of Revolution and Counterrevolution: Change and Persistence in Social Structures by Seymour Lipset Martin
Entwicklung zum faschistischen Führerstaat in der politischen philosophie von Robert Michels by Frank Pfetsch (1965)
Robert Michels; vom sozialistisch-syndikalistischen zum faschistischen Credo by Wilfried Röhrich (Duncker & Humblot, 1971, ISBN 3428026101).
Organizzazione, partito, classe, politica e legge ferrea dell'oligarchia in Roberto Michels by Giorgio Sola (1972)
Sociology and estrangement: three sociologists of Imperial Germany by Arthur Mitzman (Knopf, 1973, ISBN 0394446046). Republished with a new introduction by the author (Transaction Books, 1987, ISBN 0887386059).
The anti-democratic sources of elite theory : Pareto, Mosca, Michels by Robert A. Nye (SAGE, 1977, ISBN 0803998724).
Dilemmi della democrazia moderna : Max Weber e Robert Michels by Francesco Tuccari (Laterza, 1993, ISBN 8842042439)
Intelectuales, masas y élites : una introducción a Mosca, Pareto y Michels by María de los Angeles Yannuzzi (UNR Editora, 1993, ISBN 9506730415).
Robert Michels : die Herausbildung der modernen politischen Soziologie im Kontext von Herausforderung und Defizit der Arbeiterbewegung by Joachim Hetscher (1993)
Robert Michels und das eherne Gesetz der Oligarchie by Gustav Wagner in "Wer wählt, hat seine Stimme abegeben" Graswurzel Revolution pp. 28
Robert Michels und das eherne Gesetz der Oligarchie by Gustav Wagner in "Wer wählt, hat seine Stimme abgegeben" Graswurzel Revolution pp. 28
Verstehen: Max Weber's Home Page By Frank W. Elwell. 'Oligarchy' section describes the Law. Last accessed on 27 May 2006.

Michels, Robert. 1915. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Translated into English by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul. New York: The Free Press.

External links

Biography of Robert Michels at BookRags.com
Robert Michels index, a site featuring a PDF of Political Parties.
Robert Michels - Oligarchy taken from Oscar Grusky and George A. Miller, The Sociology of Organizations: Basic Studies (Free Press, 1970, pp. 25-43). Reprints from Political Parties.
Books and Articles on: Robert Michels at Questia.
O’Sullivan’s First Law
Political Parties in PDF

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