The+Bureaucratic+Machine

(Source: Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings. Edited by Charles Lemert. 4th ed. Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2010) ** Summary by Namalie ** The bureaucratic machine is a modern, capitalistic invention, and tends to become permanent – it is very hard to destroy a bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has an office hierarchy, with a leader at the top, and the management of the office entails training, the following of rules and the full participation of the official. However, there is a separation between the public (bureaucratic) and private life of an official.
 * Max Weber: The Bureaucratic Machine **

The functions of modern officialdom that constitute bureaucratic authority are: · Fixed and official jurisdictional areas · Official duties · Stable authority to discharge these duties · Duties are continually fulfilled by those that are qualified to do so

** Bureaucracy and Democracy ** Bureaucracy usually accompanies mass democracy and comes “into power on the basis of a leveling of economic and social differences” (110). Therefore bureaucracy does away with privilege in terms of getting a position of official authority.

However, democratization does not necessarily mean that the people (the governed) have a greater share of the authority. In fact, the only things the governed can really do to influence the authorities are through the way leaders are selected and through public opinion.

Since democratization is all about the public opinion of the governed and bureaucratization is all abut the authority/rule of the office and its selected officials, there is a tension between democratization and bureaucratization. Another way of putting it is that democracy wants to minimize the authority of the officialdom and to give a greater space for public opinion, which is basically the opposite of the nature of bureaucracy. Then we have this “passive democratization” idea, which Weber describes as the “leveling of the governed,” meaning that we have substituted the old type of feudal nobility with the new office nobility (111).

Bureaucracy is an instrument of power and it is “the means of carrying community action over into rationally ordered societal action” (113). All the power rests in this rational societal action and it trumps even mass or communal action. The single bureaucrat cannot do anything about it as he is (and Weber’s language is very interesting here) a “single cog” harnessed to the bureaucratic machine who can only follow his “fixed route to march” (113). It is almost like a hive, where the bureaucrat’s existence is one with the bureaucracy – he is fully integrated into the machine and has a “common interest that the mechanism continues its functions and the societally exercised authority carries on” (113).

In addition to the bureaucratic machine being a hard thing to destroy, it is also something that we cannot do without – without the machine; we would have chaos, according to Weber. The machine is not connected to any specific individual – it can work with for anyone who controls it. This is probably why Weber says that bureaucracy makes revolutions more and more unlikely to happen as things will trundle along no matter who is in charge.

** Discussion Questions ** · What do you think of the bureaucratic machine? What are the pros and cons? On one hand it is this great efficient, leveler of social and economic differences. On the other hand, it is still a source of localized power at the expense of the public opinion. · Do you agree with Weber that the “individual bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the apparatus in which he is harnessed”? (113).   · Do you agree with Weber that bureaucracies are very difficult to remove or to change, and are in fact, inevitable? Do you also believe that without bureaucracies, we would have chaos?