ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how organizations and institutions become rigid oligarchies. It explores how organizations and institutions are linked to each other by elite interests that impede majoritarian democratic self-governance. In anarchism, the primacy of the individual cannot be overstated, as the individual has inherent moral value. The mass membership was unable to provide an effective counterweight to this entrenched minority of self-serving party officials, who were more committed to internal organizational goals and their own personal interests than to radical social change. Robert Michel’s theory has also been applied to modern-day labor unions as bureaucratic organizations and how they have become ends in themselves rather than a means to an end. The term organization implies the mobilization of individuals into roles and statuses committed to the performance of some form of collective behavior. The iron law of oligarchy, with respect to democratic organizations and policy outcomes, functions in four different capacities.
