"the way I thought of the Marxist theory of bureaucracy is that bureaucracy arises due a pause in a struggle."
I'm not saying you are wrong about that, Jim, only that I think there is much more to it. This is made clear by the whole Marxian literature from the Critique of Hegel's philosophy of right to the present day. Ernest Mandel mooted some interesting ideas in his 1965 theory of bureaucracy, as Charlie Post I think noted, but unfortunately Mandel's theory degenerated. I think there are valid insights in many different theories of bureaucracy, but there does not exist to my knowledge any consistent or integral theory of bureaucracy - all the social scientific perspectives I know of, have flaws or lacunae. This attitude of mine is different to that of Prof. Marcel van der Linden, who believes the problems of the theory of bureaucracy are already solved. There is a substantive difference between a state which is financed mostly by taxes, and a state which is mostly self-financed because it owns/controls income-generating activities, yes. But I think there exists considerable comparative historical research which suggests that, although the financing or property structure is important for the explanation of bureaucratization, it isn't necessarily the main factor. Jurriaan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
