The Printers and the “Iron Law”

In a concluding section, the authors of Union Democracy (subtitled “The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union”) observe, “For men of good will, there is much to learn in the history, institutions and arguments of American printers.” Such “men of good will” would do well to start with this book, which is surely one of the most important of recent times. It is also one of the finest studies of the labor movement ever written.

Since Robert Michels first postulated his “Iron Law of Oligarchy” in the early years of this century the world has accumulated evidence to sustain it more rapidly than critics could find arguments to dispute it. Lipset, Trow and Coleman have not attempted to refute Michels; on the contrary, they write as social scientists who remain in Michels’ debt, convinced of the basic soundness of his views. What they have done is to explore an exception to the “law.” They chose the International Typographical Union (ITU) because almost alone among established unions (one might easily add, almost alone among voluntary associations of any kind or size) the ITU is genuinely democratic. Not merely in the large historical or socio...