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Democracy, Organization, Michels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

John D. May
John D. May
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

This article marks an attempt to clarify the teachings of Robert Michels. It suggests that in Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1915), Michels presented a favorable account of the compatibility of organization and democracy.

Other treatments attribute to Michels a thesis of the following kind: (1) Large, organizationally complex associations, compared with small, simple associations, are likely to be governed by cliques whose powers (disposable resources, freedom of action, security of tenure) are abundant and whose policies (use of official status and resources) deviate from the policy preferences of their constituents. (2) Increments of Organization (of scale, or members, and of complexity, or procedural formality, functional differentiation, stratification, specialization, hierarchy, and bureaucracy) augment the powers and the policy-deviating propensities of leaders vis-à-vis followers.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , June 1965 , pp. 417 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1965

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References

1 See S. M. Lipset's introduction to the Collier Books edition (1962) of Political Parties, and the commentaries cited by Lipset. For additional statements or approximations of this version of Michels's thesis, and some challenges, see the following: Blau, P. M. and Scott, W. R., Formal Organizations (Chandler, 1962), pp. 48, 228 Google Scholar; Brooks, R. C., Political Parties and Electoral Problems (Harper, 1933), p. 30 Google Scholar; Coker, F. W., Recent Political Thought (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1934), p. 328 Google Scholar; Dahl, R. A. and Lindblom, C. E., Politics, Economics and Welfare (Harper, 1953), pp. 279–85Google Scholar; Gouldner, A. W., ed., Studies in Leadership, pp. 418–35Google Scholar (T. W. Adorno) and 477–504 (B. Barber); Hughes, H. S., Consciousness and Society (Vintage, 1951)Google Scholar, ch. 7; Keller, Suzanne, Beyond the Ruling Class (Random House, 1963) pp. 72–3, 80, 263, 273–74Google Scholar; Kornhauser, Arthur and others, eds., Industrial Conflict (McGraw-Hill, 1954)Google Scholar, ch. 9 (L. H. Fisher and G. McConnell); Lasswell, H. D. and Kaplan, A., Power and Society (Yale, 1950)Google Scholar; MacIver, R. M., The Web of Government (Macmillan, 1959), pp. 122, 140, 434 Google Scholar; McKenzie, R. T., British Political Parties (Praeger, 1964 ed.), pp. 15–17 Google Scholar, ch. 11; Merriam, C. E. and Barnes, H. E., eds., A History of Political Theories: Recent Times (Macmillan, 1924), pp. 56–67, 383 Google Scholar; Nomad, Max, Aspects of Revolt (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1959)Google Scholar, ch. 1; Presthus, Robert, The Organizalional Society (Knopf, 1962), pp. 4, 41–52 Google Scholar; Pfiffner, J. M. and Sherwood, F. P., Administrative Organization (Prentice-Hall, 1960), p. 338 Google Scholar; Sartori, Giovanni, Democratic Theory (Wayne State University Press, 1962), pp. 42, 82, 100, 120–28, 134 Google Scholar; Spitz, David, Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought (Macmillan, 1949), esp. p. 27 Google Scholar and the treatment in Part II of James Burnham's The Machiavellians; Truman, D. B., The Governmental Process (Knopf, 1955), pp. 137–55Google Scholar; and Waldo, Dwight, “Development of Theory of Democratic Administration,” this Review, Vol. 46 (03 1952), pp. 100–01Google Scholar.

2 Michels does not use the terms “democracy,” “oligarchy,” and “organization” in a consistent or coherent manner. The terminological difficulties have been probed by Cassinelli, C. W., in “The Law of Oligarchy,” this Review, Vol. 47 (Sept. 1953), p. 3 ffGoogle Scholar. However, Michels persistently associates democracy with equality, with conditions suggesting the notion of popular sovereignty, and with the “system in which delegates represent the mass and carry out its will.” On the other hand, he speaks of “The notion of the representation of popular interests, a notion to which the great majority of democrats … cleave ….” Political Parlies, trans. Eden, and Paul, Cedar (Dover Publications, 1959), esp. pp. 1–2, 27, 401 Google Scholar. References hereafter will be to this edition unless designated otherwise.

3 Pp. 33, 40.

4 P. 402.

5 Pp. 329, 406.

6 Pp. 3, 5, 5n, 11, 63, 190, 194, 201.

7 Pp. 11, 32, 390, 400, 402.

8 We are excluding here Michels's arguments for the indispensability of Organization and his suggestions that the process of Organization tends to be self-accelerating. Attention is confined to the question of what arrangements can be compatible with the presence of Organization.

9 For a sophisticated discussion of these processes and of some implications, see Langer, above, note 1, esp. ch. 3.

10 Pp. viii, 22, 168, 402, 408.

11 For example, Easton, David, The Political System (Knopf, 1959), pp. 56–7Google Scholar.

12 P. 32.

13 P. 401.

14 P. 376; emphasis added. He also says, “A party is neither a social unity nor an economic unity.” (p. 387) His characterization of change in parties, however, presupposes initial unity. See section III below, under Social Pluralism.

15 Pp. 27–8. Omitted from this quotation is a contradictory remark, illuminating Michels's chronic confusion about the difference between hypothesis and history. He remarks that the “equality of like men” is “manifested” in some cases (i.e., Socialist labor groups) “by the mutual use of the familiar ‘thou,’ which is employed by the most poorly paid wage-laborer in addressing the most distinguished intellectuals.” (p. 27) If poor laborers and intellectuals are associated, then “equality of like men” is absent. The group is not a social democracy, although it may employ equalitarian rituals and it may be pledged to the attainment of social democracy.

16 P. 33.

17 P. 401.

18 P. 36.

19 Pp. 31–2, 36, 206, 400.

20 Pp. 21–2.

21 P. 365.

22 P. 365n.

23 For example, see Sartori, above, note 1, pp. 121–26.

24 See pp. 176, 185–87, 272, 392.

25 P. 365.

26 Pp. 187–8.

27 Pp. 187, 189, 371, 307, 401 (his capitals), 376. Some writers have suggested that Michels's Law of Oligarchy deals with the general subject of goal-reorientation as determined by internal group processes, rather than with the particular Subject of democracy. For example, see Eldersveld, Samuel, “American Interest Groups,” in Interest Groups on Four Continents, ed. Ehrmann, H. W. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958), p. 184 Google Scholar. Philip Selznick relies heavily on Michels's contributions to understanding the “unanticipated consequences” of Organization and of circumstantial adaptation. See esp. Selznick's, “An Approach to the Theory of Bureaucracy,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 8 (1943), p. 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 See Gouldner, A. W., “Metaphysical Pathos and the Theory of Bureaucracy,” this Review, Vol. 49 (1955), p. 3 Google Scholar. Gouldner argues that Michels, Selznick (in TV A and the Grass Roots), and other modern theorists of group organization quite arbitrarily assume that the “unanticipated consequences” wrought by Organization will be deplorable.

29 Part I, ch. 3, esp. pp. 41–3.

30 P. 238.

31 Pp. 22, 237, 281.

32 P. 238; emphasis his.

33 P. 11; emphasis added. Elsewhere (esp. ch. 2) Michels voices doubt that such a commitment has ever truly animated a particular social group.

34 P. 40; also pp. 289–90.

35 P. 295.

36 Pp. 283–8.

37 Pp. 271–82.

38 Pp. 265–70.

39 Pp. 185–87.

40 P. 387.

41 P. 268.

42 P. 275f.

43 Pp. 185–7.

44 P. 278.

45 Ibid.

46 Part IV, chs. 2, 3, 4. The downward movement involved in the “social exchange” is ideological and affiliational rather than socio-economic. Idealistic or opportunistic bourgeois join Socialist groups, usually as leaders.

47 P. 279.

48 P. 89.

49 P. 1.

50 P. 189.

51 P. 389. A very similar argument (omitting the “teleology” of “class” fidelity), is advanced by Carr, E. H. in The New Society (1951)Google Scholar and is dissected by Langer, above, note 1, p. 263.

52 P. 280.

53 The early Socialist platform was “the best one from which to advocate the interests of the workers … so that the renunciation of this platform almost always involves the loss of opportunity for defending working-class interests” (p. 116).

54 P. 367.

55 Pp. 398–9.

56 P. 367.

57 P. 6.

58 P. 367.

59 P. 374.

60 P. 394; also pp. 367–74. Michels amended this assumption in the light of the Bolshevik and Fascist triumphs. He acknowledged the prowess of elitist-insurrectionary (non-“mass”) parties during crisis periods. He also suggested that these parties alone can maintain a moral and social integrity, since they do not need to emasculate their doctrines for the sake of pluralistic electoral support. Michels, R., “Some Reflections on the Sociological Character of Political Parties,” this Review, Vol. 21 (11 1927), p. 3 Google Scholar.

61 P. 371.

62 P. 374.

63 P. 367.

64 P. 393–5.

65 P. 297. The second-generation Socialist leaders, in addition to being psychologically and sociologically more representative than their predecessors, also were ‘ethnically’ more representative. The early leaders (and many followers) were bourgeois, militant, and Jewish, (pp. 258–63, 28, 324, 342)

66 Pp. 289, 319, 171.

67 P. 306; emphasis added.

68 Pp. 89, 165.

69 Pp.389, 114.

70 P. 80.

71 Pp. 71–2.

72 P. 67.

73 P. 301.

74 Pp. 400, 50–2, 79, 98.

75 P. 400.

76 “The mass per se is amorphous, and therefore needs division of labor, specialization, and guidance.” This “incompetence” is “incurable.” (p. 404). Sartori observes that what is rendered as “leadership” in the English translation of Political Parties appears as Führerstum and as sisterma di capi in the German and Italian editions. The latter terms allegedly connote “rulership,” or “headship” or some sort of arrangement more sinister than what is conveyed by “leadership.” Sartori, above, note 1, p. 110.

77 Pp. 83–83, 86.

78 P. 83n.

79 P. 76.

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