So you’re trying to do something. Maybe you’re trying to plan a trip for Spring Break. Maybe you’re trying to pass landmark healthcare reform. Most likely you’re fighting with your miserly friends over a restaurant bill. You all put in your two cents (sorry couldn’t resist that one,) about how the bill should be divided up. A couple of you have busted out those stupid tip calculators on your iPhones, a few more are trying to divide a $4 appetizer seven ways, and goddammit, Dewey you had to order that $14 margarita, didn’t you???? But eventually, something interesting happens. Someone inevitably wrestles the check from the math professors and their iPhones, gets down to brass tacks, and tells everyone what to pay. Then they put in about half of that, no one notices, and you all walk out while the waitress curses you and your descendants for your 4% tip.
In all of these situations, even small groups of people prove themselves completely incapable of making even the most cut and dry decisions. I get it, health care and tax structure can be pretty subjective things. Even Spring Break holds a lot of variables. I know how difficult it can be to decide between the seaside villa in Mexico, or going on a trip to Europe in order to take a picture in front of Western civilization’s greatest monuments, so everyone knows just how cultured and international you really are! There are many ways to approach those problems. But there’s one way to approach dividing up a bill: division, and yet, we seem incapable of agreeing on even the most objective of issues.
Invariably, either one person, or at least a small subset of the group steps forward to make the decision. Usually, it’s the same person or group of people. Maybe you know who they are in your group. You bat around ideas anemically, without any real commitment. Until, they show up. They bust out the laptop, type in their credit cards, and boom, the trip/ concert/ Buddhist pilgrimage across all of Asia, is booked. Seems like a pretty good deal right? You got to continue your kill streak in Call of Duty and got the gunship, and all this stuff magically happened. Just pay this much, and you’re good. But there’s an underside to all this ease and comfort, because what we’re really dealing with is….
Oligarchy.
I know we’ve talked about Max Weber before on this blog, but we’ve never mentioned his star pupil, Robert Michels. Michels studied under Weber, and later linked up with the Socialist movement, although seemingly bizarrely, he allied himself with Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party in Italy, where he would end his days at the University of Perugia. Michel’s most famous sociological insight was the same insight we arrived at when we looked at how the group divides up the dinner bill. Decision making groups, or political parties, quickly transform themselves into bureaucratic oligarchies, according to Michels. This is true even, and perhaps especially, of political modes of organization that espouse egalitarianism, notably, Socialism, and Communism.
Michels sums up his point quite simply in his book Political Parties when he asserts: “It is the organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the lectors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization says oligarchy.” Our little society bickering over the bill was unorganized at first. Sure, little cliques formed, trying to grapple with the problem, but until an individual, or a group, seized power, we had, essentially, an egalitarian society. But there was a problem. This society was incapable of action. It could not accomplish even the simplest of tasks.
A society like this will not last long. Without the ability to make decisions, the society will quickly fall to another that is capable of making them. A completely disorganized society will become completely paralyzed in crisis. And so, the greater group delegates its authority to a small subset of decision makers. Now, these decision makers may obtain their authority by permission from the group, as in elected democracies, or they may simply take power by force, as in a military coup. Or, as in our dinner example, they may simply fill a power vacuum, and by the time anyone notices, they’ve become resigned to the political order that has arisen.
Whichever way this works out, the group as a whole delegates its authority to these delegates. But just as Michels says, the delegates quickly turn the tables on the delegators. As we saw in the bill example, the “delegates,” who’ve been tasked with deciding the bill, quickly adopt an authoritarian posture. They’ve been “ordered,” (maybe by themselves) to figure out a solution, but they soon begin ordering everyone else how much to pay. In short order, the delegates become the delegators themselves.
The Roman Republic employed an interesting system in order to organize society in times of crisis. They appointed dictators, in order to allow the state to act quickly and decisively. These men were supposedly dictatores rei gerundae causa, or dictator for the matter to be done. They were given absolute power in order to resolve the crisis, but the expectation was that they would surrender this power after the time of crisis had subsided. One of Rome’s most famous dictators, was Cincinnatus, who served as a paragon of morality and honor after he willingly relinquished his dictatorial authority immediately after he’d concluded a the war. But not all men would be so virtuous. Julius Caesar would later use the concept of dictatorship to declare himself dictator for life. Indeed, it seems no coincidence that the fasces, one of the main symbols associated with Roman dictatorship, would find new life in Benito Mussolini’s Fascist party, millennia later.
It’s trite but it’s true. Power corrupts, and absolute power, corrupts absolutely. The people in charge of the bill have no qualms with charging everyone a bit more, so they can charge themselves a bit less. They’ve become classic bureaucrats, performing a function and skimming a little off the top for themselves while they’re at it. A corrupt bureaucracy has ever been the menace of developed societies. On one hand, we need them. We need someone to do the paperwork. We need someone to torture us at the DMV. Just kidding, if you need that, then you have serious masochistic tendencies. But for most, the temptation for the delegates to become the delegators is simply too great.
Michels’ own teacher, Max Weber contended in 1905 that: “The dictatorship of the official, and not the proletariat, is on the march.” If only he could see how right he turned out to be Weber, would probably hang his head in sorrow. Most presciently, he predicted that if Russia were to undergo a revolution, it would experience a bureaucratization of society, the likes of which the world had never seen. We all know how that one turned out. Everywhere we look, we’re at the mercy of officials. You can’t have a bonfire without a permit. Even my dog needs a license. I understand where all these rules come from. Most are well intentioned. Many only serve minority interests, and either way, we’re being strangled by red tape.
But is there a way out from Michel’s “iron law?” Somewhat surprisingly, I found a ray of hope in George Orwell’s dystopian 1984. In it he notes: “For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.” In this, Orwell professes a tremendous confidence in humanity. If they could get out of the struggle for mere survival, they indeed would learn to think for themselves, and would create a social order more just than what had preceded it. When given literacy, and the leisure time to think through issues, people will make the right decisions. That’s extraordinarily uplifting for such a dark novel.
It’s easy to misinterpret Orwell here. I don’t think he’s suggesting that leaders are useless, only that the privilege they afford themselves is. Worse than just useless, it’s unjust. We need to delegate our authority sometimes. That seems self evident, when we see a group become paralyzed trying to make a simple decision, based on the unerring principles of arithmetic. But we have to remain vigilant to make sure the delegates stay delegates. They can’t become the delegators.
This vigilance requires effort. It certainly requires us to be “literate and think for ourselves.” Unfortunately, that can be difficult at times. It’s not always easy to see through the fog of ideology and arrive at a clear understanding of a complex issue. But it’s required of us, if we want to live in a free, equitable, and efficient society. Unless we choose to take the easy way out. Turn a blind eye. Let them charge you a little extra, it’s easier that way. Don’t make waves. Just let everything run along smoothly. If we choose that path, then it’s true: Slavery is Freedom, and Ignorance is Strength.
