{"id":26423,"date":"2014-06-21T00:01:17","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T05:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26423"},"modified":"2014-06-20T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T17:27:00","slug":"qotd-the-bureaucratic-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/06\/21\/qotd-the-bureaucratic-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The bureaucratic revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1939, Bruno Rizzi, a largely forgotten Communist intellectual, wrote a hugely controversial book, The Bureaucratization of the World<\/em>. Rizzi argued that the Soviet Union wasn\u2019t Communist. Rather, it represented a new kind of system, what Rizzi called \u201cbureaucratic collectivism.\u201d What the Soviets had done was get rid of the capitalist and aristocratic ruling classes and replace them with a new, equally self-interested ruling class: bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

The book wasn\u2019t widely read, but it did reach Bolshevik theoretician Leon Trotsky, who attacked it passionately. Trotsky\u2019s response, in turn, inspired James Burnham, who used many of Rizzi\u2019s ideas in his own 1941 book The Managerial Revolution<\/em>, in which Burnham argued that something similar was happening in the West. A new class of bureaucrats, educators, technicians, regulators, social workers, and corporate directors who worked in tandem with government were reengineering society for their own benefit. The Managerial Revolution<\/em> was a major influence on George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t believe we are becoming anything like 1930s Russia, never mind a real-life 1984<\/em>. But this idea that bureaucrats \u2014 very broadly defined \u2014 can become their own class bent on protecting their interests at the expense of the public seems not only plausible but obviously true.<\/p>\n

The evidence is everywhere. Every day it seems there\u2019s another story about teachers\u2019 unions using their stranglehold on public schools to reward themselves at the expense of children. School-choice programs and even public charter schools are under vicious attack, not because they are bad at educating children but because they\u2019re good at it. Specifically, they are good at it because they don\u2019t have to abide by rules aimed at protecting government workers at the expense of students.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Working for the federal government simply isn\u2019t like working for the private sector. Government employees are essentially unfireable. In the private sector, people lose their jobs for incompetence, redundancy, or obsolescence all the time. In government, these concepts are virtually meaningless. From a 2011 USA Today<\/em> article<\/a>: \u201cDeath \u2014 rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs \u2014 is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonah Goldberg, “Of the Bureaucrats, by the Bureaucrats, for the Bureaucrats: The naked self-interest of the government-worker class”, National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2014-06-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1939, Bruno Rizzi, a largely forgotten Communist intellectual, wrote a hugely controversial book, The Bureaucratization of the World. Rizzi argued that the Soviet Union wasn\u2019t Communist. Rather, it represented a new kind of system, what Rizzi called \u201cbureaucratic collectivism.\u201d What the Soviets had done was get rid of the capitalist and aristocratic ruling classes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,79,84,7,41],"tags":[780,261,433],"class_list":["post-26423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-education","category-government","category-history","category-quotations","tag-communism","tag-management","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Sb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26424,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26423\/revisions\/26424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}