Robert Michels

For the American physician, see Robert Michels (physician).

Robert Michels (German: [ˈmɪçəls]; 9 January 1876, Cologne, Germany – 3 May 1936, Rome, Italy) was a German sociologist and fascist who wrote on the political behavior of intellectual elites and contributed to elite theory. He is best known for his book Political Parties, published in 1911, which contains a description of the "iron law of oligarchy." He was a student of Max Weber, a friend and disciple of Werner Sombart and Achille Loria. Politically, he moved from the Social Democratic Party of Germany to the Italian Socialist Party, adhering to the Italian revolutionary syndicalist wing and later to Italian Fascism, which he saw as a more democratic form of socialism. His ideas provided the basis of moderation theory which delineates the processes through which radical political groups are incorporated into the existing political system.

Biography

Michels, from a wealthy German family, studied in England, Paris (at the Sorbonne), and at universities in Munich, Leipzig (1897), Halle (1898), and Turin. He became a Socialist while teaching at the University of Marburg and became active in the radical wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany for whom he was an unsuccessful candidate in the German federal election, 1907. In Italy, he associated with Italian revolutionary syndicalism, a leftist branch of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). He left both parties in 1907.[1]

He achieved international recognition for his historical and sociological study, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens, which was published in 1911. Its title in English is On the Sociology of political parties in modern democracy: a study on oligarchic tendencies in political aggregations. In this study, he demonstrated that political parties, including those considered socialist, cannot be democratic because they quickly transform themselves into bureaucratic oligarchies.

Michels was considered a brilliant pupil of Max Weber who began publishing his writings in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1906[2] and appointed him as co-editor in 1913, but they disagreed over Michels' opposition to World War I.[1]

Michels criticized what he perceived to be Karl Marx's materialistic determinism. Michels borrowed from Werner Sombart's historical methods. Because Michels admired Italian culture and was prominent in the social sciences, he was brought to the attention of Luigi Einaudi and Achille Loria. They succeeded in procuring for Michels a professorship at the University of Turin, where he taught economics, political science and socioeconomics until 1914. He then became professor of economics at the University of Basel, Switzerland, a post he held until 1926.[3]

After World War I, he joined the Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini, former director of the Italian Socialist Party's newspaper "Avanti!". Michels was convinced that the direct link between Benito Mussolini's charisma and the working class was in some way the best means to realize a real lower social class government without political bureaucratic mediation. He spent his last years in Italy as professor of economics and the history of doctrines at the University of Perugia[3] and occasionally lectured in Rome where he died on May 3, 1936.

Writings of Michels

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cook, Philip (August 1971). "Robert Michels's Political Parties in Perspective". Journal of Politics (University of Chicago Press  – via JSTOR (subscription required) ) 33 (3): 777–778.
  2. ↑ Scaff, Lawrence (May 1981). "Max Weber and Robert Michels". American Journal of Sociology (University of Chicago Press  – via JSTOR (subscription required) ) 86 (6): 1269. doi:10.1086/227385.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Michels, Robert 1876-1936". Contemporary Authors  – via HighBeam Research (subscription required) . January 2004. Retrieved 26 December 2014.
  4. ↑ Speech by Robert MICHELS at international syndicalist conference (Paris, 3 April 1907). Analysis of the situation of the Left in Germany. Online here (Archive.org)

External links