Timothy DeChenne, Ph.D. This essay is a brief salute to a work published over a century ago. It is a remarkable study, perhaps more relevant today than when it was written. Robert Michels (1876-1936) was a German historian and sociologist, and a star pupil of Max Weber. He was also a political activist, initially working for the German socialist party but later moving to Italy to support Mussolini. The focus of this essay is his earlier (1911) book entitled Political Parties, a brilliant but frequently overlooked piece of work. In it he introduced his notion of “The Iron Law of Oligarchy.” When in his youth Michels began working for Germany’s Social Democrats, he found that although the party advocated democracy, it did not itself function as one. Instead, he observed, it functioned as an oligarchic machine, with those at the top laboring primarily for their own benefit. Now this might not have been surprising in an organization ideologically devoted to hierarchy and obedience, but for the Social Democrats, who stood in many ways for just the opposite, it did seem a tad unusual. It got him to thinking. He watched, he reflected, he wrote, and a picture of the oligarchic process began to take shape. Looking back now, he seems to have put his finger on a central feature of organizational functioning. An organization, he suggested, begins to form an oligarchy out of a need for efficiency. A large body is inefficient for decision making. Meetings veer off course, dragging on and on. Eventually, in desperation, a smaller group is delegated to make plans for the larger body. Proto-administration is born. And this is all it takes. The smaller group now begins to acquire more power: steadily, naturally, inevitably. In the beginning it will happen even if no one wills it to be so. Task-focused organization itself creates the oligarchy. This smaller, delegated group becomes a collection of insiders. Unlike the rank and file, they have access to all the relevant data. Unlike the rank and file, they become full-time specialists. And unlike the dispersed rank and file, they spend time in frequent, informal contacts among themselves, helping to smooth out contention on problematic issues. They are thus both better organized and more united than those they represent. The values of this small elite come to differ from those of the rank and file. They have more status and power. They become conservative around that, not wanting to jeopardize their positions. They tend to focus more on keeping the organization alive than on actualizing its original or self-professed goals. Controlling administration and finance becomes self-reinforcing. And of course since they possess all the administrative knowledge, they tend to end up choosing their own replacements. The oligarchy becomes self-perpetuating. It’s probably no surprise that research over the subsequent decades has repeatedly confirmed what might be called an “oligarchic drift” in virtually all types of organizations, across both business and government. The ones with the strongest oligarchies are those that have a large and dispersed membership with the greatest need for centralized administration. Now the “iron law” was applied primarily to organizations. But I want to argue that this venerable principle also applies to society as a whole—that is, to the entire complex aggregate of individuals and groups. And the clearest example I can adduce is the current trend, most prominent in the U.S. but evident in other nations as well, toward increasing economic inequality. I will not subject you to the numerical details of this inequality. The data are now so widely publicized they might be considered common knowledge. Rather, the point I want to make is that Michels’ long shadow falls grimly, inexorably across this domain as well. It’s just that, viewed from the perspective of society as a whole, the oligarchs are not bureaucrats; rather, they are plutocrats. Unlike the administrators in one of Michels’ organizations, plutocrats as an entire class obviously do not meet face-to-face to design their self-enhancing strategies. If we define the very rich as, say, the top one-tenth of one percent of earners, then in the U.S. that still amounts to thousands of people, many of whom have never met. Sub-groups of the very rich can and infamously do meet for special purposes, but plutocracy is not one enormous cabal. Rather, the dynamics play out multiply and continuously. The fungible, ubiquitous resource of money becomes the means through which the “iron law” percolates through the social structure. Money exists as a necessity for efficient exchange, but over time, unless carefully controlled, its flow becomes the vehicle for the concentration and successive replication of power. These two elements—concentration and replication—are related, but let’s address them separately. In the U.S. the concentration of plutocratic oligarchy is a cycle played out continuously in all three government spheres—legislative, executive, and judicial. The top .1% of earners—and more particularly the top .01%—control the campaign funds that elect legislators, presidents, and most judges. Their corporations are the farm teams from which these figures often emerge, as well as the lucrative havens to which they typically retire. And their lobbyists, indefatigable and omnipresent, labor mightily to insure playing fields tilt steeply in their favor. This last point is especially well developed in Robert Reich’s recent volume, Saving Capitalism. Here he reminds us that no market is truly “free”. Every market operates according to a bewildering variety of rules, including legislative, administrative, and judicial. The relevant matter is who makes the rules, and thus, whom the rules favor. The important rules are not just the familiar issues of tax policy, but also the often overlooked nuts and bolts of property, contracts, monopolies, bankruptcy, and enforcement. These are all tilted toward the rich in a variety of ways, and most of them go unnoticed. What most of us notice instead are the biggest ticket items—a judicial decision allowing unlimited corporate campaign contributions, or a bail out of fraudulent banks followed by a refusal to jail their kingpins. All of these items—large and small, noticed and unnoticed—I would characterize in this one simple manner: business as usual for the iron law. But the full operation of this law is more than the vicious cycle of wealth concentration. It is also the ceaseless process of self-replication. Just as Michels’ bureaucrats chose their own replacements, so do contemporary plutocrats. And whom do they choose? Why their children of course. Here again the dynamics of money are not (necessarily) a conspiracy, but more like multiple and continuous cycles. From the very beginning, toddlers of the rich walk a manicured path. They are born to parents who themselves, usually, had good health care and education. They pass these on to their children. The little tykes eat nutritious meals in well-kept homes nestled in the safest neighborhoods. The bookcases have actual books. The parental assumption—spoken and unspoken, but always powerfully persuasive—is that these children will succeed. When it comes time for school (or pre-school) they attend the best private institutions. After all, money is no object. If they get in trouble as adolescents, a parental contribution to the mayor’s campaign might just circumvent those messy legal problems. When it comes time for college admission, large sums will be spent on entrance exam tutors. But no need to worry, because Dad’s alma mater has an alumni preference policy that will probably guarantee admission anyway. And if not, if the child turns out to be less than the sharpest tool in the shed, again no worries. Large sums of money await him or her in the inheritance. All of which items—large and small—I would once again characterize in this simple manner: business as usual for the iron law.
Sounds great except right now we have a black President who was born, according to Trump, under some tree in Africa, who lived his childhood in a broken home and was very poor who used public education to give himself opportunities. Everything you talked about is just human nature. We all want to give our kids the best possible future, and some parents are not smart enough to understand that doesn´t mean giving them ´everything´. There is also the issue of legacy, we want our children to succeed because it means ´we´ are more important. You dont´think Romeny Sr or Grandpa Bush, both politicians loved the idea that their sons and for Bush, even his grandson was President? This isn´t some systemic problem, this is just basic human nature, parents love their kids, and people have egos. It will never change.
