Groucho Marxism

Almost everyone agrees that (a) bureaucracy is a bad thing, and (b) there is too much of it. But what exactly do we mean by ‘bureaucracy’? A good working definition is a system comprised of people who are more interested in maintaining their position than they are in the effectiveness of their work. How do such systems arise? One theory is that bureaucracies occur and expand organically to fill a void between the state and ordinary people. On the other hand, bureaucracies can be installed deliberately in order to create and maintain such a void. For example, in East Africa around the turn of the last century, the British ruling class installed a bureaucratic administrative class, made up primarily of people from the Indian subcontinent, in order to create a ‘buffer class’ between them and the African natives.

Bureaucracies aren’t all bad, at least according to some. The 19^th Century sociologist Max Weber argued that bureaucracies serve an essential purpose in removing favouritism and bias from the workplace. Weber identified six ‘principles of bureaucracy’: rationality, hierarchy, expertise, rules-based decision making, formalization, and specialization. It could be argued that these principles form the basis of the better elements of capitalist workplace culture today. Weber asserts that in order to function effectively, capitalist organisations must follow these principles, which leads to ‘management by rules’ as opposed to management at the whims of bosses or owners. Without this there would be no basis at all for objecting to management action, and trade unions could not function effectively.

Weber’s argument is fine as far as it goes, but it has its limits. He saw bureaucracy as the highest form of rational organisation and the most efficient way for capitalist enterprises to function, which meant his model was tied to the existence of capitalism. Effectively, Weber saw bureaucracy as a way of disciplining both workers and capitalists within a capitalist system. For Weber, bureaucracy was about stability and predictability, not liberation. So whilst workers can use bureaucratic rules to challenge arbitrary decisions, these rules entrench class hierarchies through a professionalized, hierarchical layer of administrators. This is precisely the problem Lenin took up in his 1917 work The State and Revolution, to which we now turn.

In The State and Revolution, Lenin argued that the old bureaucratic state machine could not simply be taken over and used for the benefit of the working class; it had to be replaced. He argued further that given the correct working conditions – namely, workers’ control of workplaces and soviets (workers’ councils) and the raising of workers’ material conditions – the old bureaucracy would wither away. Drawing on Marx’s lessons from the Paris Commune of 1871, Lenin concluded that bureaucracy had had its time. Whereas under capitalism, bureaucracy can play a progressive role by disciplining bosses and creating a predictable framework for workers’ struggle (as pointed out by Weber), under socialism bureaucracy becomes a barrier to this struggle.

In a socialist society, said Lenin, the working class cannot allow separate caste of administrative officials to stand over them. Instead, Lenin advocated for the abolition of a standing bureaucracy through principles such as officials being elected and recallable at any time, wages for officials being fixed at the level of workers’ wages, and the replacement of professional administrators with a workers rotation. In Lenin’s vision, bureaucracy is stripped down to its technical functions, whilst real political power rests in the hands of the working class. Unfortunately, in spite of the goals set out by Lenin, bureaucracy in the Soviet Union increased substantially under Stalin. Although it is tempting to place the blame for this entirely on Stalin and his inner circle, the real explanation is more nuanced.

As the Soviet Union became more and more isolated, scarcity of resources started to become an issue, and Stalin was compelled to appoint a layer of bureaucrats to allocate these scarce resources to the population. This inevitably created a void between the state and the people. It seems that scarcity is a precondition for bureaucracy to thrive. However, scarcity is no longer a problem in many parts of the world, particularly in the West; in fact many in the West often talk of living in a ‘post-scarcity society’. Why, then, does bureaucracy seem to be becoming more prevalent over time? We can only conclude that this is by design, and that the ruling class is deliberately creating and expanding a ‘buffer class’ between itself and ordinary people – much as the British ruling class did in colonial East Africa.

This deliberate creation and expansion of a buffer class of bureaucrats provides an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable fact that, despite technology automating away a lot of work that used to be done by humans, we all seem to working as hard as ever. Technological automation has resulted in an entire army of workers becoming available to turn into administrators. This explains the push for higher university participation rates; a university education is essentially training for becoming a bureaucrat. The advantage to the capitalist class of dividing workers into two sub-classes – the traditional proletariat and a ‘professional managerial class’ – is obvious: these classes can then be pitted against each other, as we saw for example with the Brexit referendum. It is a classic divide and conquer strategy.

So how do we get rid of bureaucracy? Lenin’s three key ideas on avoiding bureaucracy mentioned above remain perfectly relevant today. But they stand little chance of being implemented under our current capitalist system, where there will always be an incentive for the ruling class to maintain a bureaucratic sub-class of workers. In truth, the only way we will ever get rid of bureaucracy is by getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with socialism. This is obviously a big task, and a necessary step is to unite members of the traditional proletariat and the professional managerial class by convincing them that they are on the same side. Only a united working class has any chance of overthrowing capitalism.