This work has been declared by the AHA board as historic, and is superseded by Humanist Manifesto III. The Manifesto is a product of many minds. It was designed to represent a developing point of view, not a new creed.
Re: the iron law of oligarchy Aug22-09, 10:47 PM JRDunassigned: The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory, first developed by the German syndicalist sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties. This is actually wrong.
This raises the question of who came up with the iron law of wages, if it was not Ricardo. Apparently the Iron Law was named by Ferdinand Lassalle. Stirati (1994) reads Marx as here saying that Malthus was the law's creator: It is well known that nothing of the 'iron law of wages' is Lassalle's except the word 'iron' borrowed from Goethe's 'great, eternal iron laws'.