Robert Michels

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Robert Michels (9 January 1876, Cologne, Germany — 3 May 1936, Rome, Italy) was a German sociologist who wrote on the political behavior of intellectual elites and contributed to elite theory. He is best known for his book Political Parties, 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.

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[edit] Biography

Michels, from a wealthy German family, studied in England, in 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; he left the party in 1907.

Michels was considered a brilliant pupil of Max Weber. In the early twentieth century, 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 (1911) (On the Sociology of political parties in modern democracy: a study on oligarchic tendencies in political aggregations), in which he demonstrated that political parties, including those considered socialist, can not be democratic because they quickly transform themselves into bureaucratic oligarchies. In Italy he associated with Italian revolutionary syndicalism (it:sindacalismo rivoluzionario) a leftist branch of the Italian Socialist Party (Psi).

Michels criticized Karl Marx's materialistic determinism; his socialism was more empirical, borrowing from Werner Sombart's historical methods. Michels admired Italian culture; this, and his prominence in the social sciences, brought him to the attention of Luigi Einaudi and Achille Loria, who succeeded in procuring for Michels a professorship at the University of Turin, where he taught economics, political science and socioeconomics. In 1914 Michels became a professor of economics at the University of Basel, where he taught until 1926.

After World War I he joined the Fascist Party, led by the former leader of the Italian Socialist Party, Benito Mussolini. Michels was convinced that the direct link between Benito Mussolini's charisma and the proletariat was in some way the best means to realize a real proletarian government, without political bureaucratic mediation. His last years were spent in Italy teaching economics and the history of doctrines at the University of Perugia.

[edit] Writings of Michels

  • Syndicalisme & socialisme ... (1908)
  • Proletariato e la borghesia nel movimento socialista italiano (1908; 1975)
  • Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (1911, 1925; 1970). Translated, as Sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna : studi sulle tendenze oligarchiche degli aggregati politici, from the German original by Dr. Alfredo Polledro, revised and expanded (1912). Translated, from the Italian, by Eden and Cedar Paul as Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (Hearst's International Library Co., 1915; Free Press, 1949; Dover Publications, 1959); republished with an introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset (Crowell-Collier, 1962; Transaction Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0-7658-0469-7)
  • Grenzen der Geschlechtsmoral. Italian translation, Morale sessuale; versione dal tedesco del dott revised and expanded by Alfredo Polledro (Fratelli Bocca, 19-?). Translated as Sexual Ethics: A Study of Borderland Questions (Walter Scott, George Allen & Unwin, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914); republished with a new introduction by Terry R. Kandal (Transaction Publishers, 2001-2, ISBN 0-7658-0743-2)
  • Probleme der Sozialphilosophie (1914)
  • Imperialismo italiano, studi politico-demografici (1914)
  • Amour et chasteté; essais sociologiques (1914)
  • Organizzazione del commercio estero (1925)
  • Sozialismus und fascismus in Italien (1925)
  • Storia critica del movimento socialista italiano : dagli inizi fino al 1911 (La Voce, 1926)
  • Corso di sociologia politica (1927). Translated, and introduced by Alfred de Grazia, as First lectures in political sociology (University of Minnesota Press, 1949; Arno Press, 1974, ISBN 0-405-05515-3)
  • Sittlichkeit in ziffern? Kritik der moralstatistik (1928)
  • Patriotismus, prolegomena zu seiner soziologischen analyse (1929)
  • Einfluss der faschistischen Arbeitsverfassung auf die Weltwirtschaft (1929)
  • Italien von heute ; politische und wirtschaftliche Kulturgeschichte von 1860 bis 1930 (1930)
  • Introduzione alla storia delle dottrine economiche e politiche (1932)
  • Boicottaggio, saggio su un aspetto delle crisi (1934)
  • Boycottage international (1936)
  • Verelendungstheorie; Studien und Untersuchungen zur internationalen Dogmengeschichte der Volkswirtschaft, with a foreword by Heinz Maus (1970)
  • Elite e/o democrazia (G. Volpe, 1972)
  • Antologia di scritti sociologici; edited by Giordano Sivini (1980)
  • Works on paper, 1918-1930 (Barbara Mathes Gallery, 1984)
  • Critique du socialisme : contribution aux débats du début du XXè siècle; articles selected and presented by Pierre Cours-Salies and Jean-Marie Vincent (Editions Kimé, 1992, ISBN 2-908212-43-9)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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