Michels and his Critics

Abstract

Ipropose in this paper to develop a theme from an earlier article I wrote on Michels: namely, that Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens is to be understood as the work of someone who had passed over from revolutionary Marxism into the camp of elite theory; more precisely, it is a work which takes as its starting point a problem posed within a revolutionary tradition and proceeds to answer it from within a quite different theoretical framework. We could say that it offers a Right-wing answer to a Left-wing question. It is in this conjunction that lie both the strengths and weaknesses of the work (1). One failing of much of the critical literature on Zur soziologie des Parteiwesens is that it treats the conceptual and other inadequacies in its argument as a series of isolated errors, of separate points to be challenged, rather than as arising systematically out of the particular intellectual conjunction I have indicated (2). I propose, however, to go further in this paper than simply present a historical analysis of the intellectual development of an individual thinker. I want to ask the question: How far can the inadequacies of Michels' argument be overcome from within the framework of elite theory itself, and how far can they only be overcome by breaking with some of the central assumptions of that perspective? In other words, I want to broaden out the enquiry to consider what are the limitations of an elite-theoretical approach to the study of parties and elites, particularly parties of the Left.