We are content enough convincing ourselves that representative government, mixed constitutions, and other Roman holdovers suffice to mimic democracy, at least in name. But it is difficult to say that a democracy has ever been realized in any scale larger than a tiny organization.

That’s OK because we are confident that governments are “potentially democratic”. Plato and Aristotle promised us they can take this form. But the unassuming and unassured phrase “potentially democratic” comes with it the corollary that government is potentially not democratic. Potentially we’ve been waiting thousands of years for self-government and potentially we’ll have to wait a thousand more. Thus whatever evils arise from such systems must be excused just in case they might one day be good.

Early in the 20th century, the sociologist Robert Michels warned his fellow travellers about the perils of political organization, devising in his famous book Political Parties the theory he called The Iron Law of Oligarchy. The conservative and absolutist appeal to aristocracy was well known and out in the open. However, he noticed in the socialist and democrat parties the tendency and phenomena of oligarchy as well. “The question therefore arises how we are to explain the development in such parties of the very tendencies against which they have declared war.”

Michels set out to answer the question. With the bonus of hindsight it is safe to say his theory predicted the tendency of every political organization in the 20th century until now, namely, that “the mass will never rule except in abstracto”. Socialist, fascist, communist, democratic, liberal, conservative—even anarchist!—and whether government, party, corporation, or trade union, the very structure of their organizations forbids democracy in favor of oligarchy.

His arguments are myriad, and one will find himself better off reading the entire book, but I’ve quoted and/or summarized a few:

• “The most formidable argument against the sovereignty of the masses is, however, derived from the mechanical and technical impossibility of its realization.”
  
  

As organizations grow the ability for members to participate equally becomes increasingly difficult. Organization is faced with an immediate logistics problem. Where to organize? Where to find the time? How to manage the deliberations between all members, everyone equal? To Michels, “it is impossible to carry on the affairs of this gigantic body without a system of representation”. Delegation occurs.

  
  
• “Popular sovereignty has recently been subjected to a profound criticism by a group of Italian writers conservative in their tendency. Gaetano Mosca speaks of “the falsity of the parliamentary legend.” He says that the idea of popular representation as a free and spontaneous transference of the sovereignty of the electors (collectivity) to a certain number of elected persons (minority) is based upon the absurd premise that the minority can be bound to the collective will by unbreakable bonds. In actual fact, directly after the election is finished, the power of the mass of electors over the delegate comes to an end. The deputy regards himself as authorized arbiter of the situation, and really is such.”

  
  
• “Under representative government the difference between democracy and monarchy, which are both rooted in the representative system, is altogether insignificant — a difference not in substance but in form. The sovereign people elects, in place of a king, a number of kinglets. Not possessing sufficient freedom and independence to direct the life of the state, it tamely allows itself to be despoiled of its fundamental right. The one right which the people reserves is the “ridiculous privilege” of choosing from time to time a new set of masters. To this criticism of the representative system may be appended the remark of Proudhon, to the effect that the representatives of the people have no sooner been raised to power than they set to work to consolidate and reinforce their influence. They continue unceasingly to surround their positions by new lines of defense, until they have succeeded in emancipating themselves completely from popular control. All power thus proceeds in a natural cycle: issuing from the people, it ends by raising itself above the people”.

  
  
• “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, defying their own will spontaneously transferred by them to their representatives, and thus infringing democratic principle. In democracies, the leaders base their right to command upon the democratic omnipotence of the masses. Every employee of the party owes his post to his comrades, and is entirely dependent upon their good will. We may thus say that in a democracy each individual himself issues, though indirectly, the orders which come to him from above”.

  
  
• As the organization grows, so too does its complexity. The effective administration of the organization requires specialized knowledge and training among the representatives, none of which other members of the organization receive. Soon our representatives, bookkeepers, secretaries, ballot-counters, bureaucrats, are standing in the place of the praetorian guards. This leads to a hierarchy, and all the wonderful social results of hierarchy. Michals says, “Just as the patient obeys the doctor, because the doctor knows better than the patient, having made a special study of the human body in health and disease, so must the political patient submit to the guidance of his party leaders, who possess a political competence impossible of attainment by the rank and file.”

  
  
• Administrative positions usually become positions of prestige and employment. The job-holders tend to do what’s best for the administration, their meal ticket, and not for the organization and all its members.

At any rate, if we hold up the theory of Potential Democracy to the Iron Law of Oligarchy, one appears weightier than the other. After a thoroughgoing analysis, Michels concludes:

“The sociological phenomena whose general characteristics have been discussed in
this chapter and in preceding ones offer numerous vulnerable points to the scientific
opponents of democracy. These phenomena would seem to prove beyond dispute that society cannot exist without a “dominant” or “political” class, and that the ruling class, while its elements are subject to a frequent partial renewal, nevertheless constitutes the only factor 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 of the exploitation of the mass 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. Even when the discontent of the masses culminates in a successful attempt to deprive the bourgeoisie of power, this is after all, so Mosca contends, effected only in appearance; always and necessarily there springs from the masses a new organized minority which raises itself to the rank of a governing class. Thus the majority of human beings, 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.”

So it is and so it has been, as far as I can tell. What is our opinion on the matter?

Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchial Tendencies of Modern Democracy Link to PDF