On The Political Party Thought Of Robert Michels

In the early 20th century, the fact that the European academic paid more and more enthusiastic attention to the theoretical research on pluralism, which made a number of scholars start to change their research thinking and perspectives, thereafter, they casted interest in studying individual political organizations. Among the most scholars, someone needed to be mentioned, he was Robert Michels(1876-1936),a German-Italian scholar. After making a series of studying and analyzing of large scale of organizations and parties, he posed a classic argument that is iron law of oligarchy:"Organization implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it is a political party, a professional union, or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. The mechanism of the organization, while conferring a solidity of structure, induces serious changes in the organized mass, completely inverting the respective position of the leaders and the led. As a result of organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a minority of directors and majority of directed.Coupled with brought a strong shock to the European academic circles on that time, Michels' thought also laid foundations to academic researches, which on organizations, trade unions, and political parties for scholars from various countries. Today, the writer of this paper thinks of making in-depth and detailed discussion and evaluation about Michels' thought will be a very meaningful academic work.In the first part of the paper, the author retraces Michels' life, and makes a brief presentation of his main masterpiece, that is "Political Parties:A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Meanwhile the writer also classifies the background and theoretical sources which are made up to the thinking formation of Michels. In the early years, as a member of the German Social Democratic Party, he had personal experiences of the activities within the party. And he also saw the development, and the dramatic changes of the SPD, before the Fist World War. All of those bring an indelible impact on Michels'thought. In addition, the impact factors of Michels'thought also include Gaetano Mosca's "rulling class" theory and Vilfredo Pareto's "elite circulation" theory.In the second part of the paper, the author analyses the logical evolution of the iron law of oligarchy thesis of Michels. As organizations (including political parties) come into being the increasingly large-scale, specialized division of labor makes the representative essential. In this case, only the person with higher qualifications could be capable of the complicated things in the organizations, the Mass's own indifference and incompetence, as well as the psychological desire to be led make leaders outstanding from them. Therefore, there the gap between the leaders and the Mass comes to appear, and then be enlarged greater. Soon afterwards driven by the desire for power, the leaders works hard to secure their own status, As a result, organizations have become increasingly conservative, the tendency of oligarchy clearly be found out.In the third part of the paper, the author discusses Michels'several insights on the socialist parties. According to Michels, where the socialist parties also have a tendency to sit on the parliamentary elections, at the same time, with the growing strength of the socialist parties, the independent tendency of their parliamentary group has become increasingly evident; Although centralized tendency and de-centralized tendency both exists in the social parties, the latter while avoiding the formation of a single gigantic oligarchy, it eventually results in the emergence of a number of individual oligarchic mechanisms; Again Michels has also made a detailed analysis about the advantages of the socialist political party leaders; Lastly, the socialist party leaders, with their own advantages to come to the fore from the general population, however, the struggle within leader groups has continued from time to time. Although in most occasions, the older leaders often to be defeated to an end, the final outcome of the struggle is that the older and the new leaders, after some reunions, will share party powers.In the fourth part of the part, the author also shows Michels'analysis about the attempts to restrict the influence of the leaders. In the eyes of Michels, syndicalism, anarchism, and referendum voting are not the panacea to cure the crux of oligarchy. Because that although they regard the pursuit of democracy as their criterion, in fact their own shortcomings ultimately could not make themselves escape the consequences of oligarchy. There is no doubt that Michels'reasoning makes him surely regard his argument of the oligarchic tendency within all organizations as an "iron law".At the end of the paper, the author analyzes and explains the rationalities and defects of the political party thought of Michels. The author illustrates the limitations of Michels'political party thought, while definitely stressing the major revelation which Michels has given to us. Despite inherent defects of Michels'political thought, for example, the object of his study not entirely comprehensive; He only emphasizes on indifference, stupid, and ignorance of the Mass, meanwhile he ignores the fact that along with the development of organizations, the potential initiatives of the Mass will also getting higher, all of this factors make him blind to stress on the incompetence of the Mass and also extremely intensify the arbitrary and authoritarian tendencies of the leaders; Michels'thinking of awareness of centralized power of the party organizations does not correspond to today's scholars' findings. But through the analysis of Michels, we get a deep and meaningful revelation, that is, in organizations, we will know more about the basic lie which by developing and improving members' own political and social communication ability to stimulate their participation awareness, we will know better about the key principle of establishing the sense of responsibility of the members, we will know better about the gist of being able to carry out making criticism and self-criticism within organizations.