The Elite: The Iron Law Of Oligarchy

Improved Essays
the elite. Positions of leadership give daily great advantages: access to information, the right to make decisions, and power and control over others within the organization. The iron law of oligarchy means that wherever organization exist, only a few people will have power in relation to everyone else. To exercise the term organization is to activate the hidden powers or occult powers of the elite. The elite coexist with the ideology of democracy or dictatorship. The end results bring forth the existence of inequality of power. (Charon, 2013)
According to Marx the legal rational positions are traditions that are developed within the guises of modern societies rules, laws, rights, responsibilities, power, and privilege, he describes the social structures as bureaucratic. (Charon, 2013)
The positions that are developed within the social structures are decided by the qualifications and responsibilities. Bureaucratic authority structures exist within the atmosphere of all organizations. Both rational and irrational organizations beget social inequalities that created on purpose to gain control and power of the
…show more content…
The process of stratification is decided or ranked from high to low and they are ascribed and continue from birth and through kinship. The first-class structure is based on economic characteristics. Social status decides the second aspects of stratification such as a person’s gender, race, sexual preference, education, profession, religion, age, and many other factors. The third structure is political. The political position influence power, privilege, and identity, perspective, and role (lifestyle). The divisions of labor are a central aspect of society. Inequalities is encouraged and perpetuated by the economic, oligarchy, bureaucracy, and stratification structures. (Charon,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the year 2222, the human race has began to dwindle, verging on the brink of extinction, the infected have started their world domination. In an effort to survive and reconstruct a world that is safe, my partner (Megan) and I have established a safe haven society as a final effort to save the human race. We have built a community with five walls encircling the city. The outermost wall is the barrier that separates us from them. Outside our community is a savage and cruel world where the infected rule over the barren land.…

    • 1151 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Robert Moses Summary

    • 1497 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Abraham Lincoln famously remarked that “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The power belongs to those who want to get the top position in organizations with personal qualities, such as leadership, humility, ambition, etc. In this book, Jeffrey Pfeffer examines how to get the power from the individuals’ perspective to make and implement decisions by considering various situations. Also, he describes that power is a positive mechanism in managing the organizations effectively since he has also viewed it as obtained common profits or gains through collectively working together. Such opinion of him about power is diametrically opposed to our common norm that power connotes a conservative…

    • 1497 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Bureaucracy is an organization that focuses on a system of government in which the authority within the bureaucracy is a hierarchy which shows who clearly is in change. . “First, authority is hierarchically structured, making a clear chain of command. Second, selection of personal is competitive and based on demonstrated merit. Third, a specialized division of labor allows for the more efficient completion of assigned tasks. Fourth, bureaucracies are governed by formal, impersonal rules that regulate all facets of the organization.”…

    • 1541 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Systems are defined as meaningful wholes that are maintained by the interaction of their parts. ’’(Lazlo 1972) In Shelly Smith-Acuna’s book Systems Theory in Action, she discusses the idea of systems looking from a larger perspective that is intertwined with the smaller meanings.…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Power Elite Analysis

    • 1448 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In this paper, I will discuss and examine “Some Principles of Stratification” by Davis and Moore, “The Power Elite” by Mills, and “Who Rules America” by Domhoff. Davis and Moore argue that there are two ways in which society falls into social structures. The first being there must be a motivation or desire for certain occupations. The second is that these jobs must offer rewards to keep people in these positions for a long time. Next, Mills argues that power is determined by the world we live in.…

    • 1448 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Candy Vazquez April 19, 2016 Intro to Social Psychology Article Analysis Assignment Allen C. Smith III and Sherryl Kleinman’s article, Managing Emotions in Medical School: Students’ Contacts with the Living and the Dead deals with how medical students deal with the difficulties of being physically intimate with their patients and how they manage their inappropriate feelings as they become physically intimate with their patients, whether dead or alive by touching them. These medical students face a number of problems; one of these problems being the ability to maintain a healthy relationship with the patient. In view of the fact that we distinguish doctors as authoritative figures, and in the United States we have this ideology that people…

    • 2268 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Evaluate the idea of social stratification and, with the aid of statistical evidence and sociological explanation, demonstrate how stratification (with reference to class, gender or ethnicity) can be a cause or factor in health inequality. This essay will evaluate the concept of lung cancer and, with the help of statistical proof and social science rationalisation, demonstrate that stratification with respect to class and gender may be a cause or consider health difference. Stratification is societies grouping people based on age, gender, ethnic group, social role or personal characteristics. Most common stratification is wealth and income, for example a lawyer is higher in the class group than a builder. Social stratification is a way different…

    • 1704 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hegemony is rooted in the struggle for power and influence in a given community. In 1971, Antonio Gramsci wrote in “Selections from Prison Notebooks”, that the ruling class dominates the lower class through intellectual rule. Gramsci added, “The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as domination and as intellectual and moral leadership.” This is the foundation of his ideas about cultural hegemony, intellectual and moral leadership. Gramsci started the conversation about hegemony with his theory behind the intellectual and the state.…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Power Corrupts (An depiction on how there are such things as a great leader, but there has to be boundaries so the power is corrupted by the leader.) The world has housed many amazing people. They are adventurous, cunning, smart, and religious and everyone is a little different. The people look for leaders. People want to be able to make someone else responsible.…

    • 1305 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Donald Black, a theoretical sociologist and professor at the University of Virginia, is a prominent figure in the sociology of law, morality, and conflict. Black became increasingly influential in the analyze of the deviance of law through his cross-national assessment of social groups. Black’s exerts, “Stratification” and “Morphology,” each from his 1976 publication The Behaviors of Law, describes law as a quantitative and relative variable in relation to dimensions of social life. Black describes stratification, the first dimension, as the vertical aspect of social life. Stratification explores the uneven distributions of conditions, and the inequality of wealth.…

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Public Opinion Case Study

    • 1573 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Question 3 a) Public opinion is as important as the goals of any public organization due to the influence it has on managers and their abilities to deliver. Public opinion can either be positive or negative, but the managers have control over what type of opinion he/she creates about his/ her organization in the eyes of the public. Public opinion may have formal or informal authority that allows it to exert such influence. Formally, a public manager would seek a public opinion through a poll or customer survey.…

    • 1573 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Managerial Elite Theory

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The managerial-elite theory argues that the domain of power in society is controlled by a managerial elite. These managerial elite are few in numbers compared to the much larger mass which they have control over. The managerial elite are made up of three distinct groups, corporate elite, government elites, and the military elite. The president as well as top members of government are viewed as managerial elite. CEOs and board members are considered corporate managerial elite.…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Others who even possess human capital for the position unlike myself, which shows how social capital can benefit more than human capital at times. Using conflict theory and the concept of stratification, which holds that society is organized into hierarchical layers or strata (Brym and Lie 2012: 118). The example can be analyzed as in order for individuals to have mobility upwards or downwards the strata’s of society, certain conditions must be met. First, there must be an achieved system, where there is fluid mobility into all ranks of the hierarchy.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    On top of the list is formal authority which is the right to control over assets and the ability to make decisions whether as an individuals or partners. Formal authority is a degree to which managing positions are allocated to join partners such as general manager, logistics, financing etc. Lastly, Wrench and Punyanunt (2012:202) contend that this source of power is the hierarchal structure in the organization from CEO to general workers; their qualification, knowledge and expertise give them the authority to make decisions in the…

    • 1632 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The culture has been unfairly divided for centuries, including by race, social class and social status. Sociologist, Max Weber implied that individuals ought to be arranged in society by using certain factors. Not to mention there are a number of social classes, each of them consisting of distinctive characteristics. Family structures and neighborhoods are affected in both good and bad ways by these social classes. The social class inequality are perceived differently by the three theoretical paradigms.…

    • 811 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays