Critiques of Bureaucracy

Extract from David Graeber's Utopia of Rules

This is just a few paragraphs from the introduction in the first few pages of David Graeber's book. I'll be posting some of the bits I find interesting as I go along.

I've already read two of his books 'Debt' and 'Bullsh*t Jobs', and I always find them surprising, informative and entertaining. I love the way he writes and some of the things he has to say have blown my mind wide open.

I highly recommend you get your hands on one of his books. At the very least he provides a refreshing alternative perspective.


"The social movements of the sixties were, on the whole, Left-wing in inspiration, but they were also rebellions against bureaucracy, or, to put it more accurately, rebellions against the bureaucratic mindset, against the soul-destroying conformity of the postwar welfare states. In the face of the grey functionaries of both state-capitalist and state-socialist regimes, sixties rebels stood for individual expression and spontaneous conviviality, and against (“rules and regulations, who needs them?”) every form of social control.

With the collapse of the old welfare states, all this has come to seem decidedly quaint. As the language of antibureaucratic individualism has been adopted, with increasing ferocity, by the Right, which insists on “market solutions” to every social problem, the mainstream Left has increasingly reduced itself to fighting a kind of pathetic rearguard action, trying to salvage remnants of the old welfare state: it has acquiesced with—often even spearheaded—attempts to make government efforts more “efficient” through the partial privatisation of services and the incorporation of ever-more “market principles,” “market incentives,” and market-based “accountability processes” into the structure of the bureaucracy itself.

The result is political catastrophe. There’s really no other way to put it. What is presented as the “moderate” Left solution to any social problems—and radical Left solutions are, almost everywhere now, ruled out tout court—has invariably come to be some nightmare fusion of the worst elements of bureaucracy and the worst elements of capitalism. It’s as if someone had consciously tried to create the least appealing possible political position. It is a testimony to the genuine lingering power of leftist ideals that anyone would even consider voting for a party that promoted this sort of thing—because surely, if they do, it’s not because they actually think these are good policies, but because these are the only policies anyone who identifies themselves as left-of-centre is allowed to set forth.

Is there any wonder, then, that every time there is a social crisis, it is the Right, rather than the Left, which becomes the venue for the expression of popular anger?

The Right, at least, has a critique of bureaucracy. It’s not a very good one. But at least it exists. The Left has none. As a result, when those who identify with the Left do have anything negative to say about bureaucracy, they are usually forced to adopt a watered-down version of the right-wing critique."
~David Graeber, 'Utopia of Rules'


David Graeber is an American anthropologist, activist and author. He is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber