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If the people only knew how the world truly worked, there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning! The Iron Law of Oligarchy by Robert Michels. It’s time for some RealPolitik! Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by the sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy. This work analyses the power structures of organizations such as political parties and trade unions. Michels’s main argument is that all organizations, even those in theory most egalitarian and most committed to democracy – like socialist political parties – are in fact oligarchical, and dominated by a small group of leadership. Let me share some of favorite parts: Part 1: Leadership in Democratic Organizations. Democracy is inconceivable without organization . … Organization, based as it is upon the principle of least effort, that is to say, upon the greatest possible economy of energy, is the weapon of the weak in their struggle with the strong. The chances of success in any struggle will depend upon the degree to which this struggle is carried out upon a basis of solidarity between individuals whose interests are identical. Pg. 61. It is undeniable that these educational institutions for the officials of the party and of the labor organizations tend, above all, towards the artificial creation of an élite of the working class, of a caste of cadets composed of persons who aspire to the command of the proletarian rank and file. Without wishing it, there is thus affected a continuous enlargement of the gulf which divides the leaders from the masses. Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than the executive organs of the collective will, soon emancipate themselves from the masses and become independent of its control. Organization implies a tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union, or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. … As a result of organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a minority of directors and a majority of directed . With the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline . Pg. 70. Every party organization which has attained to a considerable degree of complication demands that there should be a certain number of persons who devote all their activities tot he work of the party. For democracy, however, the first appearance of professional leadership marks the beginning of the end . Pg. 73. Part 3: The Exercise of Power and its Psychological Reaction Upon the Leaders. The apathy of the masses and their need for guidance has as its counterpart in the leaders a natural greed for power. Thus the development of the democratic oligarchy is accelerated by the general characteristics of human nature . What was initiated by the need for organization, administration, and strategy is completed by psychological determinism. Pg. 205. It was a tenet of the old aristocracy that to disobey the orders of the monarch was to sin against God. In modern democracy it is held that no one may disobey the orders of the oligarchs, for in so doing the people sin against themselves , Pg. 216. Part 4: Social Analysis of Leadership. Moreover, a sense of fatalism and a sad conviction of impotence exercise a paralyzing influence in social life. As long as an oppressed class is influenced by this fatalistic spirit, as long as it has failed to develop an adequate sense of social injustices, it is incapable of aspiring towards emancipation. It is not the simple existence of oppressive conditions, but it is the recognition of these conditions by the oppressed, which in the course of history has constituted the prime factor of class struggles. Pg. 228. Socialists leaders, considered in respect of their social origin, may be divided into two classes, those who belong primarily to the proletariat, and those derived from the bourgeoisie, or rather from the intellectual stratum of the bourgeoisie. Pg. 238. When he abandons manual work for intellectual, the worker undergoes another transformation which involves his whole existence. He gradually leaves the proletariat to become a member of the petty bourgeois class. Pg. 262. To sum up, it may be said that these former working-class people, considered as families and not as individuals, are absorbed sooner or later into the new bourgeois environment. The children receive a bourgeois education; they attend better schools than those to which their father had access; their interests are bourgeois and they very rarely recall the revolutionary and anti-bourgeois derivation of their own entrance into the bourgeoisie. The working-class families which have been raised by the revolutionary workers to a higher social position, for the purpose of a more effective struggle against bourgeoisie, thus come before long to be fused with the bourgeoisie. Pg. 265. The workman’s ideal is to become a petty bourgeois . Pg. 271. Part 6: Synthesis: The Oligarchical Tendencies of Organization. Political organization leads to power. But power is always conservative . Pg. 333. no highly developed social order is possible without a “political class”, that is to say, a politically dominant class, the class of a minority. … all phrases representing the idea of the rule of the masses, such terms as state, civic rights, popular representation, nation, are descriptive merely of a legal principle, and do not correspond to any actually existing facts . Pg. 342. Society cannot exist without a “dominant” or “political” class , and that the ruling class, while its elements are subjects to a frequent partial renewal, nevertheless constitutes the only of sufficiently durable efficacy in the history of human development. According to this view, the government, or, if the phrase be preferred, the state, cannot be anything other than the organization of a minority . It is the aim of this minority to impose upon the rest of society a “legal order”, which is the outcome of the exigencies of dominion and the exploration of the masses of helots effected by the ruling minority, and can never be truly representative of the majority. The majority is thus permanently incapable of self-government . … Thus the majority of human being, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the dominion of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy . Pgs. 353-354. Every system of leadership is incompatible with the most essential postulates of democracy … the principle cause of oligarchy in the democratic parties is to be found in the technical indispensability of leadership … It is organizations which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy . Pgs. 364-365. Political Parties : A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. The principle of self-government through political parties, the cornerstone of democracy, has come to be regarded as a solution to the problem of nationality. This is because the principle of nationality entails the acceptance of the idea of popular government. The importance of the principle of nationality is undeniable, and most of the national questions of Western Europe might be solved in accordance with this principle. Matters are complicated by geographical and strategical considerations, such as the difficulty of determining natural frontiers and the frequent need to establish strategic frontiers. Moreover, the principle of nationality cannot help us where nationalities barely exist or where they are entangled in inextricable confusion. The present work is a critical discussion of the problem of democracy. Michels believes that democracy, as an intellectual theory and as a practical movement, has entered upon a critical phase from which exit will be extremely difficult. In this book he analyzes the tendencies that oppose the realization of democracy, and claims that these tendencies can be classified in three ways: dependence upon the nature of the individual; dependence upon the nature of the political structure; and dependence upon the nature of organization. This edition, described by Morris Janowitz as a "classic of modern social science" and by Melvin Tumin as "the beginning of a tradition," offers a landmark study in political science. Following its original publication in 1910, the study and analysis of political parties was established as a new branch of science. Political Parties continues to be a foundation work in the literature and is a necessary addition to the libraries of contemporary political scientists, sociologists, and historians. Roberto Michels and the Study of Political Parties. Roberto Michels’ book Political Parties has come to be regarded as one of the classics of political sociology. Most recent studies of the internal government of parties, trade unions and pressure groups take it as their starting point: it influences the kind of questions that are asked and the concepts that are employed. Access options. References. 1 Michels , Robert , Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy , translated by E. , and Paul , C. , with an introduction by S. M. Lipset ( New York : Free Press , 1962 ).Google Scholar. 2 See e.g. Lipset , S. M. , Trow , M. and Coleman , J. S. , Union Democracy ( Glencoe, Ill. : Free Press , 1956 );Google Scholar Mackenzie , R. T. , British Political Parties ( London : Mercury Books , 2nd ed. 1963 )Google Scholar ; Eldersveld , S. J. , Political Parties: A Behavioural Analysis ( Chicago : Rand McNally and Co. , 1964 )Google Scholar ; Ostergaard , G. N. and Halsey , A. H. , Power in Co-operatives ( Oxford : Basil Blackwell , 1965 ).Google Scholar. 3 See however: Cassinelli , C. W. , ‘ The Law of Oligarchy ’, American Political Science Review , xlvii ( 1953 ), 773 –84CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; May , J. D. , ‘ Democracy, Organisation, Michels ’, American Political Science Review , LIX ( 1965 ), 417 –29CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; S. M. Lipset, introduction to Michels, op. cit; Linz , J. J. , ‘Robert Michels’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences ( Macmillan , 1968 )Google Scholar ; Zeitlin , I. M. , Ideology and the Development of Social Theory ( New Jersey : Prentice-Hall , 1968 ), ch. 14.Google Scholar. 4 Neumann , S. . ‘Toward a Comparative Study of Political Parties’, in Neumann , S. (ed.), Modern Political Parties ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press , 1956 ), p. 406 .Google Scholar. 5 See e.g. Schorske , C. E. , German Social Democracy 1905–1917 ( New York : Wiley and Sons , 1955 ).Google Scholar. 6 See Joll , J. , The Second International 1889–1914 ( London : Weidenfeld and Nicholson , 1955 ), p. 130 ;Google Scholar Nettl , J. P. , Rosa Luxemburg ( London : Oxford University Press , 1966 ), i , p. 408 , n. 1.Google Scholar. 7 This element is particularly apparent in the Preface, and at the beginning of Part 6. 8 Michels , , Political Parties , p. 354 .Google Scholar. 9 The phrase ‘the iron law of oligarchy’ seems to occur only once, in the title of Part 6, ch. 2. 10 Michels , , Political Parties , pp. 105 –6.Google Scholar. 11 Michels , , Political Parties , p. 364 .Google Scholar. 12 May, however, achieves an ingeniously, though tortuously, paradoxical interpretation, according to which Michels sees democracy and organization as fundamentally compatible, largely by taking Michels to be equating ‘democracy’ and ‘socialism’ throughout. That such an interpretation is untenable can be seen quite clearly, I think, by considering Michels’ arguments about representation, the stability of leadership, etc. See May, ‘Democracy, Organisation, Michels’. 13 If a more explicit formulation of the third sense is required, the following might be suggested: a system of government may be described as democratic if it provides (structural) mechanisms which ensure that the policies pursued by the government are in accordance with the wishes of the citizens. This would obviously need considerable clarification, but the problems involved are not, I think, insuperable. 14 Michels , , Political Parties , pp. 73 –7.Google Scholar. 15 However, several writers concentrate on the Rousseau-ian sense. E.g.: ‘In Political Parties, Robert Michels… laid down what has come to be the major political argument against Rousseau's concept of direct popular democracy…’ ( Lipset , , intro. to Michels , , Political Parties , p. 15 Google Scholar ). See also Ostergaard , and Halsey , , Power in Co-operatives , pp. 217 ff.Google Scholar Cassinelli's emphasis on the question of size might also be seen as implying the Rousseau-ian interpretation. See Cassinelli, ‘Law of Oligarchy’. 16 See the analysis of the term ‘oligarchy’ in Cassinelli , , ‘Law of Oligarchy,’ pp. 777 –80.Google Scholar. 17 Michels , , Political Parties , p. 364 .Google Scholar. 18 Michels , , Political Parties , pp. 64 ff.Google Scholar. 19 See e.g. the evidence presented by H. A. Turner. The present-day union structure in this country is largely a result of the period of the New Unionism of the 1890s, and the developments resulting from this just before, during and after the First World War. Union growth in this period was predominantly due to the organising efforts of individual leaders like John Burns and Ben Tillett, and to amalgamations between their creations. Michels' model only finds any real application in Turner's description of the earlier evolution of the cotton unions and the NUM. But it is interesting to note that it is precisely these unions that have retained their decentralised federal structure. Turner , H. A. , Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy ( London : Allen and Unwin , 1962 ).Google Scholar. 20 Michels , , Political Parties , p. 206 .Google Scholar. 21 Michels , , Political Parties , p. 213 .Google Scholar. 22 Lipset , S. M. , Political Man ( Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday , 1960 ), ch. 12 (‘The Political Process in Trade Unions’).Google Scholar. 23 On this, and the general intellectual climate of the period see Hughes , H. S. , Consciousness and Society ( London : MacGibbon and Kee , 1959 ).Google Scholar. 24 On participation in trade unions see e.g.: Kahn , R. L. and Tannenbaum , A. S. , Participation in Local Unions ( New York : Row Peterson , 1958 )Google Scholar ; Spinrad , W. , ‘ Correlates of Trade Union Participation: A Summary of the Literature ’, American Sociological Review , xxv ( 1960 ), 237 –44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Barber , B. , ‘Participation and Mass Apathy in Associations’, in Gouldner , A. W. , Studies in Leadership ( New York : Harper , 1950 ), pp. 477 – 504 .Google Scholar. 25 Michels , , Political Parties , pp. 182, 186 –7.Google Scholar.