The Iron Law of Oligarchy

 Staring down the Democratic National Convention in August, with its foreordained outcome, many of us are still wondering: how exactly did we get here? Why are we stuck with a candidate who everyone agrees is almost certain to lose the election in November—despite strong public support for a hypothetical Democratic alternative to Trump, so long as it is not Biden? Why is the party almost certain to proceed with nominating someone who is widely perceived as unfit for a second term? Why are we hurling ourselves on the pyre, and simply accepting that we will have to take the loss in the next election—even though everyone agrees that the future of American democracy may be at stake? 

Biden, of course, insists that it is democracy itself that has led to this manifestly undemocratic outcome. The Democratic Party membership had a chance to vote already for their favored candidate. This is what the primary process is all about. And Biden won that vote hands-down. To replace him now at the head of the ticket, he says, would be a flagrant violation of the public will. It would be to betray the party's own democratic commitment to its members. Thus, he maintains, only anti-democratic "elites" and journalists are calling for him to leave the race at this point; the people—by contrast—have spoken. 

Of course—in reality—no one is convinced by this argument. Biden's nomination was a foreordained conclusion from the start of the primary process. He had no serious challengers with widespread name recognition. The party cognoscenti had already made their choice, as everyone knows—and had worked to ensure that there would be negative consequences for the political careers of anyone who went against the consensus. We all knew we were stuck with Biden from the first day of the primaries on. The choice had been made for us. (I even like Biden, and would have voted for him anyway, by the way; but that hardly matters now—the problem is the man simply cannot win in November, regardless of what I think of him.)

So far, of course, I sound like a Bernie bro circa 2016—blaming the Democratic Party's failures on the decisions of a closed coterie of party insiders, who foisted an unpopular candidate on the nation simply because it was her "turn"—according to the logic of seniority that governs the party bureaucracy—and not because of any rational assessment of the party's best electoral prospects. The problem with that critique, however, is not so much that it is wrong—but that it does not sweep broadly enough. For the criticism tends to focus on one bad candidate or one misguided decision—and thereby to imply that if only we could run someone else—if only we could choose the truly virtuous candidate—then none of this would have happened. "If only we had run [insert hero of the moment]..."

But, as Robert Michels shows in his classic work of political sociology, Political Parties, the oligarchic tendencies that the critics are complaining about are baked into the party structure. Indeed, they are inherent in any organization. The rebels and outsiders of today, once they gain entrance to the "inner circle," will take the same steps as the current Biden coterie to cling to power—even if it means costing the party the election and placing the entire country's democratic institutions at risk. The problem with the Biden phenomenon is not that the people grouped around the president are insufficiently virtuous. It's that they face structural incentives that outweigh their moral selves. Their futures depend on toeing the party line. And the same structural incentives would still be there, even if Bernie were on the ballot instead. 

At this point, it is necessary to clear up a misunderstanding about the ideological valence of the critique I intend. After all, Michels is often lumped in with a category of other antidemocratic writers of his era—including Pareto and Mosca—as professors of the "elite theory" of democratic institutions. Reading his book in full, however, one is hard pressed to characterize him as an opponent of democracy (and certainly, by quoting him with approval, I do not intend to sound like such an opponent myself). Despite his avowals to the contrary in the book's introduction, Michels in fact writes with severe moral indignation about the ways that party elites distort democratic institutions. He is clearly an ardent, if disillusioned, democrat at heart.

Indeed, at times, the book reads almost like a record in real-time of Michels' process of disillusionment. Stylistically, the author sounds in several places as if we were about to show us a way out of the blind alley of oligarchic rule. In the final "synthesis" that concludes the text, Michels turns to the question, as he puts it, of "whether the oligarchic disease of the democratic parties is incurable." Most writers would not phrase the question that way, if they were planning all along to answer "yes; it is indeed incurable." But Michels nonetheless reaches this surprisingly bleak conclusion. One almost has the sense that, by posing the question this way at the end of the book, he was hoping he would think of a more encouraging answer to it himself, at the last minute. But, he does not. Oligarchy, he concludes, is inevitable—that is the "iron law" of organization. 

Yet, Michels is plainly not happy with this fact. He is disgusted that party organizations which allegedly came into existence to serve as a "means" to the liberation of the working class have evolved into self-perpetuating "ends" in themselves. He notes that the socialist parties always claimed that they needed to pile up resources and increase their membership rolls simply as the necessary prelude to their eventual assault upon existing institutions. He quotes another writer who asks ironically—when faced with the sight of the massively bloated, rigidly hierarchical and bureaucratized, and well-financed socialist party organizations of his day—is the preliminary work done yet? Have you amassed enough power and resources to declare the final assault? 

His point, of course, is that the parties, once they become powerful and rich enough, don't actually want to upset the established order. They have a good thing going. Why jeopardize it? It is better to simply prolong their own existence indefinitely—especially when the party structure itself provides a livelihood and a raison d'être to so many bureaucrats and officials. 

I was reminded, in reading this, of the critiques one often hears of the so-called "nonprofit industrial complex" today. Leftist and progressive activists warn that movements for social change have been coopted by well-funded NGOs (such as the one I used to work for), which have amassed enormous endowments that will allow them to exist into perpetuity. As a result, these critics allege, the organizations become fundamentally conservative—despite their publicly-professed rhetoric to the contrary. Regardless of what they describe as their mission, their internal structural incentives compel them to maintain the status quo. Keeping things as they are gives these organizations a reason to be and to go on amassing more donations and resources—whereas actually solving social problems would put them out of a job. 

The realization of the progressive "mission" that they allegedly exist to accomplish therefore becomes indefinitely delayed—just as the socialist revolution was. The endowment grows ever larger, year after year—always on the theory that it must be conserved for some future task: some moment when the time is finally ripe, and the organization can truly accomplish its purpose. And of course, that moment never actually arrives. In Michels's terms, the NGO that was supposed to be a "means" to accomplish something has become an "end" in itself. 

Once again, as with the Bernie bros' critique of the DNC, the criticism is valid—but does not go far enough. Big, well-heeled NGOs may be vulnerable to all of the conservative tendencies of which the critics accuse them. And small, scrappy, volunteer-run anarchist mutual aid societies may be comparatively immune to the same. But, Michels's point is that the latter sorts of organization, if they were to reach the same degree of size and complexity, would start to display the same oligarchic features as the big NGOs. The problem is not the lack of virtue in one or the other, but the psychological and sociological forces that operate regardless of who ends up in charge. 

Of course, small mutual aid societies could avoid these dangers by remaining small and scrappy. But, if they go that route, they will forfeit any chance to remake large sectors of a modern, complex society, as they avowedly seek to do; and therefore, they would have to abandon their own purported mission. Besides, Michels notes, the history of anarchist collectives and cooperative enterprises so far suggests that these tend to dissolve, or become micro-autocracies based around one charismatic figure, or to become an exclusive group of insiders who try to monopolize the organization's benefits and membership rolls—eventually converting themselves into something more like a "joint stock company" than a commune. 

In other words—the evil of oligarchy stems from the human will to power, not from the failings of particular human beings. It will therefore manifest itself even in an anarchist collective—given enough time—as inevitably as it will lead large NGOs to pile up treasure in their endowments for a hypothetical future day of action that never comes. 

I am reminded too of the critique one often hears of progressive organizations, that if only these NGOs were to be staffed and run by people from "directly impacted communities," then they would be immune to the temptations to oligarchy and organizational conservatism. Michels discusses at length in the book the contemporary equivalent of this argument. In the early twentieth century, he notes, many critics of the contemporary socialist parties argued that they had become reformist and conservative merely because they were staffed with so many bourgeois intellectuals. If the children of the bourgeoisie could be excluded from the party ranks—or, at least, demoted from professional roles within the hierarchy—these critics alleged, then the party would be rid of the contaminating influences that had led it in an ever more conservative direction. 

Michels admits, in responding to this, that people drawn from proletarian backgrounds have certain valuable insights into the needs and plight of their communities—no one could deny this. But, he observes, the critics give insufficient attention once again to the structural rather than the characterological forces at work in causing institutional conservatism. The socialist parties of his era, he observed, had indeed become "embourgeoised." But this came about, he argues, not due to the influx of bourgeois leaders into the party—but rather because all party leaders and bureaucrats—regardless of their class origins—become "bourgeois" once they attain salaried positions in the organization. 

Updating the terminology for today's progressive NGOs, we could say that the institutional conservatism of the "nonprofit industrial complex" and its alleged "white supremacy culture" are not the product of staffing these agencies with too many privileged people. The problem is that people become relatively privileged by virtue of their professional stake in these organizations. People who are employed at a competitive salary—no matter their own class, racial, or ethnic origins prior to taking the job—have self-interest at stake in perpetuating the organization in its present form. This same dynamic operates, then, regardless of who these people are or what community they are drawn from. The structural incentives, not the identities of the people involved, are what prompt these NGOs to try to maintain the status quo. 

Will we have to join Michels, then, in reaching an ultimately pessimistic conclusion? Will we have to throw up our hands and say—to quote Vachel Lindsay—"so [mankind] will be, though law be clear as crystal/ Tho' all men plan to live in harmony"? This, of course, is a dangerous conclusion to reach. If we find that oligarchy is inevitable in all possible political and organizational structures, after all, then we may start to think that one political system is therefore as good as any other. The corollary of finding that all organizations are corrupt and undemocratic is thus often to say that we might as well back whichever one appears to be ascendent, since all are equally rotten. 

Troublingly, this appears to have been Michels' own political trajectory later in life; years after writing this book, after all, he backed Mussolini. Other critics of parliamentary democracy at the time, such as Hilaire Belloc, managed to reach the same conclusion. They made pointed and often basically accurate critiques of the democratic deficiencies of existing parliamentary regimes, such as the UK government. And they were not wrong to do so. But then, they took the unwarranted and dangerous further step of thereby concluding that there was no possible moral superiority to these regimes, and that a dictatorship might well prove to be as "democratic" as a parliament in practice. After all: if all organizations alike end up leading to the dominion of the few over the many, as Michels argues—then on what grounds can we accuse the dictator of depriving the majority of its rights? 

The Trump movement, in its own autocratic power grab, is already availing itself of similar arguments. As Michels observed in his era, every political force in modern life—however antidemocratic it is in practice—seeks to portray itself as the true voice of the masses. The Bonapartist dictator, Michels observes, claims to embody the will of the people. He puts the extension of his emergency rule up for a vote by referendum, and thus claims authoritarian power by plebiscitary means. So too, Trump and his lieutenants, such as J.D. Vance, always claim that in plotting the downfall of our existing institutions, it is they—rather than their critics—who are defending democracy. The true threat to the people's rule, they argue, comes from the unelected bureaucrats of the "deep state." By trying to replace them with a group of MAGA toadies who will do Trump's personal bidding, they argue, they are simply respecting popular sovereignty. 

And so, the would-be MAGA oligarchs working to subvert American democracy claim all the time, as they do so, that they are in fact defending it. They thereby join the ranks of those whom the Old Testament prophet denounced as "them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness."

The later version of Michels—the one who was bamboozled by these sorts of deceptive arguments into backing Mussolini—should have listened to his younger self. The version of Michels who wrote Political Parties, after all, already knew how to counter these sophistries. It is a pity that he later appears to have forgotten his own wisdom. 

After all, the younger version of Michels notes, aptly enough, that the mere fact that some amount of oligarchy is inevitable, does not mean that it cannot nonetheless be present in different systems as a matter of degree. The fact that we can detect undemocratic elements even in American party institutions and elected governments, including even in the Democratic Party and the administrative state—does not furnish us with a reason to overthrow the whole system and install a dictator. Our representative institutions—however flawed—still manage to provide some greater degree of popular accountability for our officials than would exist under conditions of outright dictatorship. 

Preserving relatively free institutions, then, may not mean that we will reach perfect democracy, but it does mean that we can get closer to this goal than we ever could under an alternative system. This is Michels's own ultimate conclusion, at least in this book. He speaks of democracy as a "moral criterion which renders it possible to appreciate the varying degrees of that oligarchy which is immanent in every social regime." "Democracy," he continues, "is a treasure which no one will ever discover by deliberate search. But in continuing our search, in laboring indefatigably to discover the undiscoverable, we shall perform a work which will have fertile results in the democratic sense." And so, he concludes, "the democratic principle carries with it, if not a cure, at least a palliative, for the disease of oligarchy." (Eden and Cedar Paul translation throughout.)

And so, even if we cannot ever completely cure our political institutions and parties and NGOs of the oligarchic tendency—we can nonetheless protest against it. And by this act of protest—by registering our dissent from the decisions of the oligarchs—we can score a partial victory at least for the "democratic principle." We can help bring the reign of true democracy closer, even if we will not live to see it in our lifetimes—even if, indeed, no nation will ever see it, this side of the kingdom of heaven. 

Such, too—for what it's worth—was Vachel Lindsay's conclusion, in the poem quoted above. Even if human nature was bound to be weighted down with an inheritance of selfishness, he argued—which rendered all our grandest political aspirations impossible to attain in this life—nonetheless, we can vote our conscience, and try thereby to move at least one step closer to the political ideals we seek. 

So: Come, he bid us, let us vote against our human nature, 

Crying to God in all the polling places

To heal our everlasting sinfulness

And make us sages with transfigured faces.