The Left doesn't have any credible understanding of bureaucracy, and therefore they latch opportunistically and eclectically on to any old concept, such as Weber's, which seems to make some descriptive sense of it.
Bureaucracy is not simply "administration". It is "administration as a reified social power". In order to understand bureaucracy, you have to understand how and why administration becomes a reified social power. But because the Left is largely trained in Althusserian Stalinism, they can't do it, they lack the conceptual frame of reference. Among others on this topic, I have a text on my bookshelf "In praise of bureaucracy" by Paul du Gay (Sage, 2000) - although it makes many interesting points, it is a pretty queer book. The reason why people accept bureaucracy is, because an administrative order is efficient, and because organizationally they cannot very well do without an administrative order. The bureaucracy gets things done, and they would not get done otherwise. The Trotskyites discourse richly about "the parasitic bureaucracy" but as soon as they've grabbed a bit of power, they become parasitic bureaucrats themselves, just like their Stalinist alter-ego. I can affirm this from personal experience. As regards bureaucracy, I base my own idea a lot on the practical experience which I had doing administrative support work for bureaucrats, a sort of "petty bureaucrat" government function. Of course, a true bureaucrat doesn't do administration himself, or at least minimizes the amount of time he spends on this. He is busy with "more important things", such as meeting with important people, having lunch or dinner, writing creative papers and reports, telephone discussions and emails of his opinions, making important decisions, policy analysis, etc. Within the bureaucracy itself, administrative tasks are lower-order tasks which support core functions, and bureaucratic promotion means being promoted out of administrative chores and into budgetary responsibility. Jurriaan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
