Sociology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Steve Bruce

Author:Steve Bruce [Bruce, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2009-08-07T21:10:00+00:00

Unintended consequences

One of the strands of the sociological bracelet is the ironic principle of unanticipated outcomes. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns succinctly put it: `the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay.' We set out to do one thing. Because we are unaware of all the social forces that shape us and because we cannot anticipate how our actions will be received by others, we end up achieving something very different. I will illustrate the point with two examples that concern the links between ideas and the organizations that people create to promote those ideas.

Robert Michels, a student of Weber who was active in left-wing politics in Germany in the first decade of the twentieth century, was struck by a common pattern of evolution in left-wing trade unions and political parties. They began as revolutionary or radical attempts to reconstruct the world but became increasingly conservative and at peace with the world. They began as primitive democracies but became less and less democratic. In what at first sight looks like a very different arena, the world of conservative Protestant sects, H. Richard Niebuhr identified a similar pattern. The Methodist movement in the late eighteenth century was radical. It broke away from the Church of England because it wished to return to a more pristine Christianity. Initially it preached the need to restructure the world but gradually became socially conservative. Initially it stressed the priesthood of all believers but gradually acquired a professional clergy.

That we see the same pattern being repeated suggests that it is not accidental and hence can be explained by reference to some general social processes. That the consequences were so different from those desired by any of the people involved suggests that we cannot explain what happened simply be saying that these people wished that outcome.

The explanation Michels proposed went as follows. Any kind of group activity requires organization. But as soon as one starts to organize one creates a division within the movement between the organized and the organizers, between ordinary members and officials. The latter quickly acquire knowledge and expertise that set them apart and give them power over ordinary members. The officials begin to derive personal satisfaction from their place in the organization and seek ways of consolidating it. They acquire an interest in the continued prosperity of the organization. For ordinary trade unionists, their union is just one interest in which they have a small stake. But for the paid officials the union is their employer. Preserving the organization becomes more important than helping it achieve its goals. As radical action may bring government repression, the apparatchiks moderate.

At the same time as material interests dispose them to compromise their once radical credentials, the officials are drawn into new perspectives by a new 'reference group'. They come to appreciate that they share more in common with the officials of other political parties than with their own rank and file. Like servants discussing their masters, Labour and Conservative party activists can

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