Robert Michels
Robert Michels was a German-born Italian sociologist who contributed to elite theory by describing the political behavior of intellectual elites. He belonged to the Italian school of elitism. He is known best for his book Political Parties, published in 1911, which contains a description of the "iron law of oligarchy".
Michels was a friend and disciple of Max Weber, Werner Sombart, and Achille Loria. Politically, he transitioned from the Social Democratic Party of Germany to the Italian Socialist Party, endorsing the Italian revolutionary syndicalist group and later Italian fascism. His ideas provided the basis of moderation theory, which specifies the processes by which radical political groups are incorporated into an existing political system.
Early life and education
Michels was born to a wealthy German family in Cologne, Germany on January 9, 1876. He studied in England, Paris, and at universities in Munich, Leipzig, Halle, and Turin. He became a socialist while teaching at the Protestant University of Marburg and became active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, running as an unsuccessful candidate in the German federal election">Germans">German federal election. In Italy, he associated with Italian revolutionary syndicalism, an anarchist branch of the Italian Socialist Party. He left both parties in 1907.Career
Michels 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 Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. In it, he presented his theory of the "iron law of oligarchy" that political parties, including those considered socialist, cannot be democratic because they quickly transform themselves into bureaucratic oligarchies.Michels delivered a paper, "Eugenics in Party Organization", at the First International Eugenics Congress. He was considered a brilliant pupil of Max Weber, who in 1906 began publishing Michels' writings in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and in 1913 named him co-editor. However, they disagreed over Michels' opposition to World War I.
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 in 1907, where he taught economics, political science, and socioeconomics until 1914. He then became professor of economics at the University of Basel, Switzerland, a posting he had until 1928. He also taught at the University of Messina in 1921.
In Italy, Michels studied the elite theory writings of Vilfredo Pareto. After 1911, he abandoned gradually his socialist ideas. In 1924, he joined the National Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini. There are different interpretations among scholars for this change. One interpretation is that Michels as a disillusioned idealist considered fascism as an alternative to the problems of democracy and bureaucracy. Another interpretation is that Michels incorporated elite theory into his own political thought and began to consider the charismatic authority as the most logical hope to avoid bureaucratic domination.
In 1928, Michels became professor of economics and the history of doctrines at the University of Perugia, and occasionally lectured in Rome. He caught an illness in Bordeaux and died soon thereafter in Rome on May 3, 1936.