Robert Michels and the Iron Law of Oligarchy

Robert Michels and the Iron Law of Oligarchy

• Robert Michels is known for his work on political parties and the "Iron Law of Oligarchy."
• Michels critiques the idea of sovereign masses and direct democracy.
• He argues that large public meetings readily pass resolutions, whereas smaller groups deliberate more cautiously.
• He contends that individual responsibility diminishes in crowds.
• A key argument against mass sovereignty is the logistical impossibility of its realization.
• He claims the sovereign masses are incapable of making necessary decisions due to their size.
• Michels references Louis Blanc's argument against Proudhon, questioning the feasibility of direct action by millions.
• He notes the necessity of representation in large organizations, citing the example of the socialist organization in Berlin.

The Need for Delegation

• Large organizations cannot function through direct discussion due to logistical issues like space and communication.
• Technical and administrative reasons also prevent direct self-government in large groups.
• Resolving disputes among individuals in large groups through direct collective action is impractical.
• Delegation, where representatives act on behalf of the masses, becomes necessary.
• Even in democratically spirited groups, individuals handle daily business and important actions.
• The inability of the people to directly exercise legislative power led Spanish democratic idealists to advocate for popular representation and a parliamentary state.
• Initially, leaders are considered servants of the masses, with emphasis on equality among members.
• This equality is often manifested through informal address, such as using the familiar "thou" in interactions.
• Over time, the initial concept of equality evolves towards equality among comrades within the same organization.
• The fundamental postulate of the Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme finds theoretical application in this context.
• All positions are filled through election, with officials acting as subordinate executive organs.
• At first, attempts are made to closely tie delegates to the will of the mass, but this approach later evolves.
• Some organizations required a supermajority for election and written authorization for negotiations.
• Open access to accounts was intended to prevent mistrust and promote bookkeeping skills among members.
• Democracy in the initial sense is only applicable on a small scale.
• In early labor movements, delegates were appointed in rotation or chosen by lot.
• Delegates' duties become more complex, requiring specific abilities and knowledge.
• Relying on chance or alphabetical order becomes insufficient for selecting effective delegates.
• Methods intended to enable mass participation in administration are gradually abandoned.

The Rise of Professional Politicians

• Development of modern political aggregates leads to a streamlined process transforming the led into leaders.
• Calls emerge for official recognition and the constitution of a class of professional politicians.
• Ferdinand Tönnies suggests regular examinations for socialist parliamentary candidates and party secretaries.
• Heinrich Herkner argues that trade unions cannot rely on rank-and-file individuals for management.
• He predicts these unions will need to hire university graduates as officials.
• Candidates for trade union secretaryships face examinations on legal matters and writing skills.
• Socialist parties train their own officials.
• "Nurseries" are established to provide officials with "scientific culture."
• A Party School in Berlin trains individuals for positions in the socialist party and trade unions.
• The school is funded by the socialist party, with additional support from trade unions to cover pupil's expenses.
• Preference is given to existing party or union officials as pupils.
• Individuals attending the school sought to enter the labor bureaucracy.
• Graduates who failed to secure positions sometimes became discontented.
• Labor organizations employed a percentage of party school graduates.
• L'Umanitaria founded a "Practical School of Social Legislation" in Milan to train workers as factory inspectors or union officials.
• The school awards diplomas entitled "Labour Expert."
• Coursework includes topics to prepare for employment within labour organizations.
• A similar school was founded in Turin, but quickly failed.
• Ruskin College in Oxford is used by English trade unions and co-operative societies to train aspiring officials.
• The educational institutions for party and labor organization officials lead to the creation of a working-class elite.
• Without intending to, these institutions widen the gap between leaders and the masses.
• Technical specialization in extensive organizations necessitates expert leadership.
• The power of determination becomes attributed to leadership, withdrawn from the masses.
• Leaders were formerly the executive organs of the collective will, but become emancipated from mass control.

Organization and Oligarchy

• Organization implies a tendency toward oligarchy.
• In any organization, the aristocratic tendency manifests very clearly.
• The mechanism of organization induces changes in the mass, inverting leaders' and led's positions.
• Every party or union becomes divided into a directing minority and a directed majority.
• Lower stages of civilization feature tyranny, but democracy emerges at later stages.
• Freedoms and privileges are initially restricted to a few, gradually extending to a wider circle.
• The era of democracy is characterized by the extension of these rights.
• Democracy tends to decline as organization advances, following a parabolic course.
• Democracy is in decline as far as party life is concerned.
• The increase in leaders' power is directly proportional to organization's extension.
• The influence of leaders is mainly determined by the degree of organization development.
• Stronger organization leads to a lesser degree of applied democracy.
• Any solid organization presents a soil for the differentiation of organs and functions.
• The apparatus of the organization widens, membership grows, and the influence of the committees increases.
• The direct control exercised by the rank and file becomes less efficient and gets replaced by the increasing power of committees.
• Parties insinuate themselves into an indirect electoral system.
• The influence of the electoral system tends to be disastrous within the party because it must strive to eliminate views that might alienate potential party members.
• It becomes more common to refer all important questions to committees that debate behind closed doors.
• Administration tasks become complex, making it impossible to oversee at a glance.
• The rapid movement in rapidly progressive causes requires higher task quality, which mandates further function differentiation.
• All activity by the leaders is, in theory, subject to criticism; instructions are carried out by the leader using the instruction of the mass.
• As organizations begin to grow, control is largely artificial.
• Members must give up the idea of directly managing organizations and hand them over to salaried officials.
• Democratic control undergoes progressive diminution, ultimately being reduced to an infinitesimal minimum.
• The number of functions removed from electoral assemblies and moved to executive committees increases steadily.
• A powerful and complex party builds an edifice.

Bureaucracy and Immutability

• The principle of the division of labor goes further into operation, causing authority to undergo division and subdivision.
• A bureaucracy gets constructed that is both defined and has a hierarchy.
• Strict party hierarchical observation of the rules becomes the most important thing.
• Parties become inevitably bureaucratic because of how they function technically.
• Radical wings of social parties don't object to evolution, democracy is only a form and where things stop harmonizing it is better to abandon democracy.
• Organization is the only means to socialism, being considered the revolutionary party component.
• There have always been leaders, even though orthodox Marxists of Germany try to convince people that socialism is a democracy which doesn’t need leaders.
• Stating that socialism doesn’t need leaders is a false assertion that strengthens leaders.
• Leaders serve to attempt to attempt to conceal the dangers that now threaten democracy.
• Strong organizations need equally strong leadership for technical, tactical, and administrative reasons.
• Anarchists don’t have leaders because they have a horror of fixed organization.
• The employee of the organization was still a simp workmate sharing the social conditions of his fellows, but today he now is a professional politician.
• There is a market increase for the tendency to replace temporary leaders with professions leaders.

Masses and Their Characteristics

• It becomes increasingly essential for a market number of individuals to dedicate entire activity to party effort.
• Enabling to appreciate leadership over the people, the characteristics of the level and file have to be shown.
• Masses have a sentiment of indifference toward party's own affairs, it is natural to them, even in organizations that aim for political outcomes.
• The masses are unable to resist party leaders, because if they were organized to a point of resistance the party would crumble.
• Party leadership is more aged and experience than the masses.
• The leaders don't have to fear the criticism of members of the masses, because they are lacking.
• The mass's fluctuating nature is another important piece because it is constantly changing.
• The connections between organizations and groups are skinny, showing that small proportion of the organized feel at one with their unions.
• When the leaders are compared to the masses, the members differ from them every moment.

The Conservative Basis of Organization

• Whether the oligarchical disease is incurable is one of the questions that must be raised.
• Whether a democratic party can practice a democratic party, or for a party to be socially revolutionary, there needs to be investigation.
• A brief answer to why socialism alone isn’t the way can come from this.
• Democratic parties which have been subjected to oligarchical control can still act a certain way in the state.
• The importance the masses give increases what the lead demagogues do.
• Executives learn to yield, leading to inconvenience but giving opportunity that social justices might get applied.
• Extremem left classes that succeed in attracting other governing classes into governmental order leads to arrest of revolution.
• Political organization leads to power, but that is always conservative.
• The internal party organization to-day is absolutely conservative or on the way to becoming such.
• If the oligarchal party leads to an external manifestation, it might be responsible for the creation of an oligarchical policy.
• Party organization, if built, leads to an oligarchical policy.
• The struggle for great principles becomes impossible to extend into the market scale as the organization increases in size.
• Fights are fought out to an ever dimensioning extent when the fields of ideas are in question during a conflict, because of this it has begun to become more personal struggles. Bureaucratic principles happen due to internal dissension.

Implications of Organization

• One can draw individuals based on a wide variety organization, that is one of it’s principle aims.
• The number of members needed in the party will be less because if has already had it’s fair share.
• Parliamentary activities are a major factor of parties working, that they will try to recruit members.
• Organization is an aim that a member and a vote can have because of where they stand with the party.
• Every decline and loss of votes diminishes a parties prestige.
• Individuals need to pay attention to those out-willed in the party so they don’t alarm themselves.

State and Party

• A need merely exists out of a solidified state so those like the staff who require this see and can take.
• Class has only to secure solid organization so the people of the group understand the state organization. Government is a party now that’s organized like government, on the small and on the large.
• Getting something for an end will have to be looked at more with an end rather than the end.
• One can't make the argument that socialist doctrine should determine when theory should fall instead those ideas need to coincide that each could be right.
• A threat should need to give way to someone that can handle it.
• History offers great amounts of how you treat an organization to see how it gets after something is set up.
• Revolutions were used at one point to get parties and get the state which they have had.

Iron Law, Continued

• Revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat will show up.
• In other words, dictatorship is shown in the hands of those that are powerful enough and know how to be subtle enough to pull it off.
• Contradictory dictatorship over all the classes is shown to what it means between each sector in what should be done.
• Marxism shows what to do in the classes, how it sees it, how it shows the truth of the world, that is the proletariat.
• There is a class so each member needs to come together, and all are members who believe what Marxism has to say.
• In the socialism aspect, there needs to a preeminent side.
• The heterogeneity on how members in the party behave gets showed.
• There has now been a conservative party which employees revolutionary terminology still.

Further Considerations

• It isn’t societies aim alone that is the idea. Not to see those well but it should go to a different perspective.
• Society’s need for economic is at times more than what a normal one may need.
• Parties now have good means to be made social.
• The task isn't to inquire if something is good or bad.
• It is science to show that every system is incompatible, that a fact which is based on law is not of the historical necessity.
• Laws give empirical observation.

Leadership

• Leadership is necessary in very form of life.
• Sciences need to show what is needed, if those parts that work isn’t true.
• It is psychological to have it where oligarchy is.
• The way function gets completed is done through new leaders. They function accessory and are given free to do.
• However people will be hired and kept to work.
• Organization will give birth to electorial results, the electorial power should not be limited. It is designed to be used to control the direction of leaders.
• What has been written should now change and stay.
• Masses might want to do so with people but the people that they do are the opposite of having a solution.
• Parties in the modern area had to give the lead.
• If we are looking to choose democracy, its not looking for an aristocracy. Democracy shouldn’t have what it has now.