Robert Michels - boring post, don't read.

I've been reading a book by Robert Michels called Political Parties in preparation for a seminar presentation I'm working on. It's a study of the German Socialist party, and Michels basically goes about showing how undemocratic the internal workings of the party are (his proof is excellent); even less prone to democratic processes, like rotation of office, than the old Aristocratic regimes (he was writing around 1913 or so). Anyways, Michels point was this, if the revolutionary democratic parties are entirely despotic in their internal organization, what hope is there for a democracy to result from their forming a government. This is basically the exact same thing that the Anarchists were saying at the same time, except that whereas the Anarchists said the solution was non-hierarchical federation, Michels is (I think) drawing towards the conclusion that one might as well just be ruled by an openly oligarchical government. This conclusion was carried out practically by his leaving the German Socialist Party and joining the Italian Fascists. So there you have it, the two choices for rational people, Fascist or Anarchist. Well, perhaps there is some room in between.