Robert Michels

Michels studied the German Social Democrats, the most democratic mass party of his day, and found them run by a self-perpetuating leadership. Political Parties (1911) states the "iron law of oligarchy": any large organisation needs full-time leaders and staff, who acquire expertise, control information and come to put the organisation's survival above its ideals. Test it on any union, charity or party you know. Michels later joined Mussolini's Fascists, a disturbing coda to his disillusion with democracy.