💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › claude-lefort-what-is-bureaucracy.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 08:38:56. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: What Is Bureaucracy
Author: Claude Lefort
Date: 1960
Language: en
Topics: bureaucracy, the State, post-marxism
Source: From Telos #22. http://libcom.org/library/what-bureaucracy
Notes:  This article originally appeared in Arguments, no. 17 (1960); reprinted in Elements dune Critique de la Bureaucratie (Paris: Droz, 1971). The “Postscript” was written in 1970. English translation by Jean L. Cohen.

Claude Lefort

What Is Bureaucracy

Although the concept of bureaucracy has fallen into the common domain of

political sociology, theory of history, and public opinion, and has been

sanctified to the success it has today, it has nevertheless remained so

imprecise that it is still meaningful to question the identity of the

phenomena it claims to describe. At first one is astonished at the

diversity or ambiguity of the responses. But this is only a first

impression. Bureaucracy appears as a phenomenon that everyone talks

about, feels and experiences, but which resists conceptualization. Thus,

rather than immediately attempting to provide a new definition or

description, we will measure the difficulties encountered by theory,

assume that they have a meaning, and from the very beginning critically

examine what both motivates and perpetuates these difficulties.

Outline of The Problem of Bureaucracy

Already in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx draws

attention to the specific nature of the social stratum in charge of the

administration of public affairs. To corporations dedicated to

particular activities and attached to particular interests, this stratum

appears to represent a universal interest. We will follow the

development of the theory of the state in Marx’s later works, then in

Lenin’s Stale and Revolution, and its application to post-revolutionary

Russian society by Trotsky, together with an examination of the role

that the bureaucracy plays as a stratum inextricably bound to the

structure of a class society. From this viewpoint, the bureaucracy is

neither a class nor a stratum. It is a result of the division of society

into classes and class struggles, since its function is to secure the

acceptance of the rules of an order (an order undoubtedly connected with

relations of production, but in need of being formulated in universal

terms and maintained by force). Bureaucracy is “normally” at the service

of a dominant class since the administration of public affairs within

the framework of a given regime always assumes the preservation of its

status. But since it is not simply a section of this class, when the

balance of social forces permits it, it can run counter to some of its

interests, thus acquiring a relative autonomy. The limits of power are

always determined by the configuration of social relations. In short,

bureaucracy is a special body in society because its function is such

that it supports the established structure and its disappearance would

mean the end of bourgeois domination. (Marx said that the Commune’s

first revolutionary measure was the suppression of the bureaucracy

through the lowering of functionaries’ salaries to that of the average

worker.) Since it is not a key to social stratification, its role in the

society is ascribed by the real historical agents-classes in struggle.

The viewpoint changes as soon as one observes the growth of the stratum

devoted to administrative tasks in the various sectors of civil society.

Thus, it is tempting to look for criteria defining a type of social

organization that recognizes the similarities between the bureaucracies

of the state, industry, party, unions, etc. Comparison encourages

research into the conditions for the emergence of bureaucracies in order

to define a type which would pull together various characteristics.

From this viewpoint, very close to Weber’s thesis, the bureaucracy

appears again as one particular mode of organization corresponding to a

more or less extended sector within society. In other words, the social

dynamic doesn’t seem to be affected by the development of bureaucracies.

The mode of production, class relations and political regimes can be

studied without reference to a phenomenon designating only a certain

type of organization.

A qualitative change in the theory of bureaucracy takes place when it is

used to refer to a new class considered to be the dominant class in one

or several countries, or even seen as destined to displace the

bourgeoisie all over the world. This is suggested by the evolution of

the Russian regime after the rise of Stalin, with the disappearance of

the old proprietors and the liquidation of the organs of workers’ power

along with a considerable extension of the Communist Party bureaucracy

and the state, which took over the direct administration of society.

Similarly, social transformations connected with the development of

monopolistic concentration in large industrial societies (notably in the

United States) also generate reflection on the development of a

bureaucratic class. This necessitates a change in the theory since,

because of its role in economic and cultural life, the bureaucracy is

now understood as a stratum able to displace the traditional

representatives of the bourgeoisie, thus monopolizing power.

Finally, we believe that a completely different conceptualization is

required if the phenomenon of bureaucratization is seen as a progressive

erosion of the old distinctions linked to private property.

Bureaucratization here refers to a process seeking to impose a

homogeneous social form on all levels of work-at the managerial as well

as the executive level-such that the general stability of employment,

hierarchy of salaries and functions promotion rules, division of

responsibilities and structure of authority, result in the creation of a

single highly differentiated ladder of socio-economic statuses. This

last thesis refers to a social dynamic in bureaucracy, and lends it a

goal of its own, the realization of which engenders an upheaval of all

of society’s traditional structures. If this is what the problem of

bureaucracy boils down to, it is important to examine each of these

theses and explore their contradictions.

The Marxist Critique of State Bureaucracy

As in Hegel, the Marxist account of bureaucracy is conditioned by a

theory of history. In fact, when Marx criticizes Hegel’s Philosophy of

Right, his own theory is still in gestation. Yet, the philosophical

viewpoint still takes absolute precedence, and it is remarkable that

Marx could sketch out a description of bureaucracy.

According to Marx, Hegel’s error consists in having accepted the

bureaucracy’s self-image. It claims to embody the general interest, and

Hegel decides that it does so. Marx argues that the general interest is

actually reduced to the bureaucracy’s interest which requires the

permanence of particular spheres, i.e., the corporations and the

estates, in order to appear as an imaginary universal. The bureaucracy

assigns its own goals to the state. It maintains the social division in

order to confirm and justify its own status as a particular and

privileged body in society. As real activities take place in civil

society, the bureaucracy is itself condemned to formalism since it is

completely occupied with preserving the frameworks in which its

activities are carried out and in legitimating them. This critique

reveals a series of empirical traits of bureaucracy whose relevance

remains concealed to those who cling to appearances First it is the

reign of incompetence Marx writes: “The highest point entrusts the

understanding of particulars to the lower echelons, whereas these on the

other hand credit the highest with an understanding in regard to the

universal and thus they deceive one another.” But this incompetence is

rooted in the system The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can

escape Finally it lives for the secret the hierarchy guards the

mysteries of the state and acts as a closed corporation with respect to

the outside world. Furthermore, it engenders a cult of authority which

is “the principle of its knowledge and being,” while “the deification of

authority is its mentality.”

Finally, it is exposed to a “crass materialism.” The bureaucrat makes

the goal of the state his own private goal: “a pursuit of higher

positions, the building of a career.” Marx also shows that this

materialism is accompanied by a similarly crass spiritualism: the

bureaucracy wants to do all, and, in the absence of a real function, it

is condemned to an unrelenting activity of selfjustification.[1] Marx’s

analysis applies to nineteenth century Germany, i.e., to a backward

society. Its relevance, however, is not thereby diminished. When he

elaborated his theory of the state as an instrument at the service of

the dominant class, through the study of a nation where bourgeois

development had erased particularism and destroyed the corporations (the

France of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte), Marx kept the idea already

developed against Hegel: that the state bureaucracy is essentially a

parasitic body. Thus, in dealing with Bonaparte’s regime, he writes:

“This executive power, with its enormous bureaucratic and military

organization, with its ingenious state machinery, embracing wide strata,

with a host of officials numbering half a million besides an army of

another half million, this appalling parasitic body, which enmeshes the

body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores, sprang up in

the days of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal system,

which it helped to hasten.”[2] In Marx’s eyes. the Paris Commune’s most

revolutionary measure was to have installed cheap government and to have

suppressed the privileges and hierarchy characteristic of state

bureaucracy. In State and Revolution, Lenin only reiterates what Marx

had said on these points. The bureaucracy and the standing army

considered as two typical institutions of the state are seen as

parasites engendered by the internal contradiction which tears this

society apart, but parasites which block its vital pores.” To be sure,

he clarifies this notion of parasitism, and points out that the

recruitment of the bureaucracy from the middle and lower strata detaches

part of their members from the rest of the people and allies them to the

dominant class. Furthermore, the state bureaucracy is the “stake” in a

permanent battle between the large parties fighting over the

administrative domains. Particularly during a change of regime, these

parties tend to appropriate a substantial part of the booty for their

clients.

What is the relevance of the Marxist analysis and what difficulties does

it encounter? In the first place, taken as an empirical phenomenon, it

presents the state bureaucracy in a light which continues to clarify it

today as it did a century ago. It is a critique that resembles common

opinion but gives it its reasons. It is still the case that bureaucracy

is a circle out of which no one can escape, that subordinates rely on

their superiors to take the initiative and to resolve difficulties,

while the superiors expect their subordinates to solve particular

problems which elude the level of generality where they have been

conceived. This solidarity in incompetence goes quite far in tying the

employee, situated on the bottom of the ladder, to the system of which

he is a part. As a result, it is impossible for him to denounce this

system without simultaneously denouncing the vanity of his own function,

from which he derives his own material existence. Similarly, bureaucrats

seek the highest positions and work itself is subordinated to the

gaining or maintenance of personal status, such that the bureaucracy

appears as an immense network of personal relations. Actually, relations

of dependence displace the objective relations outlined by the division

of labour, while internal struggles are superimposed on the formal

hierarchy and constantly tend to remodel it according to their

exigencies. Today, more than ever, the distribution of the most

important positions between the large parties appears as a division of

booty whenever there is a change in regime. These observations are worth

stressing. Such traits are well-known, but what is not explained is why

they are not investigated: Marx, and Lenin after him, gave an account.

Even if they were wrong, that should not be an excuse for not

considering it. But in recognizing its relevance, it is not sufficient

to stop at a superficial account of bureaucracy which retains only its

official image. In this regard, Marxism preserves a freshness of

approach which fares well when contrasted with the vision of certain

contemporary sociologists. As already indicated, Marx only sketched out

a description which was subsequently smothered by a theory. From this

comes the treatment of state bureaucracy as a general category without

any attempt to explain its functioning. If the bureaucracy includes all

of its members, it still remains stratified (it is, in its essence,

stratification) and all of its members do not participate in it in the

same way. What is the location of the bureaucrat’s power? Why does the

bureaucracy always grow in size? Does the very life of the bureaucratic

organism include a principle of proliferation? Clearly, state

bureaucracies are usually staffed by middle-class elements. By becoming

bureaucrats, do they remain part of their class? Do they change their

mentality? Do they become sensitive to new interests? Marxism does not

answer these questions: its conception of society as completely

regulated by the class struggle does not encourage a study of

bureaucracy for its own sake.

Today the state is the largest capitalist and the largest investor. In

addition to what it administers directly through fiscal and economic

policy, it tends to direct investments on a national scale. Although the

state is a battlefield between large political parties which include

representatives of private capital, and its policies are often the

result of countervailing social forces, tile struggle between these

groups is not the same as that which unfolds in civil society. When

joined to the requirements of public administration, the division of

interests creates a space for its own decision-making -a space which

grows and develops as thhe process whereby the state increasingly drains

larger amounts of capital and takes over an increasing number of tasks

previously left to private initiative. The defence of the established

order which guarantees the position of the rulers over those who are

ruled, creates and recreates everyday the foundations of this

sovereignty. In this perspective, the previous conception of state

bureaucracy cannot be held any longer. In particular, the concept of

parasitism seems inadequate, or at least inaccurate: why does the

bureaucratic mode of organization as such multiply parasites? The thesis

that, on the whole, bureaucracy is a parasitic phenomenon threads its

way into Marxist theory. Actually, the bureaucracy is necessary in the

context of capitalist society. In order to be effective, the critique

must be located at the same level as that of capitalistic organization.

If this is the case, does it not seem as if there is a dialectic of

domination in modern society whereby a social stratum meant to plan and

improve conditions of domination grows in proportion as industrial work

invades all sectors of social life, and that the life of the masses must

be subordinated to it? When all is said and done, does this process of

bureaucratization, so visible in the framework of the state, also obtain

within what the young Marx called civil society?

The Bureaucracy as a Type of Organisation

Let us provisionally skip these questions in order to deal with another

perspective which uncovers the multiplicity of bureaucracies in modern

society and draws attention to their common function and similarity.

Here Max Weber is the starting point. He lists certain traits he

considers typical of modern bureaucracies: (I) The duties of

functionaries are officially fixed by laws, rules, or administrative

dispositions; (2) The functions are hierarchical and integrated into a

system of command such that at all levels lower authorities are

controlled by higher authorities; (3) Administrative activity is spelled

out in written documents; (4) These functions require a professional

apprenticeship; (5) The work of functionaries demands complete devotion

to the office; (6) Access to the profession is at the same time access

to a particular technology, jurisprudence commercial science,

administrative science, etc.

From this analysis some conclusions can be drawn concerning the

bureaucrat. His office appears to him as the exercise of a profession to

which a determinate ensemble of knowledge is attached. Moreover, it is

neither de facto nor de jure the source of fees any more than it is the

object of a contract in terms of which the employee sells his labour

power. The particular nature of the office implies that in exchange for

certain material guarantees (the assurance of a suitable standard of

living), the functionary contracts a specific duty of fidelity to the

office; he is in the service of an objective and impersonal goal, not of

a person. This goal is inherent in the enterprise to which he is

attached-state, commune, party or capitalist enterprise. Secondly, the

bureaucrat enjoys a certain prestige with those he dominates. This

prestige is usually guaranteed by a special status which confers on him

certain rights sanctified by rules. Thirdly, the functionary is normally

appointed by a superior authority. If it is true that there are certain

bureaucracies whose members are elected, the pure type requires the

principle of appointment. Hierarchical discipline is undermined when the

functionary derives his power from the approval of electors, i.e., from

below and not from above. Fourthly, the stability of employment is

normally assured, even though a right of possession over the office is

never recognized. Fifthly, the bureaucrat normally receives a

remuneration in the form of a salary determined by the nature of

employment and, possibly, by seniority. Sixthly, parallel to the

hierarchical order of the bureaucracy a hierarchy of salaries is

established: the majority of functionaries desire that promotions be

made as mechanically as possible. Max Weber also indicates the role of

certain factors in whose absence the bureaucracy would not completely

develop. For example, its structure is not definitively established

until the natural economy has been eliminated, i.e., until capitalism

dominates society. Furthermore, the emergence of democracy allows the

substitution of an administration of anonymous functionaries, detached

from every particular social milieu and devoted to tasks of universal

significance, for the traditional administration by notables, provided

with local authority. Finally, Weber goes so far as to identify the

movement of bureaucratization with the process of capitalist

rationalization. More than the quantitative development of

administrative tasks, what appears decisive is their qualitative change,

the necessity for a large enterprise, whatever its nature, to envisage

its activities from a strictly technical viewpoint and to obtain a

predictability or a calculability of results as exact as possible.

Bureaucracy in this sense is the social form most adequate to the

capitalist organization of production and to a society based on it. The

elimination of personal relations, the subordination of all activities

to the application of a norm linked to an objective goal, makes it into

a model of economic rationality established by industrial capitalism.

Here, from a technical viewpoint, Max Weber does not hesitate to judge

modern bureaucracy as superior to all other forms of organization.

It does not follow, however, that the development of bureaucracies must

affect the nature of a political and economic regime, no matter how

necessary they might seem once certain conditions are fulfilled. On the

contrary, Weber claims that the numerical importance of this form of

organization does not in any way determine its relation to power. The

proof is that the state bureaucracy accommodates itself to diverse

regimes — as demonstrated by France, where the state bureaucracy has

remained remarkably stable. The proof lies also in the fact that during

war, the bureaucratic staff of a conquered country is used by the

foreign power, and continues to carry out its administrative tasks. In

principle, bureaucracy is indifferent to the interests and values of a

political system, i.e., it is an organ at the service of rulers located

somewhere between the rulers and those who are ruled.

These analyses do not reveal their full meaning until they are located

within a certain methodological perspective. Weber sees bureaucracy only

as a type of social organization. Actually. bureaucracies do not

necessarily realize their pure form: certain empirical conditions are

needed in order that the various characteristics be simultaneously

present. But once defined, the type makes the impure forms intelligible.

Even when Weber states that the process of bureaucratization and of

capitalist rationalization are closely tied together, this could be

misleading. Historical explanations are something different from the

determination of a social type. Thus, the method partly determines its

results. If bureaucracy is seen as essentially neutral in relation to an

economic and social system, and it appears as having no historical goal,

it is because Weber sees it from a purely formal viewpoint. as a type of

organization, and not as a specific social stratum which, in

establishing a certain set of relations between its members, generates

its own history. Consequently, Weber cannot deal with “state socialism”

without prejudice. According to him, bureaucracy can adjust more easily

to state socialism than it can to bourgeois democracy. Yet, the history

of state socialism is alien to that of bureaucracy. Strangely enough,

Weber’s conclusions on this point are similar to those of some Marxists,

although inspired by different principles. In the eyes of these

Marxists, state bureaucracy is alien to the social dialectic obtaining

at the level of relations of production. For Weber a sequence of events

can be reconstituted to make sense out of the development of state

socialism. Although favored by these events, however, bureaucratization

does not generate them. Yet, certain historical developments can be

adduced to refute this thesis even more easily than Marx’s account which

is concerned with an empirical description. In the system resulting from

the Russian revolution, which Weber calls “state socialism” (an

expression which need not be criticised here), bureaucracy is not

actually alien to power. The future state leaders come out of it: Stalin

made a career in the party bureaucracy. For a long time he sought the

highest position before obtaining it; he added to his functions of party

secretary those of the state bureaucracy before becoming the master of

power. Just because his rule had a charismatic character does not mean

that he was independent of the bureaucracy: the latter was the permanent

foundation of his power. While charisma can disappear or change its

character with the death of the dictator, the new power will

reconstitute itself on the basis of the bureaucracy. The political

battles concerning the direction of the state take place in the upper

reaches of the bureaucracy.

Extended to the limit, the state bureaucracy comes to take over final

political and economic decisions, i.e., it becomes the focus of a new

system. Had Weber accepted this, he would not have formulated his

definition of the bureaucratic type as he did. Given the nature of his

thought. he refused to regard bureaucracy has having a dynamic goal of

its own. Thus, he was unable to investigate its constitutive traits,

i.e., how it is rooted in social being and increases its power. The

enumeration of criteria can be useful, but as long as what holds them

together remains un-investigated, the phenomenon described remains

indeterminate. It matters little if one adds or subtracts a criterion:

nothing allows one to decide if, in the absence of certain selected

traits, a social complex is or is not bureaucratic. In order to decide,

it is necessary to grasp the source of bureaucratisation.

The above does not apply only to Weber, but to every attempt at a formal

definition. Thus, Alain Touraine writes: “I call bureaucracy a system or

organization where status and roles, laws and duties, conditions of

access to a position, controls and sanctions, are defined by their

location in a hierarchical line and thus by a certain delegation of

authority. These two characteristics assume a third; that the

fundamental decisions are not taken within the bureaucratic

organization. the latter being only a system of transmission and of

execution.” This definition, obviously inspired by Weber-although more

concise-can readily find many applications. It is easy to agree with

Touraine when he claims that a ministry is a bureaucratic organization.

The same cannot be said when he adds that an industrial enterprise is

only partially so. If only the first characteristic of bureaucracy is

found here, how can one claim that the enterprise is a partial

bureaucracy? Does he not mean that a system of organization functioning

according to fixed rules and in an impersonal manner already entails

bureaucratization? If, on the other hand, it is admitted that the

delegation of authority is decisive, and that workers do not participate

in decisions, does it make sense to speak of a “bureaucratization of

work”? This ambiguity grows when Michel Crozier, in elaborating on

Touraine’s definition, decides that “the Western workers in general, and

French workers in particular, have already largely entered the channels

of bureaucracy. He tells us that “delegation of authority is not

necessary for participation in a bureaucratic system.” It is

characterized primarily by the existence of hierarchy. Does this mean

that it is possible to participate in a system without possessing

authority? In such a case, however, the problem would only be displaced,

because relations within the bureaucratic system, between the authority

and the executive sector dedicated to the manufacturing tasks and

subjected to external authority, remain to be defined: the problem of

knowing what role the relations of authority play in the constitution of

the bureaucracy would remain. If it is necessary to admit, on the other

hand, that a bureaucratic system on the whole does not necessarily

locate these relations and that it is essentially characterized by the

existence of a hierarchy. it is still necessary to determine the meaning

of a bureaucratic hierarchy. The notion is vague enough to be applicable

to very different structures: nothing is more hierarchical, for example,

than the court of an hereditary monarchy. What is, then, the basis of

hierarchy in bureaucracy? What justifies a vertical classification of

functions and roles? The question is always reintroduced to evaluate the

import of this or that criterion functioning in the conception of

bureaucracy.

If Weber enumerated certain precise characteristics of bureaucracy

without wishing to privilege any one of them which could have designated

another social reality, it is because he had a strong feeling of its

specificity. What is interesting in his analysis is what he links to

this feeling, i.e., the multiplicity of bureaucratic forms of

organization in modern society. Even if he fails, he at least forces us

to confront his examples and types, and to come up with a new account.

Let us return to state bureaucracy, in order to ask what stratum of

functionaries Weber dealt with. His definition surely applies to

ministerial personnel, or at least to those functionaries whose duties

carry certain responsibilities and whose ‘office’ entails a loyalty to

the goal of the enterprise. It is a professional formation having

specialized knowledge in relation to subordinates assigned to purely

executive tasks and whose labour-time is rigorously checked. But,

strictly speaking, does this definition apply to all the functionaries

who hold ‘office’? Can one say, for instance, that according to Weber’s

framework, secondary school teachers are part of the French bureaucracy?

The professor’s personal position corresponds to Weber’s

characterization of the bureaucrat. Only on one point is the definition

inadequate: participation in a system of authority. Access to a certain

position or a level in the hierarchy does not give him power over

subordinates. Similarly, his relation to his superiors is special.

Obviously, he is subjected to administrative power.His lot depends on

decisions taken at the managerial level. Yet, he largely escapes this

power; the content of his activity is only very partially determined.

His professional activity has its own goal. It is not justified in terms

of a transformation of the object-which cannot be confused with the

objective goal immanent in the ministerial enterprise. Finally, and

above all, the secondary teacher is not in the process of making a

career out of a job. He can hope for a change from one grade of

seniority to another by the most rapid route. But, unlike bureaucrats,

he does not seek a new function which will carry with it a higher social

status, expanded responsibilities, and increased power over

subordinates. The secondary school teacher remains largely an isolated

individual. Undoubtedly, his activity is social, since it necessarily

brings him into contact with a public, but it is not socialized. The

division of labour can oblige him to specialize in a branch of teaching

and thus to relate his activity to those of other teachers, without,

however, generating a unity of production. rn short, if we try to apply

the concept of bureaucracy in the way Weber himself did (neglecting the

value judgements implied in his description), we are led to exclude

certain levels of functionaries from the framework of bureaucracy while

also reforming his system of interpretation.

Since Weber did not integrate French high school teachers into his type,

it follows that most of the characteristics, which he considers typical

and which apply to our example, acquire an import only in certain

precise cases. On the other hand, the absence of certain traits makes it

difficult to speak of bureaucracy. In the first place, we see a

connection between a certain hierarchy and a system of authority (of

command-subordination, according to Weber), such that progression in the

hierarchy corresponds to amassing a higher status, new responsibilities,

and more power. In the second place, Weber’s idea that bureaucracy

expects its members to identify with the undertaking appears at first

glance to have only an apologetic function, but proves to have some

sociological content. Such an identification assumes some professional

activity linked to a role, itself determined through relation to other

roles within the enterprise.

The bureaucracy expects a subordinate to say “the Ministry” or “the

Service” instead of “I,” and by this act of identification, this person

exists as a bureaucrat. But this act has no meaning for those whose work

renders them strictly anonymous or for those who are individualized to

the point where work as such becomes a sufficient justification of

existence. In other words, what Weber calls the identification with an

office is something other than professional consciousness. The latter

finds its end in the act of production; the former, in the occupation of

an office. This professional consciousness calls for a behaviour

conforming to the interest of the bureaucracy, in response to the

expectations of hierarchical superiors-a behaviour proper for each

member of the bureaucracy in a similar situation. Thus, the activity of

bureaucrats has two characteristics: it is technical and bureaucratic.

It can lose the first, not the second. For example, the intense

circulation of reports or of memos in offices serves only to express the

necessity of each manifesting his function to others, and the

bureaucracy functions only by virtue of a mutual recognition, constantly

renewed according to determined ceremony. The volume of paper internally

consumed by an administration allows one to measure its coefficient of

bureaucratic integration. Stripped of ~l malevolent intentions, this

shows that the bureaucracy can only act by constantly reflecting its

activity in the mirror of its constitution. Finally, because of the

place it gives to the system of command-subordination, Weber’s analysis

presupposes the existence of a geographical unity-a spatial framework

determined by bureaucratic activities. Of course, all the members of a

bureaucracy are not necessarily assembled in the same place, but their

relations, the discipline that unites them, the control of each by the

others, tends to circumscribe a specific world of offices. A second

example mentioned by Weber, that of the industrial enterprise, will

allow us to test out his ideas and to specify ours. In the first place,

we are again led to ask whether bureaucracy is only an organ of

transmission and execution. Although an industrial enterprise is never

autonomous and its functioning must take into account the interests of a

financing capital on whom it depends, or the directives of a ministry if

it is a question of a nationalized economy, the fact remains that

management has a considerable power of decision. For the totality of

decisions is not the action of an individual. Whatever the personality

of the general manager, the power of decision is necessarily distributed

among the different services and is concretized at the heart of each

service only through a more or less collective participation in the

solution of problems. To ask whether the direction is or is not distinct

from the bureaucracy, is to pose a false problem. In every organization

in which hierarchy results in delineating a function of direction -this

transcends all those subordinatedd to it. Yet, the fact remains that, if

the power that it formally holds was actually composite, i.e., if the

decisions which fall to it by virtue of officially fixed allotment had

actually been partially elaborated at various lower levels, it is still

part of the framework which it dominates.

On the other hand, as with state bureaucracy, the most important thing

concerning the bureaucracy of an enterprise is its boundaries. Who are

the bureaucrats? Who can be assimilated into the bureaucracy? Finally,

who definitely falls outside this category? Clearly, for Weber, the

definition of the capitalist enterprise as a bureaucratic organization

does not specify which sector, within the enterprise, could be

designated as bureaucratic (although he goes so far as to claim that the

capitalist enterprise offers an unequalled model of bureaucratic

organization). To maintain, with Crozier, that workers are part of a

bureaucracy as soon as they are placed with engineers and directors

under a single hierarchical ladder, would have seemed extravagant to

Weber, not because some of his criteria would have been contradicted,

but because the position of a social group cannot be established only by

considering its juridical status. The fact that some workers find their

work assimilated to that of functionaries, says nothing about the

specific nature of their work, or of their relations with other social

strata within a given enterprise. The question of establishing the real

situation of workers is not automatically answered if the enterprise is

nationalized, the stability of work is guaranteed, or the workers are

integrated with the cadres in the same hierarchical system-although

these conditions could have important effects. In the industrial

enterprise, the mass of workers is confined to purely operational tasks.

The ordering of workshops, the number and distribution of positions, the

rhythm of production, the duration and the intensity of work-all is

prescribed by an administration functioning at a distance from the place

of production and constitutes an alien and closed world with respect to

it.

On the other hand, is it possible to consider all those who work in

offices as the bureaucracy? First of all, technical services should not

be confused with services of administration and exploitation. Although

both share certain common norms of organization, it remains that the

social relations are different by virtue of the different work

performed. In short, the relations of authority and the connections with

the enterprise are not similar. In technical services the engineers and

the technicians, the draftsmen, have a relative autonomy by virtue of

their professional knowledge. Control over labour can only be effective

if the boss has a technical competence at least equal to that of his

subordinates, i.e., his control must be considered a technically

superior function. Social control could be practically non-existent

where the work requirements were of fixed duration, sufficing to

establish a normal rhythm of output. Moreover, the technicians’ autonomy

is also measured by their ability to move from one enterprise to another

by virtue of their knowledge. Generally speaking, the position of

technicians depends more on the work performed than on his place in the

social organization of the enterprise.

The functioning of administrative services is something else. Here, at

the bottom of the ladder, we find unskilled employees whose professional

competence is rudimentary or non-existent. Between them and the general

management of the enterprise, the hierarchy of positions is a power

hierarchy. The relations of dependence become determining and having a

function defines one against a higher level, whether it is that of the

departmental supervisor, a boss, or a director. Here the double nature

of employment reappears. It answers to a professional activity and

expresses an established social order in which the enterprise finds its

concrete existence. In fact, from the top to the bottom of the ladder,

relations are such that they always serve to reiterate the authoritarian

structure of administration. This does not mean, however, that those

located at the bottom of the ladder participate in the bureaucracy in

the same way as those at the middle or upper levels. In certain

respects, the employees are like workers, deprived of any authority.

They are often paid less than certain hourly labourers. Thus, their work

cannot be described as an ‘office’ and we cannot assume that they could

identify with the goals of the enterprise. Nevertheless, they are not

alien to the bureaucracy: they are the dependents. They often enter into

the enterprise only when provided with references certifying their “good

character.” They cannot advance unless they prove their aptitude to obey

commands: they live in the hope of moving to a higher status. Thus, the

situation of the employee is ambiguous. He is not integrated into the

bureaucratic system. lie only endures it. Yet, everything tends to make

him adhere to it, and he does so effectively when he accepts his

superiors’ ideal: promotion. Moreover, he is even less able to detach

himself from the bureaucratic milieu since his work is determined by the

social organization of the enterprise, and in extracting the resources

that assure his subsistence, he perceives it as being as necessary as

the organization itself.

Bureaucracy thus overflows the active core of middle and upper level

functionaries tied to administrative and exploitative tasks: it is a

hierarchy which plunges its roots even into the productive sector, where

supervisors and foremen control the work of labourers. These

functionaries hold real authority. Not only do they hold positions with

official duties defined by a certain division of labour and submit to a

certain discipline, but their function makes them participate in the

power of management and leads them to identify with the enterprise as

such. To say that they identify with it does not mean that they

necessarily have a correct idea of the enterprise’s interests nor even

that they are led to place this above their own interests. In their

eyes, the horizons of the enterprise are absolutely confused with those

of their employment. They see the social order immanent in the

enterprise as both natural and sacred, their own function as something

other than a mere source of remuneration or of professional activity,

but as the backbone of a system which needs their co-operation to

subsist and expand.

To possess a status apparently differentiating his position from that of

mere labourers, to enjoy a prestige generating others’ respect, to

obtain a remuneration and material advantages assuring a privileged

condition of existence, to belong to a milieu from which authority

flows, where subordination is the other side of a command, with

opportunities for promotion-all these are the traits of the bureaucrat.

Finally, the bureaucracy of the enterprise exemplifies the mystification

implicit in a purely formal description. The latter assumes that

bureaucratic organization is identical with the rational organization of

the enterprise, insofar as it is technically required by production

itself. For, as soon as we seek to locate the strictly bureaucratic

sector and to emphasize a specific type of conduct, we discover a

dialectic of socialization different from the dialectic of the division

of labor. This does not mean that we can determine what an adequate

social organization of the enterprise would be like at a given stage of

the division of labor, since this depends on historical conditions

resulting from technical evolution and class struggle, but rather, that

bureaucratic organization has its own ends which cannot be deduced from

the necessities imposed by the organization of production. Once it is

recognized that, in addition to the manufacturing and the technical

sectors, every large enterprise must deal with tasks pertaining to the

administration of personnel, to the sale of products and to the purchase

of primary materials and machines, to the determination of production

costs, etc., it does not follow naturally that the specialized services

function as they do in the real framework of the modern capitalist

factory. The requirements of planning, coordination, and information do

not necessarily create a determined social order. This order is

instituted by virtue of a social activity. From this viewpoint, it is

essential to grasp how the bureaucracy creates its order. The more

activities are fragmented, services diversified, specialized and

partitioned, the more numerous the structural levels and the delegations

of authority at each level, the more co-ordination and control sectors

multiply because of this dispersion. Thus, the bureaucracy prospers. The

status of a bureaucrat is measured by the number of secretaries and

employees who depend on him, by the number of telephones and machines at

his service, more generally, by the authority allocated to his domain of

organization. As soon as conditions allow, he seeks to expand his sphere

of influence and to preserve it. This tendency engenders the formation

of cliques and hidden wars between departments which is stimulated by

their separation. Each department is quick to blame others for errors or

delays in carrying out a program. But at the same time, since this

tendency responds to a common aspiration, it works itself out. The more

the bureaucrats multiply, the more complicated the system of personal

dependence becomes, the more the bureaucracy as a whole becomes a rich

and differentiated milieu. As this process intensifies, bureaucrats

derive a growing sense of their own objectivity. The bureaucracy loves

bureaucrats as much as bureaucrats love the bureaucracy.

The consequences of this situation can appear paradoxical. Weber is

right in claiming that the capitalist enterprise offers bureaucracy a

privileged framework for development, that the latter finds a motive for

its organization in the process of economic rationalization: the need

for rigorous calculability and of a predictability favoring the

emergence of a special stratum of administrators and imposing on them a

certain kind of structure. Yet, this stratum elaborates its conduct,

actively intervenes in the structuring, and, located in historically

created conditions, develops while following its own interests. Thus one

can see what is behind the mask of law and impersonality, the

proliferation of unproductive functions, the play of personal relations,

and the folly of authority.

Our third example will provide a kind of counter proof, since it

presents a bureaucracy which is apparently extremely different from what

we have just seen: the mass party. It is not surprising that Weber also

refers to this example. Weber did not fail to observe that there is a

close connection between the party and state bureaucracy since he had

witnessed the emergence of a state bureaucracy in Russia under the

Communist Party. Yet, one wonders why this did not lead him to revise

his definition of bureaucratic organization. Actually it is not

sufficient to claim that the mass party is led by a body of

“professionals” in order to associate them with state functionaries or

with managers. Most of Weber’s criteria do not apply to them. In the

first place, if one considers the organization of the party, it becomes

obvious that the bureaucracy is not only an organ for executing and

transmitting orders: the management becomes part of the Politbureau or a

general secretary emerges from the bureaucracy. It matters little that

an individual or a handful of individuals holds all real power. They

have obtained it only by rising through the hierarchy of the party and

keep it only because they are supported by a stratum of bureaucrats who

direct party activities according to their directives, justify their

decisions and apply them, while ousting all opposition. If this stratum

falls apart, the power of the leaders dissipates. In the second place,

the functions of bureaucrats are well fixed by rules, but they do not

form a whole as in the structure of a state administration or an

enterprise. There are no strict rules regulating the passage from one

position to another; there is no hierarchy of salaries. The bureaucrats

do not enjoy a special, officially defined status distinguishing them

from the rank and file. Access to the highest positions does not depend

on technical knowledge linked to a profession, and if the principle of

nominating leaders by the main organs is recognized, it coexists with a

principle of election, since these organs themselves are assemblies

composed of delegates elected by the rank and file. Finally, it is not

even necessary to be remunerated by the party in order to have an

important central function in the hierarchy. This particular

characteristic of the party bureaucracy follows from the position that

it occupies in society as a whole. Its function is not defined by the

division of labor. Rather, it is an institution based on voluntary

participation which attempts to influence power-either to participate in

it, or to capture it by rallying a mass of individuals around a program

of demands. That a group of professionals is formed in the party in the

process of coordinating its activities changes nothing in the formal

definition and ascribes to this sector characteristics apparently very

different from those found in industrial enterprises.

If so, how can one speak of the mass party as a bureaucratic

institution? This question leads us closer to what we have sought to

formulate since the beginning of our analysis: what is the social nature

of the bureaucracy? If we characterize mass parties as bureaucratic

institutions, it is not because we can define the parties by criteria

equally applicable to industrial enterprises. Things are more

complicated. In the party, we distinguish a specific sector where

functions are hierarchical by virtue of participation in power; where

decisions are taken in the absence of any control from below, where

respon-sibilities are distributed in an authoritarian way, where

organizational discipline detracts from the free examination of

decisions, where a conti-nuity of roles, actions and persons is

institutionalized, thus making the ruling minority practically

permanent. In other words, in the party bureau-cracy appears as the

antithesis of democracy. But this does not make much sense until we

understand how the bureaucratic organization is constituted. Its genesis

is all the more comprehensible when it does not immediately depend on

economic conditions. As previously mentioned, the party is based on

voluntary participation motivated by an ideological agreement on a

program. This entails no particular form of Organization. The technical

organizational requirement comes about only when the party attracts

large masses. But the coordination of the activities of small, local

sections, of assuring the best propaganda, of properly managing the

assets gathered among the militants, does not necessitate any specific

social milieu. It is as a result of choice that this milieu turns out to

be bureaucratic. Choice here need not mean that individuals deliberately

decide to create a bureaucratic organization. It only means that a

certain behavior becomes predominant, with certain requirements coming

to take absolute precedence, others fading. Since the party adherence is

a function of voluntary participation based on the shared acceptance of

some ideas, it would seem to follow that the maintenance of this

participation and agreement is essential to the life of the

organization. Since the party claims to articulate a collective will,

and presents itself as a locus of cooperation, it would seem to lose its

raison d’être if it used coercion with its members. Furthermore,

formally it could not do so since the members are not dependent on the

party for their livelihood. Yet, the party must operate within society

as a whole as a coherent force, maintaining continuity of action,

permanently binding those who participate in it, and finding a structure

which guarantees its unity, independently of the uncertain participation

of its militants.

Now, if the existence of the mass party generates this alternative,

bureaucracy comes about by giving the latter considerations absolute

primacy over the former and it does so in a way that makes its existence

increasingly more necessary and its choices irreversible. From the very

beginning, bureaucrats come into being as those whose work safeguards

the party’s existence and unity, while their activity in the party makes

them indispensable. But this activity is peculiar. This becomes clear as

soon as one compares it with the activity of ordinary militants: it is

based on the very institution. It is what is usually called an

organization activity. But the term is imprecise because it hides

essential features: that it is always a question of directing the

militants’ work in a way that reinforces the party’s existence and

power. The organization’s fundamental aspect is the multiplication of

party organs: the more cells and sections there are, the more the life

of the institution is differentiated, the more is its power

materialized, the more the leaders appointed to be in charge of

coordinating each sector. Thus, the efficiency of bureaucratic work is

measured by the leaders’ ability to preserve and extend the field of

activity that they organize. This measurement, however, can be

formulated in objective communicable terms if one considers only the

formal aspect of the bureaucrat’s activity. This is what gives rise to

the fetishism of the agenda at party meetings, festivals or

commemorations. This is why what is called activism-a feverish and vain

agitation~has become routine. The number and diversity of the ceremonies

from which the institution derives its daily justification goes hand in

hand with the proliferation of bureaucrats. If they are entirely at the

party’s service, they become professionals, although they need not be

that in order to act as such. It is only necessary that their activity

be precisely specified, that their aim be mainly party preservation and

that it be carried out according to the leaders’ instructions, which

makes it seem as a form of employment. On the whole, bureaucracy is this

milieu for which the party structure is both necessary, sacred, and

irremovable. But this milieu generates its own structure: in identifying

with the goals justifying the party’s existence, it makes the party-to

paraphrase Marx-its private property: it sees itself as necessary,

sacred and irremovable. The defense of the party is the bureaucracy’s

self-defense. But this implies a particular interpretation of the

party’s goals which results in the distortion of its original vocation.

In fact, the party cannot intervene directly in the social struggle as

it should according to its principles, nor can it be the locus of

ideological discussion without running the risk of self-transformation

or even self-destruction. Thus, the bureaucratic group feels threatened

as soon as a principle of change is introduced in the party: it is

naturally conservative. This conservatism inspires all

inter-bureaucratic relations: the cult of authority, the will to control

all activities, the value of prestige around the functions of

responsibility, etc. All these are too well known traits to require

further elaboration, In the last analysis, the bureaucracy’s behavior

has its logic. The party, in fact, is not a purely artificial organism,

born out of ideological motivations. It exists as a mass organization

within society as a whole. Not only does it seek power, but presently it

penetrates, in various degrees, all sectors of society. This penetration

assures it the allegiance of an important part of its militants who are

employed in services where the party controls recruitment, either

directly, or through a friendly union. Although it can appear as an

incomplete bureaucracy if seen as an isolated institution, the party

reveals certain material determinations of bureaucratic stability, when

considered within society as a whole.

Of course, the examples which have been chosen and purposely borrowed

from Weber present common traits. Most of all, however, they allow us to

deal with the phenomenon in a certain way. In our eyes, the bureaucracy

is a group which makes a certain mode of organization prevail, develops

under certain conditions, expands along with certain states of the

economy and technology only by virtue of a social activity. To attempt

to grasp bureaucracy without focusing on a type of specific behavior is

condemned to failure from the very beginning. Bureaucracy exists only

through bureaucrats and their common aim to form a milieu apart from

those whom they dominate, to participate in socialized power, and to

interdefine each other in a hierarchy which guarantees them either

material status or prestige.

To stress the phenomena of social behavior is not to reduce bureaucracy

to a sum of similar actions. The activity of the isolated individual is

unintelligible: it becomes meaningful only when placed in the context of

a group. In fact, the bureaucracy comes about in an immediate

socialization of activities and behavior. Here the group is not a

category of activity or of socio-economic status; it is a concrete

milieu where each draws his own identity. It is here that we can locate

the link between bureaucracy and mass institutions. It is in ministries,

unions, parties and industrial enterprises that the bureaucracy finds

its adequate form because of the structural unity, the interconnection

of the tasks, the number of jobs, the proximity of men within each

sector, the perspective offered by a growing institutional development,

the volume of capital engaged, etc. All of this defines a field of

social power. It follows that the bureaucrats’ identification with their

enterprises is a natural mediation in consciousness whereby a group

acquires its own identity. But this identification must not conceal the

fact that in reality the bureaucracy does not have its destiny strictly

defined by the technical structure of the mass institution. It also

makes its own destiny. As the agent of a particular stratification, it

multiplies positions and services, partitions various activities,

generates artificial controls and coordinations, and reduces an ever

growing mass of workers into merely mechanical functions in order to

exercise its authority at every level.

Bureaucracy or Class

At this point, we can examine the thesis that the bureaucracy is a

class. Undoubtedly, there is a ruling class in the USSR. Those who

persist in denying it do so by reiterating quotations from Marx

according to which the abolition of private property entails the

disappearance of the ruling class, without seeing that at a deeper level

a class opposition has been reintroduced in the relations of production.

Here, the ownership of the means of production is no longer decisive.

What determines the proletariat as an exploited class is its exclusion

from the administration of production and its reduction to merely

mechanical functions. What determines the position of a ruling class

facing the proletariat is the fact that all decisions concerning

economic life (i.e., concerning the volume and distribution of

investments, wages, intensity and duration of labor, etc), are made by a

particular social stratum. What is relevant here is not to discuss the

class nature of the USSR, but to emphasize that bureaucracy cannot be

seen as a class without analyzing its dynamics within the context of

traditional capitalist society and the mass institutions where

bureaucracies develop. To merely define it there as a parasitical organ,

or as a simple economic category, is to overlook ho’,” through its

specific behavior, it creates a power base, and how it uses

circumstances to consolidate and grow. On the other hand, to recognize

its historicity and to establish the horizons of its activity is to

locate a world which it has made in its image and where it is the ruling

class. In the last analysis, the genesis of the bureaucracy in Russia is

intelligible only if it is related to the social type which, in

different forms, obtains in all modern countries.

But this observation concerning the conditions leading to the formation

of a ruling class after the Russian revolution applies only to a special

case where the bureaucracy has built its power through a specifically

social activity. If it is claimed that today this class is what it is

only because of its function in production, planning and the

nationalization which guarantees its material basis, then it becomes

difficult to claim that it results from a political bureaucracy whose

earlier versions were not concerned with the extraction of surplus value

within the context of modern industry, but with the concentration of

authority in the hands of a ruling minority, the exclusion of the masses

from decision-making and from the information pertinent to these

decisions, the hierarchization of functions and the differentiation of

wages. the rigorous division of competence’s; in short, the scientific

organization of inequality such that it becomes the principle of a new

form of class oppression. Certainly, the party bureaucracy has not

artificially created a whole new world. Yet, it would be inadequate to

simply say that it has been served by circumstance. The new type of

class domination was prepared by the destruction of the political and

economic powers of the old owners, the state’s taking over large sectors

of production,the existence of an already concentrated industry with a

modern administration, and the example of large industrial capitalist

countries with a growing fusion of capital and the state. But this

domination forced its way through only with a party which, by means of

ideology, terror, and privilege, melted elements torn from all the

classes of the old Russian society into the same mould.

It is inadequate, however, to point out the existence of a privileged

class in the USSR, or even to examine its own genesis, in order to

comprehend what bureaucracy actually is within the whole society that it

dominates. An analysis limited to exploitation within relations of

production altogether misses the nature of the bureaucratic class. Such

an analysis would locate the privileged strata. But the factory managers

and the planners are not the only members of the ruling class and all

those who are privileged are not necessarily part of these groups. As in

the industrial enterprise, a mere foreman, as opposed to an engineer,

can be considered a bureaucrat because he has authority and he

identifies with management against workers, Similarly, on a social

level, some union or political functionaries can be considered members

of the bureaucracy while some technicians, although earning higher

salaries, are not members of the ruling class and do not share their

values or lifestyle. The social nature of the bureaucracy cannot be

deduced from its economic function. In order to be understood, it must

be observed. In the absence of an observation, the question dealt with

here prevents a schematic conception of history. Undoubtedly, in the

USSR, as in Western countries, there is more than one class facing the

industrial and agricultural proletariat. The bureaucracy is not composed

either by the ensemble of the working class nor simply by some thousands

or tens of thousands of leaders supported by the political police: one

can only define it by pointing to the solidarity which unites its

members and crystalizes them in the exercise of domination.

It is possible, however, to indicate certain traits of this class both

by examining its constitution as well as by extrapolating from the

testimonies of observers, or of political leaders aware of the

difficulties that the regime must confront. Here two remarks are in

order. First of all, the bureaucracy involves a mode of social

participation different from that of the bourgeoisie. Bureaucrats do not

derive private power from a professional activity which allows them to

develop as a ruling class. They do not have a common interest which

could generate a power to manage society in their name. They are

immediately members of their class, and their personal attributes are a

function of this connection: they are what they are only by virtue of

their dependence from the state power which grounds and maintains the

social hierarchy, i.e., political power and economic power are merged

within the bureaucratic class. To participate in the appropriation of

surplus value for them is the same thing as participating in the system

of domination. What this means is that the bureaucracy is the privileged

terrain of totalitarianism, i.e., of a regime where all social

activities are measured by the same criterion of validity dictated by

state power. Here pluralism of systems of behavior and of values

immediately constitutes a menace not only to the ruling minority but to

the ruling class itself whose integration depends entirely on its

submission to the established power. Secondly, in spite of the

reinforced tendency to make a single authority prevail at all levels, as

already indicated, the bureaucracy cannot avoid conflicts which not only

contrapose groups against each other, but also contrapose bureaucracies

against each other. If the above is correct, bureaucracies exist

full-fledged within mass institutions: in parties, unions, in various

branches of production and various cultural sectors.In each of these

contexts they attempt to grow and monopolize an increasing part of

social capital in order to expand in as broad a field as possible. There

is no pre-established harmony within the bureaucracy, and the unity of

the class does not ‘naturally’ prevail: it involves a constant activity

of unification. The rivalry of bureaucratic apparatuses reinforced by

the struggle of inter-bureaucratic cliques is only managed by the

intervention of a political principle at all the levels of social life.

But the party which applies this principle is itself the broadest and

most complete bureaucracy. If class unity is inconceivable without it

since its mediation “politicizes” all of society so that the state tends

to merge with civil society, its presence and its natural tendency to

control and subordinate everything to its own power generates the

sharpest tension within the ruling class. Thus, the bureaucratic system

is unceasingly torn by internal conflicts, certainly different but not

any less dreadful than those typical of bourgeois regimes.

To maintain that the bureaucracy is the ruling class in the USSR does

not settle the question of its status in large industrialized Western

nations. From one viewpoint, the formation of a bureaucratic class seems

to be an extension of bureaucratic organizations: they blossom within

mass institutions because technological developments make human

activities increasingly more interdependent and impose a socialization

of administrative tasks parallel to that of production. From another

viewpoint, this class requires such a political integration and

subordination to state power that it cannot operate without instituting

a system of total domination. Yet, these two viewpoints are not

incompatible; they allow us to see bureaucracies as a type of social

behavior whose success or failure is not preordained but is a function

of a complex of historical conditions. Bureaucratic organizations have

an affinity for regimes where the definitive elimination of private

property assures the broadest possible development and their integration

within a new class structure.

Similarly, rooted in bourgeois society and fettered in their development

by their natural conservatism, as well as by the profits they derive

from the established mode of production, they prove incapable of doing

more than invading bourgeois society, i.e., incapable of transforming

the system of power. In other words, nothing warrants the claim that, in

the absence of a radical social upheaval which would sweep away old

regimes (as happened in Russia by workers’ and peasants’ revolution, and

in the peoples’ democracies by war), bureaucratic organizations would

naturally overcome their division and become integrated within a new

state apparatus as parts of a ruling class. Furthermore, bureaucracies

exhibit an indeterminacy which is the source of the difficulties

encountered by theory. The bureaucracy is not a class as long as it is

not the ruling class, and when it becomes so, it remains essentially

dependent on a political activity of unification.

To maintain that bureaucrats are already a class within all of society,

would mean that they are distinguishable because of their particular

interests, values, or lifestyle. Actually, they are different only in

terms of their aggregation and by how they gain their status as members

of a collectivity. Surely, this trait is important. The interrelations

of bureaucrats within each institution correspond to a specific social

model and outline a new global structure. But so long as this structure

is not realized, the bureaucracy does not constitute a separate world:

bourgeois society assimilates it. It is inadequate to point out that

high state functionaries are members of administrative councils, or that

important groups derive part of their income from the stocks that they

own, since this phenomenon of embourgeoisification is comparable to a

similar phenomenon of aristocratization of the bourgeoisie, who, during

certain epochs, rushed to buy land and nobility titles. What is

important is that the difference in the appropriation of wealth is not

linked to production relations, while in the context of society as a

whole the various bureaucracies split along traditional lines thus

remaining heterogeneous and unaware of their identity-at least in the

absence of a social crisis. Moreover, polycentrism, which is part of the

essence of bureaucracies meant to crystalize into particular

institutions prevents the development of class unity.

From another viewpoint, the bureaucracy retains a principle of

indeterminacy even when this unity is attained: it does not exist apart

from a social form of power. It is not an economic category but comes

about by participating in a system of domination. Thus, there is a great

temptation to deny that the bureaucracy is a class where it is seen to

rule or, in specific social contexts, where it multiplies within

bourgeois societies. If, on the contrary, it is claimed that it is a

ruling class in the USSR, there is a tendency to neglect or

underemphasize its basic constitution, the change in the function of the

political in bureaucratic society, the heterogeneity of organizations,

the intra-bureaucratic battles, and the differences of integration of

the various strata within the class. Most of all, this class could be

seen as a general model in the process of realization throughout, as if

bourgeois society must naturally turn into a bureaucratic society

because of capital concentration. Economic rationalization and

bureaucratization are then associated, and the latter is seen as the

adequate expression of the former, forgetting that rationalization

obtains within a regime based on exploitation and that bureaucratization

is part of a system of domination. By stressing the phenomenon of

bureaucratic parasitism, it is possible to ignore that the bureaucracy

simultaneously penetrates social life and poses itself as an end: it

responds to technical needs but also subordinates them to power

imperatives.

The study of bureaucracy, and the discussion that it calls forth, become

fruitful only if these simplifications are rejected. Then the true

questions can be asked, and advances toward their solution can be made

on the condition that the following principles are observed: (I)

Attention must be paid to the various bureaucracies instead of

immediately swallowing up this image in a concept which can then be

handled with such an ease that it deprives bureaucracy of all content;

(2) Bureaucracy must be seen as a social formation, as a system of

meaningful behavior, and not merely as a system of formal organization.

This implies a historical definition of the phenomenon as a human

enterprise with its own goals; (3) Special emphasis must be placed on

the relations of the bureaucracy with other social strata and

particularly among various bureaucratic groups within a given

institution; (4) From the social nature of the bureaucracy (its

sociality) no deduction should be made concerning a future based on a

whole series of historical conditions which are extensions of

established structures and events; (5) The question concerning the class

nature of bureaucracy must be posed. The answer must avoid a comparison

between the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. There must be a description

of the specific participation of bureaucracy in society as a whole,

along with the connection of its political, economic, and cultural

determinations instead of relying on an a priori definition (having

alleged universal significance whereas it is actually an abstraction

from the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie) of the essential and the

accidental features of a class; (6) In studying a particular

bureaucracy, the self-image of top bureaucrats must not be uncritically

accepted. The whole bureaucratic milieu must be considered in order to

define the bureaucratic mentality and behavior, by relying on the

workers who are most directly affected by the bureaucrats and who, as a

result, cannot be easily misled: those people whom the bureaucrats

dominate.[3]

Postscript (1970)

The above text deals with a theme which seems distant from present

concerns. For young readers, who are often the ones most engaged in

political struggle, this distance is even greater, since they cannot

remember the proper context. Those today who are between twenty and

thirty years old, have not experienced the overwhelming influence of the

Communist Party during Stalin’s life. The 1953 workers’ insurrection in

East Berlin, for some, the first to shake up the image of socialism as

it existed in the popular democracies, Krushchev’s de-Stalinization

begun at the Twentieth Congress, the Hungarian and Polish

uprisings-these are merely part of one’s personal pre-history, unable to

enter into lived experience, thus permitting one to assimilate them.

These young people do not remember how progressive intellectuals rallied

around the Stalinist banner, returning for the audacity of an

independent gesture a redoubled fidelity-a time when the Left was almost

entirely limited to Trotskyists, some branches growing into three or

four tiny “groupuscles,” or when the Communists labelled the Trotskyists

fascists, treating them accordingly when they had the chance, with the

result that the leftist press did not give them even the slightest

mention.

Does this mean that the 1950s can awaken only the interest of the

historian and that what we wrote twelve or twenty years ago has only

docu-mentary value? Does it mean that, in order to comprehend the

present and to attenspt to set the landmarks of change, it is necessary

to look at Czechoslovakia rather than to Hungary, to study Brezhnev’s

last speech rather than Krushchev’s Report, to challenge the Sartre who

supports La Cause du Peuple rather than the one who, in 1952, gave an

apology for Communist politics in France?

The questions posed at that time have not become obsolete and, in spite

of changes which occasionally modify the practice and mentality of

social actors, or the interpretation of ideologies, a considerable part

of the historical context remains, along with the same choices and

conflicts.

The distinction between what constitutes the present and the past, of

what belongs to new horizons and what is lost in the distance is subtler

than we are tempted to believe when considering only the generation gap

or in pointing to some major signs of change-which can effectively

designate the novelty of a conjuncture while hiding the continuity of

the traits of a socio-historical structure. The past is not really past

until it ceases to haunt us and until we have become free to rediscover

it out of curiosity. But so long as the images and the words continue to

fill our thoughts and excite our passions, at a distance from men and

events that we have not experienced, they fully participate in the

present, whether they serve to destroy, or whether we need them to

preserve the framework of our life.

Thus, perhaps Bolshevism, or its Trotskyist variant, and the history of

the Russian revolution no longer have any ‘real’ efficacy. Maybe they

only provide fighting symbols for leftist militants whose goals escape

them, or an identification to an imaginary community of revolutionaries,

in the absence of which their opposition to the regimes in power

disappears. Maybe the concept of revolution itself now passes through

unprecedented paths. Maybe the USSR Communist leaders themselves need

not only Stalin’s ghost, but the Bolshevik legend as well, in order to

successfully carry out the prosaic tasks, impossible to enumerate, of a

new ruling class. What is certain is that today, the glorification of

heroes and the repetition of old speeches, always accompany action and

mobilize faith.

After twenty years the sources of inspiration have not spoiled. At least

for a fraction of the new generations in Western societies, they are

much more alive than for their elders. And in Eastern countries, the

same references support both the opposition as well as the politics of

the masters of power. It follows that the temptation to dissipate

certain illusions by examining the great revolutionary politics of the

past, to reveal what has been hidden (most often to protect its

imitation) is even more necessary in the present than when they had such

a great importance for those of us in Socialisme ou Barbarie. I

discovered how Trotsky, who for so long we considered the guarantor of

the revolutionary attitude, combined the fetishism of the party, the

fetishism of the state’s ‘socialist bases,’ and the repression of worker

oppositions. Thus, we speak for a tiny number. The circle has expanded

and has also intensified the equivocal nature of militancy where the

will for emancipation joins the narrow subjection to tradition and the

taste for the sacred. Of course, the critique of Bolshevism and

Trotskyism has gained ground: the documents of the Workers’ Opposition

in Russia are better known, we can read Voline, Archinov and Pannekoek

while the Kronstadt revolt sometimes has the value of an archetype. But

it is too easy to believe that it is enough to substitute a ‘good’

tradition for a ‘bad’ one. Too often we are satisfied with changing the

symbols without renouncing the authority imputed to the pure image of a

founder. Even those who see how the party separates itself from the

exploited strata, thus creating the kernel of a new social formation,

end up by transferring to the class as such the sacredness hitherto

invested in an institution or in men. Thus, questions which emerged when

there were militants in the Communist Party, and which burst their

system of beliefs, are suddenly extinguished under this new certitude

that evil is intrinsic to organizations, while obstinately refusing to

look for the conditions of their genesis in the history of the

proletariat.

Thought could well free itself of certain images. What prevents it is

the relationship we entertain with the representation of the past. It is

the mythic function which we force it to play in order to assure

ourselves of a truth already given which will not betray us, in order to

finally exorcise the indetermination which is reborn ceaselessly in our

living history.

In vain one relies on the movement which separates us from our old

beliefs. Of course, we have managed to destroy some illusions. But the

soil on which these illusions grew nourishes other germs. When we taste

the bitter ecstasy of overturning our first theses, it is perhaps then

that we remain the most captive of their principles. In any case, so

many desires are invested on the political level that the progress of

knowledge displaces its own boundaries instead of suppressing them, and

each time new doors open before us, we must assume that elsewhere others

are closed.

We can easily see limits in others. We are struck by their inability

before a troublesome event to draw the inevitable conclusions that we

have long since reached. Thus, only recently there were the militant

Communist intellectuals, indignant at the Russian intervention in

Czechoslovakia. For once, they condemned USSR policies and even labdled

them imperialist. But it was to denounce a “tragic error” and to

proclaim that a socialist state cannot act like a great power, without

disavowing its principles. Their audacity was great. They rose against a

hitherto unchallengeable authority. They exposed themselves to exclusion

from their party. Yet, they never asked themselves whether it makes any

sense to speak of socialism in the case of a state that oppresses its

neighbors on economic, political, military, and cultural levels. They

defended the “democratic” demands of Czech Communists and they

criticized the governing group in the USSR, along with their servile

managers in the other countries. They did so, however, only in order to

oppose liberalism to authoritarianism, innovative methods to

conservatism, as if the conflicts were not rooted in social relations

and the political police terror was an accidental trait of the workers’

state-the effect of a bad interpretation of revolutionary strategy or,

even better, the sign of the ambitions of an intolerant clique. They

deplored an error, but were quick to limit it to the case of

Czechoslovakia. These ardent defenders of national communism, who still

applaud the entrance of Russian tanks into Budapest, shamelessly

maintain that the Hungarian insurrection was the work of reactionaries

and American agents. Besides, while condemning Moscow, has it not been

pointed out by others that opposition to the USSR carries the germs of

counter-revolution? flow could they explain that a regime of popular

democracy was able to last twenty years almost entirely withdrawn from

exchange with capitalist countries and fused into the socialist bloc

while preserving a bourgeoisie so strong as to endanger it at the

leaders’ first error? While supporting Dubcek, they were worrying about

the consequences of reforms. They based all their arguments on the

defense of soesalism, whileb they saw present everywhere under Brezhnev,

Novotny, Dubcek or Husak. The Counter-revolution was seen sprouting

everywhere so that they would not dare take a step in one direction

without immediately beating a retreat. But one should also consider the

position of certain non-party leftists: they also surrounded themselves

with strange hesitations. The Czechs’ taste for liberty raises their

suspicion. What in bourgeois society they consider the most precious

acquisition-however fragile, insufficient, and falsified in

practice-they are ready to brand as a sign of corruption in

Czechoslovakia. They themselves evoke anti-socialist forces, forgetting

that they do not believe in the reality of socialism of the peoples’

democracies. Thus, they remain caught in the representations which they

thought they had discarded. So powerful and so widespread is the idea

that the world has been divided into two camps since the Russian

revolution, that they take it up again, in spite of all they have

learned about exploitation and oppression in the USSR. They seemed to be

certain of the fact that the abolition of private property ends in the

fusion of Capital and State. But then they mechanically repeated that

all that American imperialism profits from is reactionary, and that

relations between East and West ultimately decide the revolutionary

significance of an event. Thus the whole casuistry elaborated by Sartre

and other progressive intellectuals at the time of the Hungarian

insurrection has not lost its effectiveness. Its terms are disjointed,

the interpreters are ideologically displaced, but the essence of the old

position is preserved, the captive imaginary has not really been

released.

Undoubtedly, it is difficult to discover in one’s own mind the forces

which draw it backwards. At least with time I have acquired a certain

power, and if I still conceal a part of what guides my judgments, I feel

less disarmed before old writings. It is useless to pretend a modesty

which has no place when an author must stand aside before the questions

of knowledge; the essays which I have written after I left the

Trotskyist party are, in my opinion, better equipped to explain the

phenomenon of bureaucracy than most of the analyses presently

circulating under the label of the Revolution. What is interesting about

them is that they were guided by the desire to apply to the labor

movement or to the forces which claim to be part of it, the principles

of analysis that Marxism had elaborated in the critique of bourgeois

society. To be sure, this was not the result of an intellectual

decision. It was the experience of militancy, lasting several years,

that taught me to scrutinize the strange logic whereby a group (weak,

numerically and, because of the inefficiency of its actions, relatively

free of political and economic constraints), reintroduced the rules,

practices, and inter-personal relations typical of the organizations

which they wished to fight, reweaving the same kind of social fabric,

cultivating the principles of frag-menting sectors of activity,

segregating information, making its existence an end in itself and

finally, presenting a cloudy account closed to reflection. Such an

experience indicates some of the reasons why Trotskyism, in spite of all

its critiques against Communist Parties, did not really succeed in

distinguishing itself from them. Although it formulated different

objectives in its program and it insisted on the decisive function of

mass mobilizations, the social relations that it instituted were ordered

according to a similar model. This was best shown in its inability to

confront the essential question of a sociological definition of

Stalinism, i.e., of inquiring into its social basis. At best,

Trotskyists reproduced Lenin’s account of the degeneration of social

democracy in terms of the emergence of a labor aristocracy. Ordinarily,

they stuck to the pure and simple denunciation of leading groups judged

opportunist or incompetent, and associated their prestige to the Russian

revolution, in the conviction that the isolation of the socialist state

left the revolutionary enterprise in shambles, thus favoring the

temporary advent of a bureaucratic caste. But their failure was

symbolic, for the same conceptions ultimately pervaded all the analyses

of the non- Stalinist Marxist Left. Of course, this Left distinguished

itself from the Trotskyists on many issues, beginning with their

insistence on remaining in the immediate vicinity of the Communist

Party. But this Left was Trotskyist in its ignorance, by virtue of its

double conviction that party policies were explainable in terms of

methodological errors or in terms of a deformed representation of the

revolutionary task, and that these policies were the result of

unexpected “accidents” after the October revolution, i.e., disturbances

in the ‘normal’ development of socialism.

It is not by chance that, in a polemic with Sartre, I developed an

argument which, although it was seen as “Trotskyist,” was largely

directed against Trotskyism. I discovered that progressives and

Trotskyists could not help but meet as soon as they eliminated some

social phenomena from Marx’s critique. Marx had stressed the divergence

between ideology and praxis. Moreover, he knew how to do a critique of

economic, political, religious, or philosophical ideologies as a

privileged means of unveiling contradictions operating at the level of

praxis. For the progressives and Trotskyists. this route was lost as

soon as what they were dealing with was no longer the bourgeois class or

the Western capitalist system. They limited their critique of Communist

Parties and of the social strata from which they drew their force to the

level of ideas. They attacked these ideas head-on as if they were

without depth, self-sufficient, and did not occlude social relations.

Yet, Marx distinguished historical from sociological analysis. His study

of capitalism, so rich in references to events, focused on the specific

logic of a system and on the articulation of oppositions which develop

once the division of capital and labor is carried out on a large scale.

Aware of the need to describe the capitalists’ actions, the correctives

they needed, the resistances that they awakened, and thus to outline

certain sequences of an empirical genesis, he nevertheless sought to

decipher in apparently contingent facts the signs of a necessity which

was not the conscious product of peoples’ activities, but was imposed by

their ignorance and often even at the cost of their immediate interests.

Our epigones, on the other hand, cling to the level of historical

development. When analyzing the USSR, they can only grasp the chain of

events invoking the consequences of the civil war, the revolutionary

defeats in Europe, or the capitalist blockade. It would have been

scandalous for them to admit that the course followed by the past

revolutionary regime was inevitable (a limited hypothesis having only

heuristic value) and that the social system that emerged had properties

which had to be studied in themselves. Furthermore, the powerlessness to

detach themselves from an explanation in terms of events coincided with

the powerlessness to discover, beneath the representations and

institutional forms, the social relations which support them. Convinced

that state ownership of the means of production and the institution of

the plan were the result of the revolution, they located in them the

bases of socialism without ever asking how these institutions modified

the relations established in the process of production, their real

function in the socio-economic system, and the oppositions in which they

were embedded.

No doubt, we would not have been able to base the critique of workers’

organizations (emerging from our experience in a small and militant

party) and their concomitant mode of representation (i.e., to measure

the reversal of the Marxist problematic) if we had not simultaneous]y

learned to recognize the USSR-thanks to Castoriadis’ enlightening

studies of the traits of a bureaucratic capitalism. The two analyses

bolstered each other. But with ideas, it is advisable to move beyond

historical descriptions. What is important is that knowledge of a

bureaucratic phenomenon involves reflection on the social conditions

which give rise to it. As long as these conditions remained hidden and

we naively accepted the norms of our milieu, we were unable to give free

reign to our questions. We continue to believe that an analysis of the

USSR will be fruitful only if it is connected to an analysis of the

organizations of the labor movement in Western countries and of their

mode of insertion in the capitalist system -just as an analysis of

revolutionary undertakings at the turn of the century (in particular,

Bolshevism), assumes that we examine the divorce of practice and

ideology in these organizations. However, as legitimate as it may seem,

the critical movement in our earlier essays today seems to suffer from

the obstinate prejudice of remaining in the strict framework of the

Marxist interpretation. Fidelity turns into equivocation when it looks

for pregiven answers to new questions.

Since we are only interested in fixing the stages and limits of our

analysis of bureaucracy, it should be noted that it was conducted in

such a way as to leave intact the image of the proletariat as a

revolutionary class-as the carrier of universal historical goals. When

we saw in the USSR the existence of a ruling class whose power was based

on collective ownership of the means of production, believing that the

whole economic system was ordered in such a way as to maintain the

division between a mass of mere “doers” and a minority monopolizing

managerial tasks, we assumed-without even making any explicit

hypothesis-that the new class antagonism reproduced the contradiction

denounced by Marx in his examination of bourgeois society. We

substituted the bureaucracy for the bourgeoisie, although it had come

about through a different process. At any rate, the proletariat’s

position remained unchanged. The only difference was that now it was in

a position to discover the true nature of its goals, until then

concealed under the necessity of the struggle against private property.

Only now could it recognize the basis of socialism in the workers’

administration of enterprises and collectivities. We imagined that in

contemporary bourgeois societies the process of bureaucratization, which

was becoming increasingly evident in spite of the maintenance of old

forms of ownership, created for the working class an analogous

consciousness of its goals-a consciousness that would not fail to

operate during periods of crisis when labor Organizations would be

forced to openly uphold the capitalist system. In other words, we

assumed that the world proletariat had reached a stage in which the task

that Marx assigned it could be carried out. When we attacked the

development of bureaucracy in the West as well as in the East, we

considered the trans-formations in the industrial mode of production-the

concentration of enterprises, the rationalization of tasks due to

technological change, and the class struggle, the growing intricacy of

productive and organizational functions — as affecting only the

structure of the ruling class. Finally, our analysis of the genesis of

bureaucracy in the organization of the working class and the

institutionalization of its forms of resistance, did not challenge but,

on the contrary, made even more evident, the proletariat’s vocation to

install a society freed from all domination. We believed that one needed

a trial of alienation, even in the process of emancipation, for the

critique of all alienations to be carried out.

In retrospect it seems that we lacked audacity. We were afraid to admit

that the transformation of the mode of social domination could involve a

profound modification of the antagonistic terms described by Marx and,

consequently, would call for a revision of his model. Even when

considering the economic sphere we would have had to inquire into the

changes affecting the nature of social labor.

Similarly, the process of bureaucratization results in a tendency

towards homogenization of models of action, social relations, and norms.

Formerly this tendency was limited to workers’ labor within large

industry. At present this tendency has expanded to strata of

technicians, planning agents, and beyond. Not only has it extended to

state administrations on which the productive apparatus depends,

production of services and to large scientific laboratories, but also

into domains which would seem naturally not amenable to such

assimilation-public health, education, juridical institutions, etc. At

the same time, the relation of workers to the enterprise has been

modified. This relation can no longer be encapsulated in the clauses of

the contract analyzed by Marx, but has expanded to encompass a network

of obligations covering the workers’ social life, e.g., through

institutions of social security, housing, education, and leisure.

Moreover, the evolution of technology and the rationalization of tasks

has the consequence of changing the proportion of skilled and unskilled

labor in industry, the productive tasks in the old sense of the term,

and organizational tasks. In examining these phenomena, it is futile to

maintain that the proletarianization of society spreads, according to

the schema outlined by Marx, for the mass of men separated from the

means of production do not resemble the image that he had of them.

Ultimately, those factors resulting in heterogeneity are no less

powerful than the forces of resistance. In short, it is no longer

possible to mix together in the same, simple social stratum the most

dispossessed, the most exploited and the most frustrated in their

creativity. The last are precisely those in whom the capacitiy of

knowledge and of intervention in the milieu of labor is most stimulated

by their training and the quality of their tasks. But they do not suffer

the most from exploitation, which remains the lot of the factory

workers, nor do they fail to benefit, sometimes substantially, from the

growth of revenues. As for the most dispossessed, those who presently

perform unskilled labor, they are not the most exploited in the sense

that it is not from their production that capital extracts the maximum

surplus value that it needs to reproduce itself. It does not follow from

this that the working class has been erased: the specificity of blue

collar labor remains, along with the division of manual and mental

labor, in spite of modifications-especially in the latter. Nevertheless,

one should not reestablish the classic antagonism between technicians

and professionals, on one side, and administrators and technocrats on

the other. This opposition surely exists, but it does not imply, as Marx

believed, a class which is excluded from the process of socialization

instituted by capitalism: a class condemned to discover itself as alien

to bourgeois society, a class which is not a class, witnessing in its

very existence-when it escapes the status of an economic category from

which it receives its definition from outside-its vocation for

communism.

With the expansion of bureaucracy, several contradictions converge:

between leaders and led, between the strata which receive only scraps

from economic growth and the strata which ceaselessly increase the size

of their advantages, and between a minority in control of the means of

knowledge and information, the production and diffusion of

representations, and the masses who, in spite of their formation and

their increasing importance, are deprived. In addition to these

contradictions in the labor process, there is another one, which

contraposes collectivities in all sectors of social life and culture

against rules which determine behavior in every minor detail and plugs

it into the planned circuits of giant organizations. But this opposition

spreads in several directions. It mobilizes various modes of Opposition.

One of these takes place within the system and is the result of

bureaucratic impotence to satisfy recognized needs that are even

intensified by the multi-plication of organizational apparatuses.

Another mode of opposition translates the desire for collective control

of resources while a third places the fringes of the

Population-essentially youth-in a position of deviance, makes them into

outcasts, tends to destroy symbolic references without which the

relation to reality dissolves.

In considering the ambiguous characteristics of this revolt that strikes

at the very heart of the system of domination by revealing the

mechanisms which guarantee the combined functioning of exploitation,

oppression, and ideology while at the same time shaking up all symbolic

references to socialization, we can measure the distance which separates

us from the world analyzed by Marx. In this world, the proletariat was

the outsider and at the same time the carrier of productive

forces-itself being the greatest productive force. Thus, it was

designated as the revolutionary class.

Presently, the producer is not the outsider. It obtains, rather, in the

rejection of the models and norms of industrial society. Strategies

ordered according to realizable objectives cannot be based on conflicts

between owners, means of production, and workers. Thus, it becomes

impossible to make everything converge toward a single revolutionary

focus to preserve the image of a society centered around the praxis of a

class, to maintain, in paraphrasing Marx, that bureaucracy necessarily

tends toward its own destruction by raising against itself as in a

single man the mass of the dispossessed. The locations of conflicts are

many and the revolutionary demand par excellence of collective

self-management is gaining ground.

Undoubtedly, all of this applies primarily to Western capitalist

societies, but it would be a mistake to imagine that the problems are

posed in radically different terms in the popular democracies and in the

USSR. Certain indications suggest that these problems are only masked by

repression which comes down on any and every opposition. The force of

this repression, the visible figure of power, has the effect of

crystalizing revolutionary energies as soon as authority vacillates. The

insurrections of East Berlin, Poland, Liungary. and Czechoslovakia

provide ample evidence. Thus, one can expect in the USSR-in some

unforesecable future-a crisis of the regime, whose consequences will

have an unheard of impact in Eastern Europe as well as in the Western

world. But this eventuality should not lead us to forget the complexity,

and indeed the heterogeneity, of conflicts at work in modern industrial

society-conflicts for which only the lazy imagination of the little

heirs of Leninism can delight in foreseeing the solution in a “good”

dictatorship of the proletariat.

A study of the peculiar traits of bureaucratic regimes where nothing

remains of bourgeois institutions must inquire farther than I have done

in order to discover where the critique of totalitarianism leads. It

will not do to refer to the logic of bureaucratic organizations, the new

mechanisms whereby the state tends to penetrate all the details of the

productive process, in all the representations and relations between

people in civil society and culture. Nor is it sufficient to recognize

in the party the opposite of what it pretends to be-the pivot of a

totalitarian integration. Nor can one point to a fundamental

contradiction between control and parasitism. In light of this analysis,

it is advisable to carry the critique into the home ground of Marxist

theory.

An examination of the Russian regime challenges nothing less than the

definition of social reality and, with it, the distinction between base

and superstructure. Even if one notes that social relations are

generated at the level of production, and that property relations are

only their juridical expression-as Castoriadis has shown-one still

remains too close to the Marxist problematic. What escapes us is what

distinguishes bourgoeis society from bureaucratic society. To be sure,

it is possible to point to a pertinent structural trait but it should

not be forgotten that it alone cannot characterize it. The very

definition of relations of production, reduced to the Opposition of

means of production and labor power, remains abstract as long as it does

not clarify what it deals with, as long as this relation remains purely

within economic space. Rather, it must be acknowledged that it allows

this space to come about, that it is at the source of a system of

operations (specified in terms of production, exchange and

distribution), which are in turn dependent on a specific institutional

structure, where modes of power and representation are articulated

according to various political and symbolic schemas. In a sense, Marx

allows one to think with the concept of mode of production, of a

structuring of the social field which locates various features of the

economy, of the policy and of the system of representation, as well as

their articulations. This structuring, however, assumes and does not

generate the referents of the economy, politics, or the symbolic.

Indeed, we need only consider the advent of capitalism to note the

impact of extra-economic factors. Even when it is characterized by a

particular order of economic Operations and regulated by specific

mechanisms, the logic of a social system can only be grasped by

connecting the network of relations under the triple heading of

production, power, and representation. Seen in this fashion, it is

certainly possible to distinguish between what comes from the base and

what comes from the superstructure. However, this cannot be expressed in

terms of the distinction between the economic and the political. It

obtains on two levels: it acts on the level of representation where the

function of imagination cannot be confused with that of symbols which

establish the possibility of social communication and make up the shell

of the economic-political field. Otherwise, how is it possible to

indicate the originality of the modern bureaucratic system? Plow is it

possible to escape the alternative of a bad sociology which sees in it

either a variation of industrial Society, or a variation of an

a-temporal formation such as Asiatic despotism? To move forward in the

analysis, we must ask how, with the destruction of the bourgeois regime,

are the articulations of a social field reproduced on all levels, how

power relations, and the operations of production and representations

combine according to a new model of socialization. If, unable to do so,

we preserve, e.g., the classic Marxist conception of the state, or if we

dismiss a priori the political or symbolic function, the traits of

totalitarianism will always appear accidental.

Such an analysis would have at least one practical consequence. So long

as we remain prisoner of the Marxist schema, all signs of oppression-no

matter how quick we are to denounce them-turn out to have no Importance.

Similarly, as we have noted, democratic demands do not constitute an

object for sociological interpretation, if they are seen as expressions

of the influence exercised by bourgeois regimes, or a reflection of

a-temporal humanist values. A new examination of the social system would

have to persuade us that with democracy we are in the midst of a

fundamental process of socialization-if we can read beyond the forms to

which it is attached in bourgeois regimes.

Lastly, it was by reexamining my views concerning the degeneration of

the “workers” parties and unions that I became aware of a critique too

faithful to the spirit of Marx. Without doubt it is important to observe

the structural homology between “revolutionary” organizations and of the

organization of the industrial system that they hope to destroy. Lenin’s

views in What Is to Be Done? bears witness, in an exemplary and explicit

manner, to the transfer of norms from the industrial enterprise (the

militarization of labor) to the model of the party. Yet, the problem is

not exhausted by invoking the alienation which leads the exploited to

reproduce in their own organization the constraints that they suffer in

bourgeois society-or which leads them to divest themselves of their

ability to direct their emancipation after having been dispossessed of

the ability to direct their production. Nor is the problem exhausted by

emphasizing the role of an intelligentsia quick to transform into power

the superiority that knowledge gives them. These answers are not false,

but they leave in darkness the mechanisms which determine the

repetition. The adherence to models of authority and hierarchy, the

belief in the knowledge of the leader, the tenacious fidelity to a

tradition, the attachment to symbols, the fetishism of the institution,

do not point only to the inability of the working class to discover its

own identity. These phenomena take on the investment of energy-both

individual and collective-in the service of a socialization about which

Marxists wish to know nothing, although they are actually very good at

mobilizing it. Like bourgeois regimes, the bureaucratic regime would

crumble if it did not nourish identifications which conceal servitude

and antagonisms, and which keep the large majority under the authority

of the leaders. By wanting to ignore the import of the ‘imaginary,’ one

only exposes oneself (under the good colors of revolutionary

optimism-itself mystifying and mystified) to the maintenance of an

exercise in repetition. These remarks on bureaucracy are far from

attaining their goal. My hope is that the reader, like myself, finds

here the inspiration to continue.

[1] Karl Marx, The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Cambridge

University Press, 1970), p. 47.

[2] Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (International

Publishers, ~969), p. 121. Emphasis added.

[3] The analysis of burcaucracy by the Socialisme ou Barbarie group

differs from that of Trotsky and Burhoam as follows (this section

originally appeared in Arguments, no.4l]une-September, 1957]): “The

ideas of Trotsky and Burnham differ qualitatively from those of the

Socialisme ou Barbarie group. Trotsky always saw the bureaucracy as a

parasitic transitory formation typical of a particular historical

juncture-as a fungus grown on the socialist organism that a new

revolutionary wave would readily sweep away. He always rejected the idea

that it represented a social class and a new social type. The existence

of the bureaucracy did not alter the nature of productive relations: the

Russian proletariat simply had to chase it away as one does with a bad

manager, since there already were socialist relations. Socialisme ou

Barbarie denounced Trotsky’s formalism by showing the absurdity of a

socialist society where the producers are expropriated from all

managerial tasks. It substituted the idea of a bureaucratic society for

that of a bureaucracy in society, i.e., a society which produced and

reproduced itself by separating the producing masses from a social

stratum which collectively expropriated surplus value. Such a

bureaucratic society was made possible by the rigorous integration of

all bureaucratic strata by the state apparatus. Furthermore, Socialisme

ou Barbarie also pointed to the function of the official

ideology-borrowed from Marxism-Leninism-in the interests of the

bureaucracy. Finally, Socialiame ou Barbarie claimed that Trotsky’s

inability to analyze the bureaucratic phenomenon was linked to his

general notion of revolutionary struggle (the absolute pre-eminence of

the party) and of socialist society (state centralization) which

inadvertently facilitated the advent of a new society of exploitation.

Buraham’s merit, on the other hand, is to have pointed out the

separation in moslem capitalism between production and ownership, and

the formation of a new type of society. But this is where the analogy

with Socialisme on Barbarie ends since the latter rejects Burnham on the

following points: (1) Burnham considers the factory managers as the

members of the new class and the real masters of society. He fails to

see the changes in the phenomenon of management which now comes to

engulf society as a whole. He merely substitutes the managers for the

private capitalists without realizing that the process which places

power within the context of the enterprise and in the hands of managers

tends to dispossess every sector of its autonomy and subordinate

everything to the state apparatus.

Furthermore, he fails to see that the bureaucratic mode of social

domination generates new relations between its members whose power no

longer flows from their private economic activity. They are able to pose

themselves as a separate class by rigorously subordinating themselves to

a control organ which guarantees a permanent integration through the

police and ideology. Hence, Burnham’s acrobatics in trying to explain

two otherwise inexplicable phenomena: in the USSR the bureaucracy is

staffed by a stratum of political functionaries and the factory mangers,

whatever their lisiluence, do not hold power. (2) Burnham believes that

the rise of industrial managers is a result of their scientific

knowledge, against which the mass of producers are seen as ignorant.

Accordingly, the managers are indispensable and without them the factory

could not function. Against this view, Socialise ou Barbarie claims that

(a) the continuous socialization of work has exploded the managers’ old

tasks since now the working of the enterprise is guaranteed at all

levels by collective organs, and that the existence of a separate

managerial apparatus answers the social need of exploitation rather than

technological requirements,- (Is) constant conflicts tear factory

organization apart, with the social hierarchy destroying cooperation and

generating an irreducible irrationality; (c) managers confront these

basically insurmountable conflicts daily in the attempt to facilitate

cooperation and initiative among producers while keeping them in

coercion, isolation and inertia. In other words, Socialisme ou Barbarie

explains the existence of bureaucracy in terms of the class struggle and

not as a function of technological progress. (3) Against Burnham,

Socialisme ou Barbarie sees the contradictions of earlier capitalism to

have been transposed and even intensified within the bureaucratic

society. Actually, the advent of the bureaucracy is the result of a

fundamental historical tendency described by Marx as “the socialization

of society.” The bureaucracy seeks to coordinate all of the activities

that it deals with, have all individuals participate in the social

totality by formally denying all class distinctions, while radically

contradicting this tendency by its very existence, its system of

oppression, its hierarchy, and its fragmentation. It itself pays for

this contradiction with an unrelenting internal struggle. This double

movement is the reason why bureaucracy exists only in the horizon of

communism, and generates the need for its own destruction. In other

words, for Socialisme ou Barbarie bureaucracy is a total social

phenomenon which is intelligible only in the perspective of modern

history and class struggle. The theory of bureaucracy is the theory of

revolution.”