Democracy, Organization, Michels Author(s): John D. May Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 59, No. 2, (Jun., 1965), pp. 417-429 Published by: American Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1953059 Accessed: 07/07/2008 11:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=apsa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org DEMOCRACY, ORGANIZATION, MICHELS JOHN D. MAY Yale University This article marks an attempt to clarify the It probably is true that in Michels's terms, teachings of Robert Michels. It suggests that a system where leaders possess the means and in Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the the disposition to ignore their followers' will Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (or wills) is an undemocratic system.2 It is not (1915), Michels presented a favorable account true that on Michels's showing, organization is of the compatibility of organization and de- relatively inhospitable to democratic leader- mocracy. follower relations. It is not true that Michels Other treatments attribute to Michels a portrays increments of Organization as breed- thesis of the following kind: (1) Large, or- ers, persistently and proportionally, of counter- ganizationally complex associations, compared democratic changes. Instead, he argues (in a with small, simple associations, are likely to be complex but not inconsistent manner) that governed by cliques whose powers (disposable Organization is incompatible with the attain- resources, freedom of action, security of tenure) ment or maintenance of absolute democracy are abundant and whose policies (use of official and yet can be a source, in many cases and in status and resources) deviate from the policy- many ways, of democratization. preferences of their constituents. (2) Incre- It is true that Michels deplored Organization. ments of Organization (of scale, or members, It is true that Michels voiced a profound and of complexity, or procedural formality, pessimism about the fate of mankind, a pes- functional differentiation, stratification, spe- simism rooted in conceptions of the indispensa- cialization, hierarchy, and bureaucracy) aug- bility and the consequences of Organization. It ment the powers and the policy-deviating is not true that Michels's pessimism was the propensities of leaders vis-ai-vis followers.' pessimism of a democrat. Far from being a democrat, Michels was a I See S. M. Lipset's introduction to the Collier Books edition (1962) of Political Parties, and the J. M. Pfiffner and F. P. Sherwood, Administra- commentaries cited by Lipset. For additional tive Organization (Prentice-Hall, 1960), p. 338; statements or approximations of this version of Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (Wayne Michels's thesis, and some challenges, see the State University Press, 1962), pp. 42, 82, 100, following: P. M. Blau and W. R. Scott, Formal 120-28, 134; David Spitz, Patterns of Anti- Organizations (Chandler, 1962), pp. 48, 228; Democratic Thought (Macmillan, 1949), esp. p. 27 R. C. Brooks, Political Parties and Electoral Prob- and the treatment in Part II of James Burnham's leiiis (Harper, 1933), p. 30; F. W. Coker, Recent The Machiavellians; D. B. Truman, The Govern- Political Thought (Appleton-Century-Crofts, mental Process (Knopf, 1955), pp. 137-55; and 1934), p. 328; R. A. Dahl and C. E. Lindblom, Dwight Waldo, "Development of Theory of Politics, Economics and Welfare (Harper, 1953), Democratic Administration," this REVIEW, Vol. pp. 279-85; A. W. Gouldner, ed., Studies in 46 (March 1952), pp. 100-01. Leadership, pp. 418-35 (T. W. Adorno) and 477- 2 Michels does not use the terms "democracy," 504 (B. Barber); H. S. Hughes, Consciousness and "oligarchy," and "organization" in a consistent Society (Vintage, 1951), ch. 7; Suzanne Keller, or coherent manner. The terminological diffi- Beyond the Ruling Class (Random House, 1963), culties have been probed by C. W. Cassinelli, in pp. 72-3, 80, 263, 273-74; Arthur Kornhauser and "The Law of Oligarchy," this REVIEW, Vol. 47 others, eds., Industrial Conflict (McGraw-Hill, (Sept. 1953), p. 3 if. However, Michels persist- 1954), ch. 9 (L. H. Fisher and G. McConnell); ently associates democracy with equality, with H. D. Lasswell and A. Kaplan, Power and Society conditions suggesting the notion of popular (Yale, 1950); R. M. MacIver, The Web of Govern- sovereignty, and with the "system in which dele- ment (Macmillan, 1959), pp. 122, 140, 434; R. T. gates represent the mass and carry out its will." McKenzie, British Political Parties (Praeger, On the other hand, he speaks of "The notion of 1964 ed.), pp. 15-17, ch. 11; C. E. Merriam and the representation of popular interests, a notion H. E. Barnes, eds., A History of Political Theories: to which the great majority of democrats ... Recent Times (Macmillan, 1924), pp. 56-67, 383; cleave .... " Political Parties, trans. Eden and Max Nomad, Aspects of Revolt (Farrar, Straus & Cedar Paul (Dover Publications, 1959), esp. pp. Cudahy, 1959), ch. 1; Robert Presthus, The Or- 1-2, 27, 401. References hereafter will be to this ganizational Society (Knopf, 1962), pp. 4, 41-52; edition unless designated otherwise. 417 418 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Romantic Revolutionist. He deplored the conservative parties have worked "'essentially" ''conservative" effects of Organization its for "socialist ideas and for the victory of the general tendency to facilitate the maintenance proletariat." The Socialist International has of a society which is not and cannot be perfectly changed from an "individual dictatorship" democratic, and its particular tendency to into "a federal republic consisting of several dissipate "revolutionary currents" in society. independent oligarchies." Nearly every Social- But by his account, Organization is counter- ist and labor group has manifested "tendencies revolutionary precisely because it facilitates toward decentralization, " tendencies which the amelioration of discontents and injustices; create pluralistic rather than monistic oli- it facilitates democratization. garchies. In the German Socialist and labor Far from being a democrat, moreover, parties, an "enormous increase" in member- Michels was a Scientific Paternalist. He por- ship and in organizational development has trayed, and lamented, Organization as the been accompanied by changes from "dictator- nemesis of authoritv-systems wherein leaders ship" to "oligarchy" and to "theoretical and possess the means and the disposition to voice applied democracy."' the scientifically ascertained Interests of the The foregoing citations are not arbitrarily "mass." But by his account, Organization selective. Michels does not specifically name facilitates the advent and the maintenance of any associations in which democracy has been leaders who are able and willing to express the attenuated by Organization. manifest wills of their clients or constituents. His contradictory testimony concerning Such, at any rate, is the interpretation which party evolution may be ascribed to at least seems consistent with the following analysis of two sources. On the one hand, it may be as- (I) Michels's account of general historical cribed to inconsistent, ambiguous use of the trends, (II) his basic reasoning, and (Ill) his term artyty" Sometimes "party" denotes an treatment of the Socialist experience. existential aggregate; sometimes if refers to a hypothetical aggregate. Thus, the so-called, I existential 'parties' have not manifested coun- According to AMichels's account of general ter-democratic changes, but hypothetical, au- trends, democratization has persistently accom- thentic 'parties' must undergo such changes. panied Organization. On the other hand, his contradictory testi- The modern era, in which "political and mony may be ascribed to inconsistent, am- economic life" acquires increasingly "complex biguous use of the term "democracy." Some- forms," and in which massive bureaucratiza- times "democracy" signifies close control by tion occurs in the state and industry and labor, followers over leaders; sometimes it signifies a is "what we know as the era of democracy."3 distinctive associational character (an ideo- Only the "blind and fanatical" fail to perceive logical, sociological, operational uniqueness) that "the democratic current daily makes un- and a moral commitment to the cause of deniable advance."4 social-democratic revolution. Modern "state institutions" exhibit "increas- Only in the latter unconventional sense, and