Marc Andreessen has found a clever justification for dismissing democratic oversight of technology. Over the past year, the billionaire venture capitalist has repeatedly invoked a century-old idea from the German sociologist Robert Michels: the “Iron Law of Oligarchy.” Michels’s theory holds that complex organizations such as a government — even those founded on democratic ideals — inevitably become dominated by a small elite.
Andreessen doesn’t cite this theory to critique power or warn against it. Rather, he distorts it to justify why his class of Silicon Valley “builders” should be in charge. “The Iron Law of Oligarchy basically says democracy is fake,” he concludes from his simplistic reading of Michels’s argument. Andreessen’s understanding echoes the logic Benito Mussolini used to justify fascism in Italy.
If rule by elites is inevitable, Andreessen’s argument goes, we should stop pretending otherwise and get out of their way. Let the builders build. Let the engineers and investors lead. Let public institutions fall in line.
But Andreessen seems unaware — or uninterested — in the deeper points made by Michels’s 1911 book, Political Parties. Michels wasn’t offering a license for elite rule; he was warning about the dangers posed to democracy when leaders claim a monopoly on insight and legitimacy while dismissing the public as too ignorant or irrational to participate. The German Social Democratic Party, which Michels studied, prided itself on mass participation, but in his view, it evolved into a top-down organization with power increasingly concentrated at the top. That wasn’t a sign that democracy was irredeemable. It was a sign that its principles can been eroded from within.
While Michels’s work is not without critique, its insights are prescient. For instance, Donald Trump’s populist rejection of “the swamp” of entrenched elites gave way to a consolidation of power around an inner…
Auteur: Christopher Marquis
