Bureaucracy (book)

Bureaucracy (book)

Infobox Book |
name = Bureaucracy


image_

author = Ludwig Von Mises
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
subject = Politics Economics
genre = Non-fiction
publisher =
pub_date = 1945
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 148
isbn = NA

"Bureaucracy" is a political book written by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises. The author's stated motivation in writing the book is his concern with the spread of socialist ideals and the increasing bureaucratization of economic life. While he does not deny the necessity of certain bureaucratic structures for the smooth operation of any civilized state, he disagrees with the extent to which it has come to dominate the public life of European countries and the United States. The author's purpose is to demonstrate that the negative aspects of bureaucracy are not a result of bad policies or corruption as the public tends to think but are necessarily built into bureaucratic structures due to the very tasks these structures have to deal with. The main body of the book is therefore devoted to a comparison between private enterprise on the one hand and bureaucratic agencies/public enterprise on the other.

Private enterprise vs bureacratic agencies

Private enterprises are managed on the sole basis of the profit criterion. A company's sole purpose is to increase revenue while minimizing cost, as reflected in the profit and loss accounts and other accounting tools. Companies or company branches that operate on a loss must either reform or shut down. Due to these simple facts it is relatively easy to devolve responsibilities from company headquarters to the various branches, no matter how large the company might be. Headquarters gives the branch manager a free hand to operate his concern as he sees fit so long as he returns a profit. In this way initiative and innovation are not only permitted but even encouraged and rewarded.

It is quite a different matter when it comes to public services and other bureaucratic structures. A structure like the FBI or an embassy in a foreign country has no criterion of efficiency that is anywhere nearly as easily evaluated as the profit criterion. 'Success' here is a more vague concept, and one that is more open to subjective interpreation. Precisely because the product of public services has no price on the market, the traditional tools of management that have proven successful in private enterprise (scientific management, time studies etc.) cannot be applied in the public sphere. To 'increase output' and 'minimize production time' are concepts that cannot be applied to something like a hospital or a police department. But an even more important consequence of the absence of the profit criterion is the necessity of centralizing administration and restricting the freedom of the branch or department manager: since his performance cannot be easily assessed in monetary terms, the safest way to prevent excesses and the abuse of power is to ensure everyone adheres to the government's directives. Thus the most important quality of the successful bureaucrat is obeying orders.

Private enterprise vs. publicly owned enterprises

In contrast to private enterprises, government-owned corporation or municipality owned enterprises are not always or even usually managed on the basis of the profit motive. A deficit in this latter case does not spell the end of the enterprise or even the beginning of reforms, because it is generally assumed that the reason the enterprise exists is to 'render useful services to the public' (i.e. employ a large part of the local population as its workforce or charge an artificially low price for its products or services), not become a slave of the profit motive. For this reason enterprises that are in the red are allowed to operate for years or decades, with the result being that the its losses are eventually passed on to every citizen.But as von Mises asserts, to disregard the profit motive is not, as is widely believed, to serve the public better. On the contrary, to operate under the restraints of the profit criterion is the best way to serve the public interest:

'With private profit-seeking enterprise this problem is solved by the attitudes of the public. The proof of the usefulness of the services rendered is that a sufficient number of citizens is ready to pay the price asked for them. Under [a given] price the production of [a commodity] tends to expand until saturation is reached, that is, until a further expansion would withdraw factors of production from branches of industry for whose products the demand of the consumers is more intense. In taking the profit-motive as a guide, free enterprise adjusts its activities to the desires of the public. The profit motive pushes every entreprenuer to accomplish those services that the consumers deem the most urgent. But if a public enterprise is to be operated withour regard to profits, the behaviour of the public no longer provides a criterion of its usefulness [...]
A private enterprise is doomed if its operation brings losses only and no way can be found to remedy this situation. Its unprofitability is the proof of the fact that the customers disallow it. There is, with private enterprise, no means of defying this verdict of the public and of keeping on. The manager of a plant involving a loss may explain and excuse the failure. But such apologies are of no avail; they cannot prevent the final abandonment of the unsuccessful project. It is different with a public enterprise. Here the appearance of the deficit is not consedered a proof of failure. The manager is not responsible for it. It is the aim of his boss, the government, to sell at such a low price that a loss becomes unavoidable'. (pp.76-7)

Contents

*Preface to the 1962 Edition::1. The opprobrious connotation of the term bureaucracy ::2. The American citizen's indictment of bureaucratism ::3. The "Progressive" view of bureaucratism ::4. Bureaucratism and totalitarianism ::5. The alternative: profit management or bureaucratic management
*Preface to the 1944 Edition
*Introduction
*I. Profit Management::1. The operation of the market mechanism ::2. Economic calculation ::3. Management under the profit system ::4. Personnel management under an unhampered labor market
*II. Bureaucratic Management::1. Bureaucracy under a despotic government ::2. Bureaucracy within a democracy ::3. The essential features of bureaucratic management ::4. The crux of bureaucratic management ::5. Bureaucratic personnel management
*III. Bureaucratic Management of Publicly Owned Enterprises::1. The impracticability of government all-round control ::2. Public enterprise within the market economy
*IV. Bureaucratic Management of Private Enterprises::1. How government interference and the impairment of the profit motive drive business toward bureaucratization ::2. Interference with the height of profit ::3. Interference with the choice of personnel ::4. Unlimited dependence on the discretion of government bureaus
*V. The Social and Political Implications of Bureaucratization::1. The philosophy of bureaucratism ::2. Bureaucratic complacency ::3. The bureaucrat as a voter ::4. The bureaucratization of the mind ::5. Who should be the master?
*VI. The Psychological Consequences of Bureaucratization::1. The German youth movement ::2. The fate of a rising generation within a bureaucratic environment ::3. Authoritarian guardianship and progress ::4. The selection of the dictator ::5. The vanishing of the critical sense
*VII. Is There Any Remedy Available?::1. Past failures::2. Economics versus planning and totalitarianism::3. The plain citizen versus the professional propagandist of bureaucratization

Publication History

*Yale University Press, 1945.
*1962.
*Liberty Fund, 2007, ISBN 0-86597-663-5 (cloth), ISBN 0-86597-664-3 (paper)

ee also

*Laissez-faire
*Austrian school
*Anti-Communism

External links

* [http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp Full text]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Bureaucracy — is the structure and set of regulations in place to control activity, usually in large organizations and government. As opposed to adhocracy, it is represented by standardized procedure (rule following) that dictates the execution of most or all… …   Wikipedia

  • bureaucracy — /byoo rok reuh see/, n., pl. bureaucracies. 1. government by many bureaus, administrators, and petty officials. 2. the body of officials and administrators, esp. of a government or government department. 3. excessive multiplication of, and… …   Universalium

  • Byzantine aristocracy and bureaucracy — The Byzantine Empire had a complex system of aristocracy and bureaucracy, which was inherited from the Roman Empire. At the apex of the pyramid stood the Emperor, sole ruler and divinely ordained, but beneath him a multitude of officials and… …   Wikipedia

  • Citizen's Briefing Book — Citizen s Briefing Book …   Wikipedia

  • Moral Politics (book) — Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think is a 1996 book by cognitive linguist George Lakoff. It argues that conservatives and liberals hold two different conceptual models of morality. Conservatives have a Strict Father morality in… …   Wikipedia

  • Three Mile Island (book) — Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective is a scholarly history of the Three Mile Island accident, written by J. Samuel Walker and published in 2004. Walker is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission s historian and his book is the …   Wikipedia

  • The Third Wave (book) — infobox Book | name = The Third Wave title orig = translator = image caption = author = Alvin Toffler illustrator = cover artist = country = United States language = English series = genre = Social Science, History, Futurology publisher = Bantam… …   Wikipedia

  • Socialism (book) — Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis   Author(s) Ludwig von Mises …   Wikipedia

  • National Book Trust — National Book Trust, (NBT) is an Indian publishing house, founded in 1957 as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education within the Government of India. Jawaharlal Nehru envisioned that the NBT would be a bureaucracy free structure that… …   Wikipedia

  • china — /chuy neuh/, n. 1. a translucent ceramic material, biscuit fired at a high temperature, its glaze fired at a low temperature. 2. any porcelain ware. 3. plates, cups, saucers, etc., collectively. 4. figurines made of porcelain or ceramic material …   Universalium

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”