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68: Robert Michels - The Iron Law of Oligarchy

The Nietzsche Podcast

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Introduction

This is the Nietzsche podcast. He who says organization says oligarchy. With these words, Robert Mikkel's advances his sociological theory of what is called the iron law of oligarchy. Whenever human beings organize into a social group, the structural realities of organizing human beings for coordinated action results in minority rule. This pattern obtains just as strongly in democratic structures of power as in others. That democracy does not represent an escape from oligarchy, but simply its transmutation into a different kind of aristocracy rather than one established according to blood or lineage.

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