"I think the best answer comes from the work of a social theorist named Robert Michels, who was occupied with a somewhat parallel problem in the early years of the last century. Born to a wealthy German family, Michels came to adopt the radical socialist politics then sweeping through much of Europe. At first, he joined the Social Democratic Party, but he ultimately came to view it as too bureaucratic to achieve its stated aims. “Our workers’ organization has become an end in itself,” Michels declared, “a machine which is perfected for its own sake and not for the tasks which it could have performed.”I think Hayes and Michels take issue with the bureaucratization of labor/leftist/progressive movements, with Hayes writing that "Michels encountered the same bureaucratic pathologies" with other politically radical organizations (emphasis mine). Out of this, I'd like to bring up two points. The first, a question; what do you, Michels or Hayes point to when making assertions about the bureaucratization of labor organization? Personally, I agree with the implication based on my own eyewitness, but I'm not really comfortable throwing around terms like "bureaucratic pathologies" and "who says organization, says oligarchy" without some evidence on hand.[1] By what standards do we diagnose a bureaucratic pathology, or assess the level of oligarchy in an organization?
Michels then drifted toward the syndicalists, who eschewed parliamentary elections in favor of mass labor solidarity, general strikes and resistance to the dictatorship of the kaiser. But even among the more militant factions of the German left, Michels encountered the same bureaucratic pathologies that had soured him on the SDP. In his classic book Political Parties, he wondered why the parties of the left, so ideologically committed to democracy and participation, were as oligarchic in their functioning as the self-consciously elitist and aristocratic parties of the right.
Michels’s grim conclusion was that it was impossible for any party, no matter its belief system, to bring about democracy in practice. Oligarchy was inevitable. For any kind of institution with a democratic base to consolidate the legitimacy it needs to exist, it must have an organization that delegates tasks. The rank and file will not have the time, energy, wherewithal or inclination to participate in the many, often minute decisions necessary to keep the institution functioning. In fact, effectiveness, Michels argues convincingly, requires that these tasks be delegated to a small group of people with enough power to make decisions of consequence for the entire membership. Over time, this bureaucracy becomes a kind of permanent, full-time cadre of leadership. “Without wishing it,” Michels says, there grows up a great “gulf which divides the leaders from the masses.” The leaders now control the tools with which to manipulate the opinion of the masses and subvert the organization’s democratic process. “Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than the executive organs of the collective, will soon emancipate themselves from the mass and become independent of its control.”
All this flows inexorably from the nature of organization itself, Michels concludes, and he calls it “The Iron Law of Oligarchy”: “It is organization which gives birth to the dominion of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization says oligarchy.”
Next, I'd like to make a few points about Michels' contentions about democratic organization. Per Hayes, "[Michels] wondered why the parties of the left, so ideologically committed to democracy and participation, were as oligarchic in their functioning as the self-consciously elitist and aristocratic parties of the right. Michels’s grim conclusion was that it was impossible for any party, no matter its belief system, to bring about democracy in practice. Oligarchy was inevitable" (emphasis original). Now, Hayes is making a kind of implication that organizations that are "ideologically committed to democracy and participation" have to be democratic in institutional design as well. I don't fully disagree, but I have a hard time imagining any organization that made all decisions through democratic means.
I help organize weekly phonebanks for the a campaign here in Cambridge. We have wonderful volunteers that join us around 6pm or so, and make calls to potential volunteers in the area until about 8pm. Part of my job, as an organizer, is to select the call lists based on ward, volunteers prospect tier, which prior event attendees to exclude or include, etc. These are decisions I've made in consultation with my team leader and other organizers, but very few volunteers get involved in that level on inside baseball. Not that they don't have the opportunity, but they have lives, jobs, kids and kinds of things outside the campaign. I characterize my choices as 'oligarchic,' and in that way I think Michels is correct, but I see these oligarchic aspects of the campaign as positive and necessary. Our organizers make leadership decisions that help make our volunteers (who are donating their time) more effective per hour of phonebanking (or door-knocking, or etc).
Democracy, in the context of institutional design, means "government by people." But 'people' is the really tricky aspect of democratic government—who gets a vote in deciding our representative. For now, I'd like to focus more on the 'representative selection' part; usually when we talk about 'democracy' we mean some type of system with universal suffrage for representative selection.
'Oligarchy' in contrast, is a adjective used to describe a style of "government by the few, especially a small faction." The root word of the prefix is the Greek ὀλίγος (or olígos) which translates into "few". In a literal sense, an oligarchy is one where the few decide for the many. Oligarchy is a seriously institutional problem, and has been since the Greeks (if not before). Democracy is the institutional attempt to solve tyrannical decision-making or leader selection, by allowing 'the people' to select their representatives rather than 'the few'. On that score, I think so far democracy has done very good job at it. The modern, consolidated democracy we enjoy has come a long way; we've got all kinds of liberal protections like inalienable rights, judicial reviews and separations of powers. But! The actual process of democracy—the voting—is constrained to selecting representatives in a legislature or executive (and in the United States' case, certain judiciaries). My point here is that democratic methods are excellent protections against tyrannical decision-making or leader-selection; but it doesn't imply that all or even most organizational decisions are best left to democratic means. In fact, I believe it is quite the opposite.
When Michels writes "who says organization, says oligarchy," my response is, "yes, but what makes that a necessarily bad thing?" At some point a single executive, or a group of legislators need to make a decision on a vote, a policy priority, or a missile launch. In the same turn, effective institutions needs effective leaders who are responsible for meaningful (and correct) decisions that effect the whole.
Given his historical context, I think Michels' allergy to non- or anti-democratic decision-making processes is reasonable. But Michels is making a normative statement about organizational leaders making decisions, by decrying the 'oligarchic' nature of how leaders make decisions. I honestly in that I don't see how any organization, let alone a political one, could effectively make institutional choices without undemocratic features of their leadership. I'm not saying leadership is fundamentally undemocratic, but there are some necessarily undemocratic aspects of leadership.
[1] If you're interested in a more in-depth look at Michels' work, his book, Political Parties is available for free here.
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