SOC-4040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Unintended Consequences

• School: Clemson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC-4040
• Professor: Wentworth

Document Summary

That spirit helped free the individual mind from the constraints of traditional authority and its version of reality. influences the nature of the rights, beliefs, equality, the level of tolerance of. But, as karl marx said, (cid:498)the ruling ideas of every age are the ideas of the ruling class. (cid:499) But as robert michels" says (cid:523)1936(cid:524) there is the (cid:498))ron law of oligarchy(cid:499). And as peter berger said in (cid:523)an )nvitation to sociology 1963(cid:524): (cid:498)the first wisdom of sociology is this: things are not as they seem. (cid:499) Law of oligarchy states, in effect, that any complex organization, no matter its manifest form, naturally moves toward oligarchy (rule by the few). Upshot: democracy must be made and remade; it is under constraint threat from the narrow-minded and the powerful. Any social structure that is to be maintained requires social control.