KARL MARX: BUREAUCRACY AND BEYOND SOCI 302 Spring 2012 Instructor: Deniz Yükseker Koç University

MARX ON BUREAUCRACY AND STATE POWER Bureaucracy: “state as formalism” in both essence and purpose Bureaucracy creates the “illusion of the state”. Bureaucracy’s formal purposes are also its content. “The purposes of the state are changed into purposes of bureaus and vice versa. Bureaucracy is a circle no one can leave. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of information.” Therefore, the “real” purposes come into conflict with the bureaucracy.

Marx on Bureaucracy (cont’d) “Bureaucracy is the imaginary state beside the real state.” “Bureaucracy possesses the state’s essence, the spiritual essence of society, as its private property. The universal spirit of bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery sustained within bureaucracy itself by hierarchy and maintained on the outside as a closed corporation. “Authority is the principle of its knowledge, and the deification of authority is its sentiment. Within bureaucracy, there is a materialism of passive obedience, faith in authority, fixed formal activity, fixed principles, views and traditions.

Marx on Bureaucracy (cont’d) For the individual bureaucrat, the state’s purpose is his private purpose of “making a career for himself.” In a bureaucracy, actual knowledge has no content, and actual life is seemingly dead. Rather, bureaucracy’s “imaginary knowledge and imaginary life pass for real.” Marx likens bureaucrats to Jesuits. Why does he do so?

Marx on the Paris Commune Paris Commune: 18 March 1871-28 May 1871 The French army was defeated by the Prussian army and the Prussians surrounded Paris. The workers and artisans of Paris protested at this. A municipal council composed of workers and soldiers – called the “Paris Commune” was elected on March 26. They ruled Paris until their bloody defeat by the army sent by the government in late May.

Marx on the Paris Commune The significance of the Commune for Karl Marx (in his Civil War in France) and Friedrich Engels (in his introduction to the Civil War in France): This was the first historical instance of self-government by workers. As such, it went against the tenets of a bourgeois state.

Marx on the French state What were the characteristics of the state in France in mid-19th century? It had a standing army, a centralized bureaucracy, a police force, and it had institutional links with the Catholic Church. For Marx, state power became the power of capital over labor. In 1848, the state crushed the revolutionary movement of the Proletariat. The “parliamentary republic” formed by Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) as President represented the alliance of various factions of the bourgeoisie against the Proletariat. Bonaparte declared the Second Empire in 1851. The empire claimed to represent the interests of the peasantry, the proletariat and the propertied classes (bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy), and sought to unify everybody under patriotism. Bonaparte declared war on Prussia in 1870 and was badly defeated and deposed as emperor, leading to the second republic.

Characteristics of the Paris Commune It disbanded the standing army and sought to create a “National Guard” (composed of all citizens who could bear arms) It separated state and church, and removed all privileges of the clergy. It removed religious teaching from schools and opened schools to everyone. It wanted to create workers’ cooperatives in factories closed down by their owners. Eventually, the cooperatives would organize into a Union.

Characteristics of the Paris Commune (cont’d) The Commune was formed of municipal councillors, elected by universal suffrage for short terms, and accountable to the people Judges were also supposed to be elected, and accountable to the people It foresaw that the rest of France would also be composed of self-governments, that is, communes. All the communes would manage their internal affairs, and would send elected delegates to a “National Delegation” in Paris.

Characteristics of the Paris Commune (cont’d) According to Marx, the Paris Commune wanted to eradicate class-rule. “It was essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class.” For Marx, this would be an experiment in communism.