Iron Law of Oligarchy” Has Held a Virtual Monopoly Over Theo- Rists and a Majority of Historians Since the Early Twentieth Century

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CHAPTER TWO

OLIGARCHY: COUNCILS OF THE COMMUNE

Th e “iron law of oligarchy” has held a virtual monopoly over theorists and a majority of historians since the early twentieth century. From the works of Robert Michels, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, C. Wright Mills, and Joseph Schumpeter evolved an “elitist theory of democracy” that has served not only to describe a political-sociological model, but also to justify a particular interpretation of modern democracy and the inevitability of elitism.1 In this paradigm, decision-makers are limited to elites, and popular political pressure and political change result only in the replacement of one elite by another. Th e role of the “masses” is constrained to the selection of elites by popular elections. However, that means that elitist governments therefore must retain the consent of the governed, which they do by extending the state into non-governmental associations of society (civil society) and exerting what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony and what modern theorists label as polyarchy.2 Th e decade of the 1960s resulted in a crisis in polyarchical theory, and although that crisis produced mostly further justifi cations of elitism, it also left a legacy of theoretical critiques, such as those by Cliff ord duRand and William Robinson.3 DuRand, in his attack on the oligarchy-polyarchy paradigm, and his claim of signifi cance for “popular surges,” such as that of the 1960s, off ers a very brief but insightful revision of our understanding of Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy,” pointing out that Michels was in fact describing a

1 Th e oft -quoted “iron law of oligarchy” concept belongs to Robert(o) Michels, a German-born theorist, who fi rst wrote in that language, but who moved to and lived in Italy. Th e fi rst version of his work dates from 1911. Robert Michels, Political Parties. A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, (New York: Th e Free Press, 1962). 2 Cliff duRand, “Democracy and Struggles for Social Justice.” Another World Is Possible. Workshop on Alter Globalizations, Aug. 12, 2004, http://ebowman.home.igc. org/AnotherWorld/papers/durand1.wtm. 3 William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy. Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), quoted by duRand, “Democracy and Social Struggles,” p. 6. 70 chapter two tendency, not an irreversible law. Moreover, Michels also described what duRand calls “a counter democratic tendency” of ever-renew- ing waves of opponents to aristocratic dominance. In Michels’ theory, therefore, struggle is inevitable, but not the permanent dominance of either aristocracy or democracy.4 Th is interpretation of oligarchical theory contrasts sharply with that of the “consensus” school that has dominated Anglo-American historiography, with its emphasis upon government by an elite dedicated to the “common good” and its de- emphasis upon the signifi cance of confl ict.5 Historians of Florence and Venice have argued that closure took place in those societies in the late thirteenth century and led to the formation of oligarchies that endured for centuries.6 But in the last decade the appropriateness of applying the concept of oligarchy to the medieval communes, paralleling the appearance of critiques of the theoretical orthodoxy of elitism described above, has also become con- troversial. Th e arguments in favor of and in opposition to the existence of oligarchies in the late medieval commune also parallel and relate closely to interpretations of the magnate-popolo struggle. Th ose sym- pathetic to the popolo tend to denounce the oligarchical interpretation, but those who deny the reality of the eff ectiveness of the popolo and its program and who see the magnates and popolani as having engaged in “mere” factional confl ict, not surprisingly, tend to support it. A recent challenge to the orthodoxy of the late medieval oligarchy paradigm and the “perception of a fundamental continuity of elite power”

4 DuRand, “Democracy and Social Struggles,” p. 3, quoting the closing paragraph of Michels’s Political Parties, p. 371. 5 For the “consensus” school, see John M. Najemy, “Politics and Political Th ought,” in Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography, ed. Jonathan Woolfson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 270–297. 6 For Venice, and the traditional view that the patriciate was closed by the early fourteenth century, see Guido Ruggiero, “Modernization and the Mythic State in Early Renaissance Venice: the Serrata Revisited,” Viator 10 (1979): 245–56. For a revision- ist view, see Stanley Chojnacki, “In Search of the Venetian Patriciate: Families and Factions in the Fourteenth Century,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J.R. Hale (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), pp. 47–90. For Florence the founding proponent of the oligarchical interpretation was Nicola Ottokar, Il comune di Firenze alla fi ne del Dugento (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1962), original edition 1926. For the same period and same type of interpretation, also see Sergio Raveggi, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici, and Patrizia Parenti, Ghibellini, guelfi e popolo grasso: i detentori del potere politico a Firenze nella seconda metà del Dugento (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978). One of the strongest proponents of an oligarchical interpretation is Sergio Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico nello stato-città medievale (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978).