Organizations and Institutions: How Republicans and Democrats Undermine Liberal Democracy and What we Can Do to Counter This
Written by SP Editor
By Ed Martin
Liberal democracy is based on a collection of individuals or groups whose socially defined identities and roles spontaneously emerge for a particular purpose. For many, such a definition seems both plausible and even fair in theory. In practice, however, one might argue to the contrary, in which spontaneous roles are not a random occurrence, but instead the outgrowth of deeply embedded interests and power relations which, when institutionalized, become an unquestioned status.
Organizations, within liberal democracies, are designed to incorporate people into roles and statuses committed to a particular goal. This then translates into structures of group authority embedded in such organizations as churches, militaries, schools, corporations, agencies, governments, and political parties. It becomes a "functionally integrated system" built around networks of communication, interest, power and social class, that comprise what is known as a "social system" or "social structure." It is here that political parties in the United States, primarily the two dominant parties of Republicans and Democrats, are organized and structured. But to what end are these parties organized, and for the benefit of whom?
One might argue that neither political party has any interest in the promotion of the general welfare and common good. To be clear, organizations based on the consolidation of power, such as Democrats and Republicans, may in fact undermine the very nature of liberal democracy itself because of their corporate dominance. These interests at the present time are controlled by the corporate rich, power elite, and military-industrial complex, to the detriment of the American people. The detriment here is a type of bribery which pays off politicians by elites and their interests and excludes the majority from determining their political priorities.
The interests of the two political parties have been accepted and institutionalized as the raison d’etre. These roles are not individually determined, but are shaped instead, by the very organizations and institutions in which they are co-opted. In turn, organizations are determined by their essential interests and minimal requisites of role performance. More specifically, the interests of organizations are manipulated by the interests of those who have the most power within the organization to determine the outcome to their advantage. This explains why the priorities of welfare policy are fading from their political platforms and voters are turning to other political options.
Individuals are socialized to believe that their well-being is to avoid conflict and thus secure a place for themselves within the system based on the system's own terms. The path to success is found in conforming to "the values, prejudices and modes of thought of the world to which entry is sought." Those who are skeptical and question the policy priorities of the given organization discover, either painfully or at great personal risk, that they must conform and adjust to minimal role demands. Bucking this trend leads to being ostracized from party leadership roles and important committee assignments integral to crafting public policy. It is here that organizational control and institutional dominance convey obedience among subordinates in any organizational structure within a liberal democracy.
The social norm then becomes the external and internal force for compliance upon the individual and the pressure to obey comes not only from the superior or elite within organizations and political parties, but from the collectivity of its subordinates. In this manner pressure for role fulfillment, then, can be felt vertically from the higher authority that controls the agenda of role performances, and also felt horizontally from similarly situated subordinates who having internalized the organizational values of obedience, are as critical as any superior in preventing departures in role performance. Such departures being seen as an unwillingness to be a “team player”, is perceived as a violation of essential professional duties, a "letting down" not only of one's superiors, but of one's peers, be they ordinary co-workers, professional colleagues, or comrades in arms.
To control the essential structures of role behavior and socialization, as is the case with organizations, is to shape social consciousness in ways that rational exercises cannot do. Roles, within organizations, become habit and custom. For persons socialized into institutional roles, most alternative forms of behavior either violate their sense of propriety or escape their imagination altogether. They do not think of themselves as responding to a particular arrangement of social reality but to the only social reality there is. In this regard the absolute nature of this social arrangement is unquestioned because, in the words of social theorist J. Peter Euben, "realism becomes an unargued and implicit conservatism." And as Sanford Levinson argues, "the more subtle form of 'political education’ is the treating of events and conditions which are in fact amenable to change as though they were natural events. This is not a question of treating what is, as what ought to be, but rather as what has to be.”
These organizations and social institutions, nonetheless, are those monuments within liberal democracy which capture and confine the vision of people, and an organization's very existence becomes its own legitimating force. In economic terms it is a case of supply creating demand. The dominant organizations in the social system lend the legitimacy of substance and practice to the established norms which in turn teach and reinforce adherence to the ongoing social system. What should be recognized is that the social norms or values are not self-sustaining, self-adaptive consensual forces. They are mediated through organizations and institutions, and to the extent that organizations and institutions are instruments of power in the service of elite interests the general public is irrelevant. As such, social norms themselves are a product of organizational interests and power relations. This continues to be the prime ingredient in determining institutional outcomes and the accompanying political corruption which is so obviously apparent in the Republican and Democratic parties.
Dominant Power
Individuals who have ultimate authority in an organization are the ones who have the final decision-making power over the organization's system of rewards or punishments, its budget and personnel, its policies and property. This means that enforceable authority has the power to exclude others from control over it. Organizational proprietors exercise "ultimate authority" and are invested, not solely by tradition or sentiment, but by state charter with the right to control the organization's incorporated resources. Directors, trustees, and elites use their leverage and power either by occupying the top positions in which ruling decisions are made or by hiring and firing those who do. William Domhoff argues that:
“control is in the hands of the board of directors, a group of men usually numbering between ten and twenty-five who meet once or twice a month to decide upon the major policies of the company. In addition . . . the board always includes at least the top two or three officers in charge of day-to-day operations . . . We consider the boards decisive because, despite the necessity of delegating minor decisions and technical research, they make major decisions, such as those of investment, and select the men who will carry out daily operations. In fact, their power to change management if the performance of the company does not satisfy them is what we . . . mean by control."
Michael Walzer also argues that the directors of most organizations:
“preside over what are essentially authoritarian regimes with no internal electoral system, no opposition parties, no free press or open communications network, no established judicial procedures, no channels for rank-and-file participation in decision making. When the state acts to protect their authority, it does so through the property system, that is, it recognizes the corporation as the private property of some determinate group of men and it protects their right to do, within legal limits, what they please with their property. When corporate officials defend themselves, they often involve functional arguments. They claim that the parts they play in society can only be played by such men as they, with their legally confirmed power, their control of resources, their freedom from internal challenge, and their ability to call on the police."
The boards of directors of most business firms do not exercise a "collegial" power except in the formal, legal sense. Even among themselves directors seldom operate democratically since usually one or two of them enjoy a preponderant influence over the corporation. Bruce Berman notes that private power is exercised both "in the economy and society" through "organizations whose internal political processes are, with few exceptions, authoritarian, oligarchic and devoid of any democratic procedures or controls." Where the board of directors consists of corporate employees, dependent on the president for career advancement, the board simply reaffirms past decisions or presents modest but inconsequential changes.
Top corporate managers, themselves board members and large stockholders, are the active power within a firm, selecting new members, exercising a daily influence over decisions, and enjoying a degree of independence. This same scenario can easily be translated into nonprofit institutions, education, churches, government, unions, administration, and policy. The institutionally controlled roles are themselves so legitimized by practice and custom, that the coercive element of this oligarchic arrangement is in effect disguised.
It appears evident, at least from what has been discussed, that authority is delegated downward within an organizational system, then institutionalized in anti-democratic fashion, in order to better serve those at elevated levels. Ralf Dahrendorf states, "For the bureaucrats the supreme social reality is their career that provides, at least in theory, a direct link between every one of them and the top positions which may be described as the ultimate seat of authority. It would be false to say that the bureaucrats are a ruling class, but in any case, they are part of it, and one would therefore expect them to act accordingly in industrial, social, and political conflicts."
Eighteenth century theorists such as Jean Jacques Rousseau argue that people who command these organizations and institutions are "hurried on by blind ambition, and, looking rather below than above them, come to love authority more than independence, and submit to slavery, that they may in turn enslave others." Adam Smith argues along the same lines when he states, "All inferior shepherds and herdsmen feel the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security of those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their lesser authority depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them."
The monopolization of privileged positions and scarce resources by elites is justified by the claim that only experienced persons or trained experts have the expertise to participate in decision making. Francis Rourke and Glen Brooks state that organizations and institutions are, "often forced to put on a dramatic show of scientific objectivity in its budgeting process in order to justify its requests for continued support, even though the dramatic props - elaborate formulas, statistical ratios, and so on - may have little to do with the way in which decisions are actively made within the . . . establishment." Thus, modern hierarchical organization with its elaborate stratification of command and fragmentation of tasks may itself be less the outgrowth of technical necessity and more a means whereby the few control the many. They argue that only “elites” are qualified to operate the institutions.
Robert Michels thus argues that the bureaucratic structure within organizations has two main functions: efficiency and class domination. The former is admitted, open and manifest; the later covert, unrecognized. Here any detection of class conflict within organizations is hidden within the bureaucracy, not because bureaucracy's efficiency and productivity has proven successful in quieting dissenters, but because the structural features of bureaucracy suppress the power resources of potential dissenters. It would therefore be correct to argue that bureaucratization is another form of class conflict, a form in which one side wins and the other loses, and which might better be called class domination. And it is worth noting that social justice efforts, when organized, also fall into these same structural traps.
Designs of Organizations
Most organizations, arguably, are linked by a commonality of class interest. The common misunderstanding is to treat the diversity of organizations as a manifestation of the diffusion of power. Robert Lynd states that, "sheer multiplicity of organizations in society may not be assumed to indicate their discreteness and autonomy . . . " More often than not, the interaction of power between organizations and institutions is neither voluntary nor equal, since some institutions "occupy positions of established dependence upon other institutions." This presupposes a distribution of power in which some organizations possess more than others. Consequently, the resources of power are not randomly scattered among the population to be used in autonomous ways, but are distributed within a social system, and the way the system is organized has a decisive effect on what resources are available to whom. Any delineation of the resources of power would include property, wealth organization, social prestige, social legitimacy, number of adherents, various kinds of knowledge and leadership skills, access to technology, jobs, control of information, manipulation of symbolic expressions, and the ability to apply force and violence.
Apparently, if organizations and institutions have power as their major interest, and the maintenance of a class dominated society, then it can logically be concluded that there are elements in society which lack power. Lacking accessibility to power resources implies that certain classes of people will chronically gain a deficient share of necessities. These people, mostly children in the United States, do not participate as decision makers in most of the arrangements directly affecting their lives. They have no lobbies, no voice in the political system, no appeal from the vested interests of certain adults. The elderly, women, handicapped, and people of color, at least those in lower social classes, can be considered among the powerless in society as well.
Every privileged class tends to propagate the notion that the existing social system and ideology constitutes the natural order of things, and as Marx argues in the German Ideology, “to present them as the only rational and universally valid ones." In this way, those elite members of organizations give legitimacy and permanence to their position. These elites, according to Weber, intend "to have their social and economic positions 'legitimized.' They wish to see their positions transformed from a purely factual power relation into a cosmos of acquired rights, and to know that they are thus sanctified." The legitimating myths, or "status-legends" serve not only to bolster the self-esteem and soothe the conscience of the elite within organizations, but reinforce the important function of assigning an almost divine status to class dominance and the rule of elites within organizations. Rousseau captures this same idea when he states that "the strongest is never strong enough to be always master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty." To this point both Marx and Engels argue that governments, held captive by capitalist elites and their allies, serve authoritatively as the “executive committee” of the ruling and exploiting class.
Thus, the threatened loss of power in organizations, and the tendency toward a more equal distribution of power, wealth, and privilege, is seen not merely as a material loss, but as the cataclysmic undoing of all social order. Operating on the assumption that all distribution must be competitive rather than communal, the elite anticipate - correctly - that more material resources for the marginalized will only mean less for themselves, since a fundamental reordering of social priorities would entail a marked diminution of class privileges for the elite. Within this socioeconomic setting the reality of conflict is spawned and determined, according to Marx, precisely because "men make their own history; but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past."
Rousseau argues that the elite of any organization enjoy their status "only in so far as others are destitute of it. Because without changing their condition, they would cease to be happy the moment the people ceased to be wretched." Consequently, Rousseau further states that "we find our advantage in the misfortune of our fellow-creatures, and the loss of one man almost always constitutes the prosperity of another." Noam Chomsky even goes so far as to state that organizations such as these are “designed to undermine democratic decision making and to safeguard the matters from market discipline. It is the poor and defenseless who are to be instructed in these stern doctrines.” And as ML King states, "history is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.”
In a capitalist society, based on financial acquisition and competition, rational actors do not readily sacrifice their own class advantages out of regard for the needs of others. Any notion of justice, based on utility maximizing, is not likely to compel self-interest to cast aside privatized pursuits. The history of class divided societies offers little hope to those who do not share in their access of scarce resources. I see little hope that the Republican and Democratic parties are willing to separate themselves from the capitalist dominated organizations that they have become, or, always have been. I have little doubt that these organizations and institutions can be modified to promote policies of social justice.
But a counterstrategy within a liberal democracy will no doubt come from below in the form of community organizing, third parties such as the DSA, Greens, PSL, etc., and activist NGOs at the grassroots level. The goal here should be to continue advocating for this strategy. Forming coalitions to break the corporate organizational and institutional hold on liberal democracy in the United States is the key to a free and just society.
Ed Martin
Ed Martin is a professor at California State University, Long Beach and The Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration, in Long Beach, California.
