RE: Bureaucracy (cont.)

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Charles B. writes:
> CB: Did you hear the one about long lines at Lenin's tomb
> when the SU was breaking up ? People wanted to see Lenin
> turning over in his grave.

there are lots of good jokes about Lenin. A lot of leftists in the old USSR
used Lenin and his tradition against the establishment.

> By the way, if there is some implication that I can't laugh
> at the Soviet Union or its weaknesses, that's another
> anti-Soviet stereotype or anti-Communist. Somehow
> "non-dogmatic" leftists _think_ they have a better sense of
> humor than "dogmatic" leftists.  NOT !

No, it just seemed to me that you were being defensive at one point. I
criticized the USSR and you gave us a list of all sorts of problems that the
US had (and I was familiar with).

> CB: I got what the point of the joke was. But it assumes that
> somehow this type of response - talking about a problem in
> the US system in non-response to a problem in the Soviet
> system - was some widespread thing that occurred on the part
> of defenders of the Soviet system, ( and of course that it
> was not typical of defenders of the US system !) But you
> haven't presented any evidence that this occurred often or
> more in relations to defenders of the Soviet system. So , it
> assumes something it hasn't demonstrated, and in the process
> perpetuates another anti-Soviet stereotype - that defenders
> of the Soviet system avoided giving answers and therefore
> DIDN'T HAVE GOOD ANSWERS TO SUCH QUESTIONS AS THE ONE POSED
> IN THE JOKE.   NOT !

No, I was simply responding to your list of all sorts of real-world problems
with the US and capitalism, which seemed unresponsive.

Both of the two super-powers had their problems. Since they represent
different modes of production, their problems were different. But they share
the problem of involving a class-type dictatorship of a small minority over
the vast majority.

> CB: There first dictionary defintion you gave, which did not
> mention private corporate bureaucracy ( you had to add it) is
> an accurate representation of the conventional usage of
> "bureaucracy". Even the COMPTON passage is much heavier on
> the government than the private socalled bureaucracy. It only
> mentions the inclusion of private corps once, and then goes
> on to only discuss goverments as examples.

The point of the COMPTON'S quote was to distinguish between bureaucracy and
hierarchy in general. It did that well.

What all this says to me is that (1) we have to oppose bureaucracy unless it
is a tool of democracy; and (2) oppose the common view that bureaucracy is
only associated with government, whether it's capitalist or USSR-type
government.

The identification of government with bureaucracy seems to reflect the
liberal world view, in which all centralization is bad, confusing
centralization with top-down rule, implicitly assuming that a centralized
organization such as the government cannot be subordinated to the democratic
will.

JD