Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Enterprise and Corporation 67subscribed to by political analysts, and a hundred years agodubbed the “iron law” by Robert Michels. Both market anddemocratic governmental elites often claim to be “servantsof the people.” But they are too big and powerful to be servantsand no more likely to behave as servants than would agiant in your household. Often they respond to an aggregateof preferences—that is, to election returns or sales reports—but they do not much respond to any of us as individuals.And the aggregate of preferences they often mold or manipulaterather than simply accept. They listen closely to eachother, but to mass they listen less than they talk. For mass toinstruct them to do anything is usually impossible. Instead,at best, mass waits for their decisions and only then, if itlearns about them and does not like them, can sometimesnegate them by refusing to reelect the elite or to buy fromthem. Cyclists could not persuade British motorcycle firmsto install self starters, but they could and did shift to Japanesecycles, leaving the British industry in ruins.How can one characterize in some summary way thepower of market elites and the power of mass to controlthem? Some of my American colleagues tell me that theylive in a democracy; others say they do not. Both groups arecorrect, for one group’s criteria for democracy are satisfiedby American institutions while the other group’s more demandingcriteria are not. Does the market system provide atolerable or unacceptable degree of mass control over marketelites? It depends on criteria, and there exists no standardset.The Two Elites ContrastedI do not know of any better way to move toward a summarystatement than to pursue a few steps further a comparison