In his book Political Parties, Robert Michels argued that mass movements have a natural tendency to develop undemocratic structures. Michels had some sharp insights into the nature of bureaucracy, but his “iron law of oligarchy” was seriously flawed.
SUPPLEMENT: The general strike and classical Marxism weeklyworker.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from weeklyworker.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
An essay on the relative influence exercised by the First International (the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA), the Second International, French revolutionary syndicalism (the CGT and the Bourses du Travail), and Italian syndicalism (the USI), respectively, on the origin and development of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, with extensive discussion of the internal debates that took place between 1880 and 1920 in the European anarchist milieu on the general strike and the nature and purpose of trade unionism.