The Iron Law of Oligarchy
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.
Thats 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 weve been waiting thousands of years for self-government and potentially well 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, conservativeeven 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 Ive quoted and/or summarized a few:
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:
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
Thats 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 weve been waiting thousands of years for self-government and potentially well 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, conservativeeven 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 Ive 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 whats 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
Comments (105)
Democracy is basically just a safety valve in my view, it shouldn't be glorified too much, even if it is better than other systems when the population of the state reaches millions of people. And if there are even safety valves on the representatives of the voting citizenship, it's even better (as in a Republic).
Yet what you said above, one thing sounded a bit wrong to me:
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm not so sure that they all favor oligarchy, they just cannot avoid that somebody actually has to make the day-to-day decisions. The people can firmly believe that their system will work (perhaps in the future with a new breed of people) and won't be an oligarchy. Never underestimate the denial people can live in.
A system that regards itself as fighting a revolution and has this mentality of a struggle makes those that are against it (or even just viewed as possibly being against it) enemies of it. Thus consensus seeking and voting that one has in an democracy are obstacles and out of the question for totalitarian movements. All that consensus and voting is actually for them the root of all evil. This totalitarianism leads to dictatorship: a system lead in the end by one. And those around the dictator are a small clique, totally dependent on the dictator accepting them as not being potential rivals, but 100% obedient lackeys and yes-men. People who compete in being the most dedicated yes-man don't actually represent an oligarchy as we usually know it.
Plato's degeneration of democracy into tyranny is remarkably prescient, as many pointed out when Trump rose to power.
Good thinking.
Just to be clear, I didnt mean they favor oligarchy, but that their organization necessarily tends in that direction, no matter what type of organization they prefer.
It also seems to me that the Republican style of representational government was designed, as it was in the founding fathers of the United States, to forbid the excesses of democracy. Given that many governments since then have styled their governments in the Republican fashionUnion of Soviet Republics, Peoples Republic of China, Italian Social Republicit was almost inevitable that there would be no democracy.
Michels was an ardent socialist and believed Fascism would deliver democracy.
How do you reconcile socialism and fascism?
I dont, save for its collectivism. Michels did, though. He was in the milieu.
True. The government took the place of the aristocracy. To the extent that leftists want the government to ensure (enforce) social welfare, they're almost indistinguishable from peasants appealing to the boyar or whatever. You really ought to read the recent posts of @Count Timothy von Icarus He lays out pretty well the advantages of democratic societies (if only democratic in a limited sense) in terms of innovation. He's exactly right.
For better or worse, we can't voluntarily return to the Bronze Age, which is what you'd have to do to escape modern social structures. Anyway, that's a static kind of life where nothing changes for millennia. But hey, the problem of global warming would be solved.
The fact is, he supported Mussolini. If he thought that Mussolini and/or fascism could lead to democracy he was wrong.
Are you suggesting that Trump's autocratic demography delivers democracy?
Exactly right. Democracy is only achievable outside of representational government. And I do not think we need to go backwards in order to remove the shackles of anothers rule. In the meantime I guess we can pretend it is democracy, protect our democratic institutions, and go on as if were not serfs for the time being.
Many people did. Clearly he was wrong.
Im suggesting that democracy is impossible where certain organizational structures are concerned, for instance representative government.
Or you can be realistic about the times you live in and recognize that your time on this little rock is short. How do you want to spend it? And do it. :up:
And what is the alternative?
I think that is the key, in the end. Rather than wasting time devising a collectivist system that ought to deliver the rule of the people (an absurdity, as Michels shows), which in practice is oligarchy, the people just need to go rule themselves.
And how does that work?
Democracy is always the alternative. Its just that we cannot reach it through collectivist calculations and means.
Free your mind. The rest will follow.
Not really the topic for En Vogue references, but Im a big fan.
:joke:
If Michels is right about the situation he's certainly wrong about the conclusion: "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."
Eternal tutelage and predistination and necessity -- these are the words of the masters. It's repeated so that the people who are at the bottom of the pedestal don't try to get to the top of the pedestal, or bring the pedestal down.
But the majority doesn't need to be content with this position, and have certainly toppled a few pedestals before.
I agree with you there. But I think that's his point. I'm sure he is noting how this is giving ideological ammunition to the conservatives. After all, this whole work is a warning to his own party. It's was my fault due to misquote, by leaving out the preceding sentance:
"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."
I'll add it to the OP.
Another thing aristocracy has in common with liberal democracy is that both find that depriving the common people so they're on the verge of dying from starvation helps get those little worker bees moving.
If you let them be satisfied, they'll just sit there eating pumpkins. Get rid of the pumpkins and take all their stuff away. They'll work like maniacs.
How then can we reach it?
Who knows? If organization tends to oligarchy, disorganize. Thats probably a good start.
You don't know what is to be done but think something should be done, even though you don't know that what should be done will make things better rather than worse. This is just the kind of thinking demagogues rely on.
The problem with disorganizing is that organizations are more powerful than the disorganized. All it takes is for a group to decide that the benefits of organization outweigh the downsides, in their particular organization, and they'll naturally be more powerful -- and thereby will have political import regardless of ideology.
I do appreciate all the attention but I'm far more interested in your opinion on the topic. Can you think of a way around the Iron Law of Oligarchy? Or would you admit, like the conservatives do, that the very structure of your organization requires a hierarchy of betters and lessers, elites and the masses, masters and slaves?
True enough. But they wouldnt have coercive political power. And I think cooperation could beat out organization any day. Im not sure if this is true or not but I do believe a voluntary army could stick it to a slave army.
If by oligarchy you simply mean rule by a few then by definition the rulers of a democratic republic are a few, although the few are actually many, but still a small percentage of the population.
In the absence of a better alternative I don't think there is a way around.
Quoting NOS4A2
There is a difference between "betters and lessers". "Elites" is a term that is stretched in order to argue for or against something. Your man Trump is an elite, if by that term you mean rich and powerful, but there are many conservatives who object to him because he is not an elite in the sense of being capable of wise and beneficial leadership. "Masters and slaves" is even more loaded.
Then the very structure of your organization and path to democracy betrays your goals. Your organization requires hierarchy, the rule of the few, in the conservative tradition. Now it is just a matter of who is more honest about it.
Who is more honest about what? Many conservatives today want to or claim they want to dismantle the administrative state. The administrative state is comprised of a few in terms of the overall population but it is not comprised of only a few, it is quite large.
In my previous replies that wasn't clear to me. I tend to think of cooperation as the same as organization.
One big problem is monetary corruption. It's legalized bribery now... quite literally. Another is conflicts of interest. Another is when faced with a choice between what's in the best interest of the overwhelming majority or what's in the best interest of the very few, the US government has been erring on the side of the few for around 50 or 60 years. That's the result of the corruption, not the form of government.
:fire: :up:
Imagine defending Trump and corporations to the bitter end, then turning around and clucking about democracy. :lol:
Being such an individualist, may have trouble understanding that folk can work together in order to avoid the outcome he sees as inevitable.
:up: :up:
When you have a centralized state, oligarchy in some form will evidently happen. Perhaps we should define oligarchy and oligarchs better as let's say the Russian oligarch of the 1990's is different from a Soviet Politbyro member, who obviously would be an oligarch in the broader sense.
In other words, oligarchy and the oligarchs are quite different if you have an plutarchy, corporatocracy or a kleptocracy or then an autocracy / dictatorship. One really has to define just what an oligarch is as there are quite different kinds of oligarchs, especially many who don't see them at all as oligarchs.
Yet I think the Iron Law of Oligarchy comes more from the enlarged powers and abilities of control created by the modern states themselves. Central bureaucracy, the legal system and highly controlled commerce and society simply leads to this "Iron Law", as Michels put it. I think this is quite obvious. Central bureaucracy is always a top down organization, which leads always the few having power, be they elected or promoted to the position.
Ancient Rome might have had emperors that have all the power, yet that power was limited by simply not having the technology and organization and thus not having the ability to control everything. If the Romans would have invented the optical telegraph (perhaps quite possible before the 18th Century), then one big obstacle would have shrunk in size. Add an industrial revolution and an scientific revolution, then you got those abilities.
Prefixing "iron" helps hide that it is not a law. Oligarchy is not inevitable.
Yup.
And it's not a conceptual distinction between individualist/collectivist that makes the difference. To be political you must have others. "Collectivist" is a boogeyman word to dissuade people from -- well, coming together. It's something you say to persuade people outside of a collective to stay individual.
I know it'd be nice to all live our individual lives @NOS4A2 -- and I also know that collective organizing requires recognizing individual differences. I've done enough organizing to know that my own individual will didn't mean squat when it came to democratic organization.
I suppose that's why I push against these narratives. We need one another. That's a good thing to recognize. It's also good to recognize that some people use that need for their own ends -- but the solution isn't individualization, because that gives people who are able, who have more power even more power. Masters like being able to spell out the rules to subordinates, and it's much easier to do so when [s]they[/s] subordinates are alone.
For some people, individuality is seen as evil. Not sure why. Some would go so far as to claim that individuality is an illusion, that all there is is the collective.
The psyche is a strange land.
:up:
If politics become a polarized caricature of reality by either just being individuals or either just being one big collective, then so is the ideologies that follow. To recognize that both the individual and the group are equally important is to simply accept reality based on facts. It is basic psychology, we do not exist in a vacuum, our mind is a combination of the self and the social sphere.
So politics should reflect those facts, politics should always reflect facts. Otherwise it becomes opinions from egospheres trying to manipulate society for their own gains and wealth. The purpose of politics is to organize society. If politics become tools for a few to reign power, it is no longer politics for society but instead abuse against society.
We can quibble about how ferrous his law is. It just seems to me that if oligarchy wasnt inevitable, and the law not so iron, that wed see some solid examples proving otherwise. Maybe someone can provide one and we can weigh it to the countless examples supporting Michels theory, but I don't even know if that's necessary.
Michels' thesis that "with the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline", and "where organization is stronger, we find that there is a lesser degree of applied democracy", stands more solid than the gaseous notion that the state is potentially democratic. If oligarchy is not inevitable, how long do we have to wait for its opposite?
I dont get why people push back against it because everyone we organize with is an individual. If you only see them as a means to some collective end, then it is their subordination rather than their cooperation you require. I fear that holding abstractions over and above actual flesh-and-blood individuals justifies the worst of humanity, and is egotism of the highest order.
Trouble is, as is explained in the article cited, the notion of "oligarchy" is so loose that it might be applied to any form of specialisation or leadership. It's not a thesis that can be empirically tested.
I've said this before in another thread, it doesn't need to be a law, and strictly inevitable, to be something we should probably take into account if we want to have a political philosophy that is effective.
His point is precisely that specialisation and leadership tend to oligarchy over time because of very common human tendencies to want to maintain power, seek and conspire with likeminded people, bend and corrupt the rules because they are in a position to do so etc etc... Demanding this very precise definition of oligarchy so we can go measure it in the world is kind of weak argument it seems to me... if we see this process happening all the time. This is not the kind of thing we can test and verify with perfect accuracy like say a law in physics anyway.
And one doesn't need to subscribe to conservatism, fascism or any far right ideology like that because of this insight, but we probably should take seriously the notion that organisation and hierarchy are in some way tied to each other, and that we therefor should probably take that into account to determine the kind of equality we want to aim for (if we want organisation at all). But you know, this is a non-starter for a lot of lefties.
Let's take just this part of the paper into debate.
Thomas Diefenbach here uses frequently conditinionals (might) and simply makes quite a weak case here.
Let's think this out: being suspicious about the higher ups and rejecting some proposals simply cannot be a refutation of the main idea here at stake. Saying "no" is easy. The bigger more difficult issue is then to find just what policy is used.
Diefenbach continues with another quote:
I think that even in other enterprises than co-operatives employees can criticize the executive board, especially if they go beyond their mandate. Again this isn't a refutation at all. Diefenbach sums up the following:
There certainly is a "good chance" that organizations work this way. I can notice such behavior even my own military (!) as the organization promotes independent thinking and people taking the initiative. Orders aren't slavishly followed: if you are given an order that goes against the law, it's your job not to follow it. And above all: slavishly just following orders from above and doing nothing else can be extremely deadly if (or when) that command link is broken on the battlefield. Hence simply urging people to a) think with their own head and b) take the initiative when required, will disrupt a hierarchial organization and create the "good chance" what Diefenbach is talking about. Also in organizations that cannot be defined to be 'democratic'.
Diefenbach does give credit Michels and understands that his conclusions have importance. He also makes quite astute observations. So what is the problem here? The answer is: ideology overriding rationality and logic. This ideology is shown well in Diefenbach's conclusion:
By talking about the 'danger' and 'threat' of oligarchy that "luckily will not materialize", Diefenbach clearly shows what he thinks about oligarchy. And this is the trap many fall into: they see the structures of organizations as ideological or ideologically constructed and morally good or bad, and spend little if any thought on the logical and rational grounds on just why organizations have evolved to what they are now.
Perhaps "The Iron Law of oligarchy" is the wrong way to look at this phenomenon. Perhaps it would be better to call it "The fundamental limitations of collective decision making". Collective decision making takes time, people think inherently differently, will disagree and will make different choices. The only answer to this is to try to seek some sort of consensus. Also, specialization of roles in an organization is natural in creating efficiency. Hence the outcome and the effect will be that some people will have pivotal roles in the function of an organization. And hence, you will have "the oligarchy" in some way or another. That "oligarch" might then be the secretary of the council, an employee of the firm like a CEO or an wealthy financier of various enterprises. At this general level, there isn't so much use for this law. That few people will have power over others in any organization should be obvious and insisting that you can eradicate "oligarchy" at this general level is just a thought that hasn't much to do with reality.
Hence the mistake is think about the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" from an ideological viewpoint. Or to give too much ideological value to what basically is a logical or rational outcome of a complex issue.
Isn't that what the Iron Law of Oligarchy would require?
But it, too, is an abstraction. Along with "individual".
From the perspective of organizing, then everyone is both an individual and in relationship with others. I am not a monad perfectly willing myself, but a human being who is attached to his family, to friends, to coworkers and neighbors, to mild nuisances and to outright enemies -- I am not just myself, but my relationship with others.
In this conversation, though, that too is an abstraction. We are you and I in a conversation. This form of organization is not an oligarchy. And it's certainly not inevitable that it will become one. And depending on how we count organizations -- well, the conversational dyads outnumber the hierarchical organizations, just by sheer numbers. Insofar that you accept our conversational dyad as a counter-example to the iron law of oligarchy regarding organizations, then surely you could count some of the other dyads out there too -- but the conversational ones in particular seem to resist oligarchic tendencies, because as soon as either participant is done they can just walk away. And so when the organization ceases to fulfill either participants desires it ceases to be, rather than lives on like the abstractions.
At base we can say you are yourself and I am myself and we're on a forum thinking about ideas and their limitations, and that conversation is not oligarchic nor does it need to become oligarchic.
:up:
It's true that human beings and other primates are gregarious. But you are a single object. The last dyad you or I have ever experienced ended when the umbilical cord was severed. Any and all attachments are strictly metaphorical. To me it's patently false to treat aggregates of any number of human beings as single objects, so I'm a strict nominalist in that regard. I can't get around it and I can't help but fashion my politics around what I see as brute facts.
For these reasons I believe any effort to give a group priority over the individuals in itcollectivismis to prioritize ideas over actuality, and worse, one's own ideas and nothing more. It is never about the collective qua collective, nor could it be.
I don't see social interactions, conversations, and natural groupings as organizations because they are not arranged systematically and artificially. They are not organized.
Good thing I recognized both, then. The group is composed of individuals, which themselves are not isolated monads, but multiplicities connected to others. Does our relationship to our mother become a metaphor when the doctor cuts the umbilical cord? Why?
If I am an object, which object am I? If I lose my leg, do I lose my objectivity? If I lose my boyhood, do I become a new object -- a man?
If I am a ship of theseus then I am certainly not a monad disconnected from the physical world, but rather am a machine for processing the world from sugar to shit.
But surely none of that even matters when it comes to politics. So why focus on such brute facts? Why call yourself an object?
I don't treat aggregates as objects. I treat objects as objects. And we are a dyad, in this conversation, rather than an object. There is both give and take, a listening and a speaking.
So when you say:
It sounds to me that you have poised the well in proving the Iron Law of Oligarchy, then -- you'll only accept human organizations which are prone to verifying the Iron Law, and calling organizations which do not something renamed which is natural rather than artificial.
Or, at least, it seems less Law like if there are human organizations which don't tend towards Oligarchy, like natural organizations.
Perhaps it's this artificiality that's more at issue, than collectivism?
I certainly understand that a group can sacrifice an individual for collective reasons -- what else is war other than the old sacrificing the young to keep the state in order? I think those things are bad. I think individuals are important. Important enough that we, collectively, need to preserve individuals by actively fighting oligarchy.
But that takes collective action, you see?
There's a theory that the queen of an ant colony is the colony's sex organ. The colony is a single individual with semi-autonomous parts.
Your body has only one citizen who can move on its on: macrophages. But it's still a diverse population of entities.
So you actually are an aggregate. That's pretty common on earth.
"Relationship" is a metaphor because there is no actual, physical connection between mother and child, save for the umbilical cord. "Connection" is also metaphorical, I believe. Rather, to relate is an action performed by things. Turning the verb "relate" into a noun by adding the suffix "ship" does not signify some other thing, but is used in abstracto to describe mother and child relating to one another.
I call myself an object because I fit the definition, at least according to the hard sciences. I have a boundary; I move as one; I occupy a position in space and time; and so on.
The brute facts are important for politics because one requires a political unit or subject to value. The fascist, for instance, would value the State and give it primacy in all matters political, and is willing to sacrifice flesh-and-blood individuals for its sake. The Marxist would do the same for the Proletariat. The liberal or republican would do it for the People or the Res publica. The National Socialist would do it for the Race. Collectivism is a tried-and-true method for justifying atrocity and injustice. Worse, their demand for the subordination of the individual to some notion of the collective proves that it is not about the collective at all, but about subordinating certain segments and individuals of the collective to others.
I don't think I have poisoned the well with the Law of Oligarchy because Michels' is concerned with systematic organizations and not the spontaneous familial relationships and other aggregates of human beings. His book is called Political Parties, after all. But I guess its an interesting question if any aggregate of human beings can be considered an organization. if you want to get into it, it's clear that the relationship of mother and child, or the bourgeois family, are not democracies by any stretch of the imagination.
Yup, I agree.
I begin with these personal relationships because I can relate to your expressed suspicion of abstractions. I'd only push further and note that a physical object, a boundary -- these are abstractions too.
With respect to this conversation the only non-abstract is our relationship, the relationship between NOS4A2 and Moliere on The Philosophy Forum.
The state? The Marxist? The Liberal? The Republican? The National Socialist? Collectivism? Individualism? These are all abstractions we are discussing in the context of a philosophy forum. The only non-abstract referent here would be what's happening within the conversation, and who we are to one another. The position you occupy in space, in this conversation, is on a forum rather than wherever you're at while reading this. At least, that's the space I tend to respond to since that's the space I have access to and am sensitive to. In abstract you'd represent something, but in concrete you're just you and I'm just me talking about ideas.
I also push against individualism because I know it's an ideology spread by the already organized. I wouldn't use artificial/natural as a distinction, because I know that human beings like hierarchies. I don't think ossification, even, is unnatural, which is roughly what I'd equate to "The Iron Law of Oligarchy" -- and I think that the Iron Law formulation of ossification overlooks too much in search of an idea. Even in the context of political parties, how have the various third parties in the United States faired in terms of the law? Do they have a core of oligarchs controlling the pedestal below them, or are they just a bunch of sad sacks and hopefuls doing their best in a first past the post democracy*? Or is the point that they aren't oligarchs, but will become oligarchs once they.... are oligarchs?
You see?
*has-been democracy, if you ask me
When a cell is ready for death, then death comes. So goes it with social organizations, though we don't know how it works -- but inequality sometimes features in topplings.
EDIT: Other times, in a conversation for instance, the random blatherings of someone does the trick ;)
Which organizations push the ideology of individualism? If I believed the fascist and socialist literature from the French Revolution onward Id think you were right, but during my lifetime I cannot say Ive heard much of it. I have to read the likes of Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Herbert Spencer, Henry Thoreau, John Locke, JS Mill to find any trace of it. I know Hoover once mention rugged individualism a long time ago and it has become sort of a meme, but not much else. Maybe Im naive.
But even debates we have are about individual choices. One of the regular points people would bring up against universal health care would be that some people take better care of themselves than others, and that general thrust is why Obamacare is this bizzarro private-public partnership law that costs way too much. To make sure that the bad individuals didn't get what the good individuals deserved.
Quoting ssu
Indeed, but I read this as a result of ambiguities in the formulation of the supposed "iron rule". The objection is methodological; it is that the notion of oligarchy is insufficiently clear to enable an empirical investigation. The supposed law is an example of Popper's poor historicism, and falls subject to tht criticism - as is pointed out very clearly in the introduction.
So those conditionals are not down to Diefenbach's criticism, but the inevitable result of equivocation in Michels thesis.
But I will go one strep further and point out that Michels work is inherently ideological. This article is part of the ideological foundations of Italian Fascism. To leave it to be so grounded and yet ask that critics not adopt ideological stances is to adopt an asymmetrical position.
Since the view espoused is not amenable to empirical test, it can only to be understood ideologically.
It's a worry.
Brilliantly put!
Cheers.
Gotta link my friend?
https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2018/02/poppers-poverty-historicism
Maybe more importantly, I wonder where that leaves us? If we want to demand the same methodological standards like in the exact sciences, it seems to me very little can be said that would stand that test, and so we are just left with competing ideologies without any real justification in past events? That doesn't seem right to me, the world does seem to put constraints on what is possible.
I've read The Poverty of Historicism and am confident that Popper would approve of Michels' theory and methodology. I think it falls under what Popper called a technological social science, which he distinguished from historicist methodology.
Somewhere in between discussing individuals and groups both of which exist just as much as the other stop and ask yourself about the downstream political decisions.
If they lead to defending Donald Trump to the bitter end, denying anthropogenic climate change, cheering neoliberal policies, and generally aligning exactly with ruling class interests, then that tells you almost everything you need to know about how seriously to take them.
The brainwashing came first. The beliefs about individuals came later.
I think, in a practical manner, you're right. This tells me what I need to know in choosing a particular group -- what are they doing, rather than just what are they saying? Most of my criticism of the institutions that be run along those lines.
But here we're just talking about ideas, and concretely that's all we can do -- here. That's the purpose of this space. And we all have ideas that came from a Background, as I'd call it, sometimes which is formed by brainwashing. Hell, in our propaganda-rich environment, our Background beliefs are almost certainly at least partially the result of undergoing techniques meant to create beliefs. It's little wonder that we don't trust institutions when we look at what they do.
The downside is that we don't have much of a choice in the matter when it comes to politics. It's either us, the random, brainwashed, and at times irritating shmucks we happened to be born around, or no one.
From what I can see of the iron law the downstream decision is to cut out, to be on your own, to be an individual -- or, if you're into politics, to become an oligarch. If it's an Iron Law then there's no in between: There are oligarchs and there are the people at the bottom of the pedestal, and the people who want to change the pedestal are just would-be oligarchs. Which is why I thought calling it defeatist made sense -- it paints a picture that is cynical.
And, on top of that, it's well constructed in that it latches onto a truth to be persuasive. Oligarchs certainly exist, and we certainly have the problem of dealing with oligarchs.
But to keep beating the dead horse until it's heard, the only way to push against oligarchs is organizing. So, to me, it seems Michel's beliefs are not just wrong, but the downstream decisions lead to the perpetuation of oligarchy through cynical apathy or cynical manipulation.
If Michels ideas are wrong there should be cases where he is. All it takes is some examples and the theory is essentially falsified. Wherever it is falsified democracy is possible. Wherever it is not falsified democracy is not.
But so far its nothing, at least as far as organizations are concerned. So why should someone like me or anyone else sit around and wait for political parties and organizers to bring us democracy, when it is more than likely theyll bring us oligarchy? If they actually cared for democracy they might try something different. If they cared for others they might actually make an effort to do so.
But they dont. Its obvious to me its the power they are after, and nothing besides. Their advocacy of policies and laws does little more than puts a veil over the fact they want government employees to do the work they refuse to do themselves.
How about the Quakers? They run their organization on the basis of consensus. Not just consensus building, but 100% consensus.
There's a lot of groups out there which don't follow this purported law.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is confusing to me.
If you're organized you aren't sitting around waiting for some group to do something for you. You're actively participating in the process of politics, regardless of the form of government. And if you want a democratic group then you form the group around democratic practices.
And there's where you'll find, outside of the books and ideas, your counter-examples -- democracy doesn't just happen, it's built, and many groups utilize democratic practices.
If, indeed, democracy is worth building. If the Iron Law holds, then it wouldn't be possible to build, so why not let the oligarchs run the show?
The only thing is -- tomorrow isn't like yesterday, when you keep looking back. And the part you've yet to address is that oligarchs fall. So what's so iron about the law if the form continues to fail due to a lack of trust that such a social form tends to breed?
The point is not that oligarchy is a good system, or even that one shouldn't even try to do something about it, tensions and struggle against oligarchy is just as inevitable... the point, I think, is rather that we never arrive at some perfect static system, at some utopia, but that these things are in perpetual motion.
There are two thoughts I've yet to express that I'm uncertain even how to --
But I keep coming back to Aristotle's Politics, and the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative.
(1) In the Politics even Aristotle* makes a distinction between Oligarchy and Aristocracy -- and he happens to like Aristocracy over Oligarchy. Naturalized politics is kind of his whole thing and gets along with the idea that we can falsify such stuff, I think.
(2) The second formulation of the CI pretty explicitly points out how one would organize with someone: by treating them as not merely a means, but as an end unto themselves.
1: Given that we're looking at all societies due to the law-formluation, I'd take Aristotle's Politics as evidence that many constitutions exist, and someone smart back then knew about these tendencies but didn't generalize oligarchy to all organizations. If we're looking for textual counter-examples then he counts.
2: This points to how we can collectively organize on ethical grounds even from a libertarian individualist stance. It's not inevitable, from that perspective, because we all make choices based upon some commitment, and here is a commitment which harmonizes collective action rather than pits all individuals against one another. Even on rational grounds.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I'm gathering that there are more points people pick up than this from Michel :D -- yes?
I agree that there's no static system or utopia, and that social lives are in perpetual motion. That's not the point I saw in Michel, but hey, we agree there.
*That is, the guy who, in writing, wrote about how slavery is good. That guy. Slaves? OK. Oligarchy? Fuck that shit. That guy.
The supposition that democratic institutions will become oligarchies gives no time frame. Suppose a given institution remains democratic after a year, is that a falsification of the "Law"? Perhaps we shoudl wait ten years? If an institution remains democratic after a hundred years, do we consider the law falsified? Any institution that remains democratic is not a falsification, since it can be claimed that it still will become an oligarchy. Hence the supposed law is inherently unfalsifiable.
While studies of the history of such institutions might reveal a trend, there is no reason to suppose that such trends are inevitable. Trends can only tell us what happened in the past, not what will happen in the future. This is a result of the problem of induction, addressed by Popper in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and resolved by fablsificationism. Inductions of the form that are used to justify the supposed "iron law" are logical invalid. Even in physical sciences, the statements sometimes called "Laws" are for fablsificationism only as-yet unfalsified generalisations, to be further tested. Historicism will oft mistake such a trend for a supposed universal law.
Social laws are not causal, and future human and social consequences are not necessitated by the past. At the extreme, humans can choose to act in opposition to such predictions. It is logically impossible to know what someone will do in the future, since even given that they know, it remains that they might do otherwise. I can predict that you stop reading this post here, but it remains that you may choose to read on.
Individual human actions cannot be predicted with certainty, and certainly not by institutions. This of course is Nos' individualist thesis, which must be set aside if this supposed "iron law" were true. The vagaries of individual actions themselves render such social ultimatums as the "law" inoperable.
What constitutes an oligarchy is left ambiguous by the Law. As a result the supposed trend towards oligarchy is left to interpretation, so any mooted historian may find or falsify the trend as they see fit - based on their ideology, as it where. Ideology is written into the very structure of the "Law". Hence it is disingenuous to insist that responses avoid ideology. A better response would be to openly admit the ideologic base of both the supposed "Law" and the responses.
So putting it simply, even if we accept that there is a trend in democratic institutions towards centralisation of power, humans can choose to work against that trend.
Thank you for your response. I think I disagree with the general picture you paint though. A lot of historians do indeed view human history and future as fundamentally unpredictable. There are others though who do think there are patterns we can discern and use to make predictions about the direction of human societies, like say Peter Turcin. Turcin started as a biologist predicting behaviours of groups of other animal species, with some success, and he saw no reason why this couldn't be tried with "human populations" as he became a historian.
One reason I think there is much resistance to this idea, we'd like to think we have a lot agency in determining the direction of our societies, it's a problem for our treasured notion of free will if we don't.
Quoting Banno
Yes human can (and will) work against it, that's not the point I don't think, the point is that humans on aggregate won't keep working against it hard enough over time. It's more like say the second law of thermodynamics in that way... even tough locally entropy can decrease, on aggregate the total entropy of the system will always increase over time. Roll enough dice and you will tend to the mean.
Quoting Banno
It's hard to argue this point because this seems like a variation of Hume's problem of induction, and I think ultimately Hume was right, there is no reason to believe the future will resemble the past. But you can use that objection against science as a whole, and all we are left with is some form of absolute scepticism. Scientist haven't cared all to much about this lack of epistemological foundation and just went with what seemed to work.
Specifically about the social sciences, as you are probably well aware, there has been a replication crisis , starting a good decade or so ago... and I would argue they haven't really recovered since. Either results of research cannot be replicated or the research is so trivial truism to be of little use... I think there are issues with trying to use the same methodology as the exact science in the social sciences. It's just a lot harder to isolate phenomena and have all other variables remain the same so empirical test can be run that can be compared with eachother.
So, again, where does that leave us?
We can just throw our hands up into the air, and give up on the endeavour altogether. I would be fine with that, I wouldn't say Michels theory is a scientific theory, but I still do think there is something there, even if not scientifically proven. We believe a lot of things that strictly can't be proven.
Or we can try to devise better methodologies that do try and address these concern, like Peter Turcin. Maybe that will be successful, maybe not, we will have to see.
Quoting Banno
What I object to is the all to common dismissal out of hand, because it doesn't fit our ideology. You were the first one in this thread to post something that actually dealt with the substance. I would like to think that the purpose of a philosophy board is to question our beliefs rather than to have them confirmed and echoed all the time.
Yes, it is what I take away from it I guess.
Michels wasn't a static entity either ;-), he started out a socialist and when he wrote about the Iron law of of oligarchy he apparently was some kind of syndicalist revolutionary. He was not that extreme yet when he wrote that book. But yeah I do get your point, there's a lot not to like about the guy for sure.
The interesting thing to me is that he did come out of socialist milieus and the unions, people who are supposedly aware of and actively fighting against oligarchies, and yet turned oligarchy themselves. That is where he got the experiences that influenced his ideas about oligarchy.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not all that familiar with Aristotle... but even though he was in many ways more empirically minded, he was still a student of Plato and his academia. Isn't aristocracy akin to the Ideal form, how it is ideally conceived and intended originally, and oligarchy how it eventually ends up after special interests corrupt it over time. If that is the case, then this wouldn't exactly be a counterexample to the iron law, but rather a more general and broader theory about the eventual corruption of political organisations.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not sure how to address this because I don't think the CI works in practice. I don't mean this in a base or mean spirited way, but we do sometimes use people as a means, out of practical and psychological necessity... I would be hard if not impossible to live in total accordance with the CI.
I think I do agree that collective organisation around values is where it is at, I'm just not sure how we can do it in practice while at the same time avoiding all the known pitfalls. What you describe for instance functionally looks a lot like how religions or myths would organize communities around shared value systems, but then a lot can and historically has gone wrong with that.
I read the paper you presented earlier but thanks for the exposition. I do think quibbling about his use of the word law here and there is warranted but doesnt say much about his central thesis or arguments, which need to be addressed as much as his choice of terminology.
Its clear from the book what he means by oligarchy. Besides, Im not sure the term has varied too much in the last millennia.
Quoting Banno
I didn't really address this particular point I feel.
The problem I have with this idea (that it is logically impossible to predict what humans will do because if they know it, they can always choose otherwise) is that these predictions don't necessarily concern individuals, but groups of people or the outcome of a lot of people interacting with eachother. Maybe individuals have some amount of agency, although I would probably argue about the extend of it, but groups of people don't necessarily have. Social outcomes are almost never the result of a single self-aware person make a decision, the impact of individuals is usually rather limited, and so I don't think it would be logically impossible to make predictions about the future of societies.
Right. And I'm not unaware of these things, either.
There's a truth in there -- it's the generalization that's being questioned, as well as the formulation. There's certainly the ideological differences that are being questioned, too.
"Ossification" is the word I like to use in thinking about organizations which form a core -- they function more like a bone structure does in a body. To keep things neutral I'd just say look at a workplace that's familiar to people, such as a kitchen. There's usually a core of people within a kitchen who function like the bones do -- they hold the structure together.
And you might gather that someone who plays the roles of the bone structure within an organization might have more influence than someone who plays the role of some other specialized function that's not holding the structure together.
I think that's undeniable.
But then what is oligarchy, in the thesis? @Banno already addressed this, and I've mostly been utilizing this ambiguity in attempting to come up with counter-examples: Not only is oligarchy fairly mushy, so is "organization" -- such that conversations might count (though they were unpersuasive here), but then even if we mean more traditional forms of organization then there are many which are not oligarchic right now, such as the political parties that aren't presently in charge. But the law is formulated in a way that we have to see these non-oligarchies as potential oligarchies, so it strikes me at least -- it really isn't a falsifiable idea.
But I haven't been pushing that as much because I don't pick up the falsifiability criterion for social theories, but I agree It's worth noting that the theory is not falsifiable, or is at least written in a manner that makes it easy to formulate a falsification as well as a verification, as the desire may be.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yeah, you're right that this isn't exactly a counter-example. And we could certainly do more justice to the Politics than using his distinctions -- but that's enough for me, and can be found at the SEP. Scroll down a little from there to see the table of correct and deviant constitutions.
It's definitely a different theory! And it's richer. With respect to social theories that's often a good reason to adopt something.
But really I think it's important to look at questions from multiple perspectives, especially when it comes to social theories. You gave me just enough of an opportunity to lay out an alternative theory of oligarchy that recognizes these tendencies but explains them differently, and in a manner which is not some foregone conclusion. The theory acknowledges the things which the iron law does, while pointing out that these tendencies are not necessary -- it's not inevitable that an organization becomes an oligarchy. (and, interestingly and somewhat along the lines of what the iron law is getting at, it even terms democracy as a degenerate form)
With Aristotle's theory what you have is the beginnings of a solution, though -- you have to look at the constitutions which city-states are organized around. Some constitutions are better than others on the basis of whether they are in the correct or deviant form.
That's the sort of thing I think a good social theory does -- it doesn't just tell you "Don't bother", it attempts to get at what can be done about the problems.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
There's a bit of a difference here worth noting, I think -- it's not that we cannot use others as means to an end. We're human, we have to! We are very much dependent upon one another. It's that the CI prohibits using others merely as a means to an end.
Also I want to say -- if democracy were an easy goal to achieve, given its popularity, it'd have been done by now. But we're still figuring it out. It's a project that takes participants rather than an ideal in the sky.
The second formulation points out how even an individualist can organize collectively without it being coercive. That's mostly what I think I'm trying to get at -- even if we be perfectly willing subjects there's a way in which we can build our social environment.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes. And a lot can and has gone well with it too. The future being open means we can also fuck it up, and there's no guarantee. Even if we do all the things right -- it's not a controlled experiment. And we're still pretty ignorant of how social forms "work" (if there be any way that they work at all), so even with the best of intentions we can mess things up along the way.
It's for these reasons I tend to favor democratic practices. I don't believe I have the answer, but I think we can probably come up with a better one together than we have so far.
After a brief look it appears the Quakers have clerks and elders and committees. Besides the belief that they are following God's will and not their own, Quakerism is a good example of oligarchy done right, in my opinion. Decentralized and largely volunteer authorities and administers, direct deliberation in how to apply God's will on even the most mundane of matters, active participation in governing affairsshould one wish to form an organization perhaps it would be a good idea to emulate them.
https://quaker.org/meeting-for-business/
I'm not sure oligarchy fails because I see it everywhere, I'm afraid. People keep instituting it, justifying it, and seeking to benefit from its fruits. Given the very structure of their organizations, it appears to me that everyone concerned with building democracy are really concerned with building a better oligarchy, especially one amenable to their tastes.
Better to remove the organization from power and politics. Organize for other reasons like cleaning up the neighborhood or helping a community member get on his feet.
If we say that there are strong forces in any democracy toward oligarchy (and I think there are), then that still serves NOS's purposes, which is to promote anarchy.
Quoting Banno
People do work against that trend, but the greatest threat to any oligarchy is the habits of the ruling class, not voters. Oligarchs end up squeezing a society until some kind of breakdown occurs. The next phase isn't more democracy, it's dictatorship.
Or if you're in Russia, you just proceed from a fake democracy, through a fake oligarchy, straight to what the people really want: a monarchy.
Im not so sure of anarchism yet but I definitely wish to promote self-government and the rule of people over their own lives. The problem with democracy, from Plato onward, is that the state is always assumed in its realization. It might be that democracy is a one-to-one ratio with anarchy, hence why Plato and later conservatives thought it would lead invariably to some kind of anarchy.
90% of the population of Athens were slaves. Plato didn't know shit about democracy.
But that thing you describe from time to time, where there's no government? That's anarchy. It's a time-honored position, though it's usually on the fringes. Anarchist sometimes influence events with the threat of violence, as during the Haymarket incident.
If the Quakers even count as an oligarchy then I'm not surprised you see it everywhere :D.
I'd draw a distinction, of course. But I think it would be better for you to say a bit more on oligarchy at this point. When you say you see oligarchy, what is it you see? And, what isn't oligarchic that is also social, if there be any such entity in the set?
Maybe in the abstract.
In practice, though -- most people hate anarchy not because it is exciting, but because actual democratic practices take work. Living anarchically is a form of organization unto itself, and is usually more about who is going to wash the toilets and take care of the chickens and buy the groceries and distributing out the tasks in a collective manner.
Basically it's more collective than what I gather @NOS4A2's preferences to be.
Oligarchy is the rule of the few. So I see a few people holding positions of power over the vast majority of human beings. I would argue that very little in everyday social life is oligarchic in character, that neither rule nor coercive power need apply to any of it, really. In most instances and in most interactions throughout history, self-rule is the norm.
I suppose it would be. Seems like things would get bloody from time to time.
It's just funny to me comparing the reality of anarchy with anarchists (endless communication and meetings and collective decision making) to the picture (propaganda of the deed, revolution, CHAOS).
Do real anarchists have meetings? Honestly, I don't know what their goal is. But I have the same problem with Marxists.
Endless meetings, meetings that continue on communication media afterwards, that get revisited the next social, then talked about at the next meeting.
How else would you organize if you didn't communicate?
The general anarchist thrust is that it is a radical politics, in the sense that there is thought to be a root cause of problems, and the root cause of problems for anarchists is hierarchy. So anarchist practice is all about how to organize without hierarchy or to minimize hierarchy -- which usually ends up meaning lots of communication and intentionally implementing practices which spread power, be it over a household or workplace or whatever bit of property or decision is under discussion.
The cartoon picture is more or less the opposite of the reality. One of the advantages to anarchic organizing, like the conversational model I proposed, is that organizations don't outlive their use.
But that advantage is also it's downside: organizations with staying power will outlast them. Organizations like warlords and gangsters, for instance, who don't tend to care too much about how they treat other people to get their way (unlike anarchists).
What would be an example of an organization outliving its use?
Quoting NOS4A2
Care to spell out the argument more? I don't see how you reconcile your notion of everyday social life with seeing oligarchy everywhere, unless for some reason political organizations are outside of everyday social life -- which is just not true. People often prefer not to think of the political organizations which constitute their lives, but that environment is still there influencing the everyday lives of people.
In general it's when it's time for an organization to die because it no longer fulfills its function.
I cant remember the last time Ive spoken to someone in authority or any leaders but I interact with people every day for work and pleasure. Imagine that: people just getting along with some pushy organization telling them what to do. If I was in an organization, though, that would be quite different in virtue of its structure.
Ive actually spent a few months in a supposed anarchist community, believe it or not. No leaders, elders, or anything of the sort. The only meetings we had were surfing and fishing and the odd celebration.
The way I look at organization -- work is already an organization, even of the more traditional sort. It's a legal entity with property claims and contracts. It requires a state to function. It's a space which is already organized with its own hierarchies and rules around property and propriety. People obey the rules, and are subject to discipline for disobeying the rules, and there are people who aren't even allowed in.
I believe you. Heh, no point in disputing what real anarchy is.
Not all of them work like that, as you might imagine.
Not if youre a sole-proprietor and self-employed.
It didnt last long. The Gov burned down their makeshift homes and sent them packing. I wouldnt even say they were anarchists, to be honest, though a few were.
Even the rare self-employed sole-proprietor requires a state to enforce contracts and tender.
Would you say that such a state, where everyone is a sole-proprietor and self-employed but there is a state, is somehow oligarchy free?
Quoting NOS4A2
It's the way of things.
Now, if they were organized and communicating they might have been able to push back. :D
I think its a superstition that only man in the form of a state employee can enforce contracts and tender and pave roads. That being said my own statism does go that far. I fear that by now people are so inured to government doing these things for them, that without it, they wouldnt be able to come up with any other reasons to abide by contracts. No government for them = no contracts, as if people couldnt abide by them and enforce them on principle and morality alone.
As for your state, I would not say it is somehow oligarchy free. People love oligarchy, apparently.
I can go halfsies here. I agree, in a universal sense. There have been many social organizations that are not in the form of the state. I wouldn't flirt with anarchy if I didn't see that. I don't think the state is a final form.
But to call a sole proprietor a counter-example is a bit of an idealization, is all I mean. The tender, the law, the courts, the education system -- it's all there to make people behave in a certain way. Of course people behave when they have learned the rules. But what taught them the rules? And isn't the sole proprietorship designation a rule specifically designed for people who just like being on their own? Isn't it a rule to accommodate the desire to be an individual?
School, work, the state, the people around them -- it all forms a system of rewards and punishments which influence how people behave. Because there are claims on property through the state, and everything is basically owned, we need each other not just in the gregarious sense but in an industrial sense too. That's the economy which allows us to continue on right now, and has even shaped us such that we can't really live outside of an industrial economy. A sole proprietor needs the farmers to keep growing things after all. They aren't self-sufficient in that sense, though they are self-sufficient in the social rules sense, the simulation of individuality that is individual rights and property.
Quoting NOS4A2
Maybe.
I think people like hierarchy more than they ought.
But it's not inevitable.
Im not sure why. It doesnt follow that because I reject abstract entities I ought not to use abstract language. I remain aware the term organization refers to nothing in particular, so Im not troubled by any dissonance. Its just that it would take too much effort to find every particular entity involved in any given organization and furnish each with its proper noun. Its enough to just recognize the limits of language and move on.
Nonetheless among the people who organize themselves under a common banner and around a common code, there are a minority who hold authority and status above the rest.
Thats how one can have an account that has all social institutions tending towards oligarchy while denying that there are any social institutions.