There is a tendency for democratic self-governing institutions to
become oligarchies, specifically because elite interests within these
institutions are prioritized over the needs of their members.
First in a four-part series
by Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel / May 8th, 2015
There is a tendency for democratic self-governing institutions to
become oligarchies, specifically because elite interests within these
institutions are prioritized over the needs of their members. According
to researchers, such as Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, and
conservative theorists, such as Robert Michels, democratic institutions
primarily serve elite interests. In “Testing Theories of American
Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens”, (in
Perspectives on Politics,
September 2014 Vol. 12/No. 3, p.564-581), Gilens and Page argue that
oligarchies within democratic institutions ultimately undermine their
democratic goals, in which the institution is co-opted by elites. And on
the other hand, conservatives like Michels (in his book
Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Organizational Tendencies of Modern Democracy,
1911) argue, “It is organization which gives birth to the domination of
the elected over the electors, of the mandatories over the mandators,
of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says
oligarchy.” Thus, for Michels, democratic institutions undermine
themselves precisely because they are held captive by oligarchs and
elites.
So, in order to understand the Occupy Movement, and its rebellion
against elite control of democratic institutions and economic
organizations, it is important to examine how organizations and
institutions become rigid oligarchies in the first place. In light of
Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” and Gilens’ and Page’s research on
oligarchies, we urge that anarchist principles, ironically, be examined
as a possible counter to oligarchic rule, that is, if democratic
institutions are to be salvaged. As such, policy recommendations via
anarchic social justice must be discussed in relation to meeting the
needs of self-determining people and the challenges awaiting them in the
twenty-first century. This is because democratic governance has been
thoroughly undermined by elite domination and why the Occupy Movement
erupted to demand democratic accountability, not just in governance but
in economic matters as well.
Becoming Oligarchy
Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” refers to organizations and
institutions, specifically the left-wing parties of Western Europe in
the pre-World War I era, which called for egalitarian reforms through
mass democracy and popular governance. Yet, as Michels observed, these
same democratically minded organizations and institutions could not
resist the tendency to become de facto oligarchies. In spite of their
revolutionary identities and democratic structures, the labor parties of
Michels’ era were dominated by tightly bound cliques with the intent of
perpetuating their own interests rather than the goals of equality and
self-rule. The irony, Michels noted, was that in a democratic
organization like the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD) to which
Michels belonged at the time, only a few people in executive positions
actually held power and decision-making privileges. This phenomenon also
applied to traditional conservative parties according to Michels.
Nevertheless, the “leaders” of the SPD valued their own elite status and
social-mobility more than any commitment to the goal of emancipating
Germany’s “industrial proletariat,” from exploitation. Inevitably, the
SPD’s actual policies became increasingly conservative, often siding
with the imperial authorities of Wilhelmian Germany. Eventually, while
SPD leaders gained constitutional legislative power and public prestige,
they failed to serve the collective will of its mass membership; they
were in fact dominating and directing it for their own ends. Research
today by Gilens and Page only confirm what took place with Michels’
research a century ago.
Michels concluded that the day-to-day administration of any
large-scale, differentiated bureaucratic organization, such as the SPD,
by the rank-and-file majority was impossible. Given the “incompetence
of the masses,” there was a need for full-time elite professional
leadership to manage and direct others in a hierarchical, top-down
manner. And the rank and file members were not necessarily opposed to
this. In theory, the SPD leaders were subject to control by the
rank-and-file through delegate conferences and membership voting; in
reality, the elite leadership was firmly in command. The simple
organizational need for a division of labor, hierarchy, and specialized
leadership roles meant that control over the top functionaries from
below was “purely fictitious.”
Elected leaders had the experience,
skills, and superior knowledge necessary for running the party and
controlling all formal means of communication with its membership,
including the party press. While proclaiming their devotion to the party
program of social democracy, the leaders soon became part of the German
political establishment. The mass membership was unable to provide an
effective counterweight to this entrenched minority of self-serving
party officials who were more committed to internal organizational goals
and their own personal interests than to radical social change on
behalf of their members. Michels believed that these inevitable
oligarchic tendencies were reinforced by a mass predisposition for
depending upon, and even glorifying, the party oligarchs. As Michels
states, “Though it grumbles occasionally, the majority is really
delighted to find persons who will take the trouble to look after its
affairs. In the mass, and even in the organized mass of the labor
parties, there is an immense need for direction and guidance. This need
is accompanied by a genuine cult for the leaders, who are regarded as
heroes.” Thus elites maneuver their way into power and the members
abdicate their participation in self-governance.
The “iron law of oligarchy” was thus a product of Michels’ own
personal experiences as a frustrated idealist and a disillusioned
social-democrat. His
Political Parties was based upon an
empirical study of the SPD and a number of affiliated German trade
unions. Michels observed firsthand that the ordinary members of these
working-class organizations were practically excluded from any
decision-making process within their organizations, either structurally
of by their own indifference. Thus Michels argued that the inherent
tendency of large and complex organizations – including radical or
socialist political parties and labor unions – to develop a mass
membership to provide any effective counterweight to a ruling clique of
leaders, was doomed. Smaller, less complex organizations also manifested
similar tendencies to be controlled by elites as well. Moreover, these
inherent organizational tendencies were strengthened by a mass
psychology of leadership dependency. This analysis made Michels
increasingly skeptical regarding the possibility of democratic
governance, precisely as a result of the general frustration he and
others, such as Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, had with democratic
organizations. Thus one reason why fascism and “elite theory” became
increasingly popular by the twentieth century, and specifically for
Michels, was because oligarchy in democratic institutions became
increasingly embedded. Some have argued that Michels may have formulated
an “iron law of bureaucracy,” mistakenly seeking “democracy in
structures, not in interactions,” and thus ignoring the real difference
between democracies and non-democracies. Nevertheless, the
dissatisfaction of people today with democratic governance, co-opted by
economic elites, has led to massive frustration by the public at large
and thus the emergence of the Occupy Movement.
The decision of Citizens United by the Supreme Court has only fueled
this burning discontent and that the Supreme Court is coopted by elite
power as well.
Why Oligarchy?
Here are some reasons why oligarchy is deeply embedded in democratic institutions and organizations.
Reason #1: The classic liberal view of society is based on
the perspective that a collection of individuals and groups is in
essence a free association in which socially defined identities and
roles spontaneously emerge. Throughout the course of a person’s life,
one’s actions and choices are shaped by social roles and statuses. In
every society, certain characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity,
appearance, division of labor, and social class, have a direct impact on
the allocation of individual roles in society. These assigned roles are
not a random occurrence; they are the outgrowth of deeply embedded
interests and power relations which have been institutionalized. In this
way status can be understood as either ascribed or achieved: ascribed,
meaning it is assigned by tradition, irrespective of individual
initiative; achieved, meaning it is the result of personal
accomplishments and talent. This is the case since achievement is itself
almost always dependent upon arbitrary and antecedent conditions of
custom and class.
Reason #2: The term “organization” implies the mobilization
of individuals into roles and statuses committed to the performance of
some form of collective behavior. “Organization” also describes the
precisely defined structures of group authority which can be found in
churches, militaries, schools, corporations, political parties,
agencies, and governments. While class structure as an organization is
not usually defined as such, it is, nevertheless, the composite of
people who differ in wealth and social prestige, who then in turn, are
served in a relative fashion by the various institutions. What then
connects these institutions is a “functionally integrated system” built
around networks of communication, interest, power and social class,
which comprise what is known as a “social system” or “social structure.”
The process in which individuals become socialized into their milieu is
determined for the most part by the organizational and institutional
roles which they assume. These roles, generally, are not individually
determined, but are shaped instead, by the very organizations and
institutions in which they are co-opted. In turn, organizations are
determined by their essential interests and minimal requisites of role
performance. More specifically, the essential interests of organizations
are manipulated by the interests of those who have the most power
within the organization to control the outcome to their advantage.
Reason #3: Individuals are socialized to believe that their
well-being is to avoid conflict and thus secure a place for themselves
within the system based on the system’s own terms. The path to success,
according to Ralf Miliband, is found in conforming to “the values,
prejudices and modes of thought of the world to which entry is sought.”
Those who are skeptical and even question the virtues of the given
organization discover, either painfully or at great personal risk, that
they must conform and adjust to minimal role demands or suffer adverse
consequences. Organizational control, nevertheless, conveys attitudes of
obedience disseminating among subordinates in any organizational
structure within a society. The social norm then becomes the external
and internal force for compliance upon the individual and the pressure
to obey comes not only from the superior or elite but from the
collectivity of subordinates. In this manner pressure for role
fulfillment, then, can be felt vertically from the higher authority that
controls the agenda of role performances, but also horizontally from
similarly situated subordinates who, having internalized the
organizational values of obedience, are as critical as any superior of
departures in role performance. Such departures, being seen as an
unwillingness to carry one’s share of the burden, is perceived as a
violation of essential professional duties, a “letting down” not only of
one’s superiors, but of one’s peers, be they ordinary co-workers,
professional colleagues, or comrades in arms.
Reason #4: To control the essential structures of role
behavior, as is the case with organizations, is to shape social
consciousness in ways that rational exercises cannot do. Roles, within
organizations, become habit and custom. For persons socialized into
institutional roles, most alternative forms of behavior either violate
their sense of propriety or escape their imagination altogether. They do
not think of themselves as responding to a particular arrangement of
social reality but to the only social reality there is. In this regard
the absolute nature of this social arrangement is not questioned
because, in the words of social theorist J. Peter Euben, “realism
becomes an unargued and implicit conservatism,” and as Sanford Levinson
also argues “the most subtle form of ‘political education’ is the
treating of events and conditions which are in fact amenable to change
as though they were natural events. This is not a question of treating
what is as what ought to be but rather as what has to be.”
Organizations
and social institutions, nonetheless, are those massive monuments of
society which capture and confine the vision of people, and an
organization’s very existence becomes its own legitimating force. In
economic terms it is a case of supply creating demand. The dominant
organizations in the social system lend the legitimacy of substance and
practice to the established norms which in turn teach and reinforce
adherence to the ongoing social system. What should be recognized is
that the social norms or values are not self-sustaining, self-adaptive
consensual forces; they are mediated through organizations and
institutions, and to the extent that organizations and institutions are
instruments of power in the service of elitist interests. Thus, social
norms themselves are a product of organizational interests and power
relations. This is why oligarchies become imbedded in institutions and
organizations and preclude democratic governance and popular control of
economic resources and accountability.
Basically, a type of dictatorship emerges in which democratic rule
and economic security are scuttled by oligarchic rule. But the elites,
and their oligarchy, define it as “democratic.” As a result, we get
Occupy.
Parts 2, 3, and 4 to follow.
Edward Martin is Professor of Public Policy and
Administration, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at
California State University, Long Beach, and co-author of Savage State:
Welfare Capitalism and Inequality;
Mateo Pimentel lives on the Mexican-US border, writing for many
alternative political newsletters and Web sites. He can be reached at:
mateo.pimentel@gmail.com.
Read other articles by Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel.
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