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Metaphysical Pathos and the Theory of Bureaucracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Alvin W. Gouldner
Alvin W. Gouldner
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Extract

The conduct of a polemic focusses attention on the differences between two points of view to the neglect of their continuity and convergences. No modern polemic better exemplifies this than the controversy between the proponents of capitalism and of socialism. Each tends to define itself as the antithesis of the other; even the uncommitted bystander, rare though he be, is likely to think of the two as if they were utterly alien systems.

There have always been some, however, who have taken exception to this sharp contrast between socialism and capitalism and who have insisted that there are significant similarities between the two. One of these, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, maintained that socialism like capitalism involved an overbearing preoccupation with economic interests. In both socialist and capitalist societies, Durkheim argued, economic concerns were at the center of attention. In Durkheim's view, neither capitalism nor socialism deemed it necessary to bridle materialistic ends; neither society subordinated pecuniary interests to some higher, governing, moral norms. Therefore, “from Durkheim's point of view,” writes Talcott Parsons, “socialism and laissez-faire individualism are of the same piece.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1955 , pp. 496 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1955

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References

1 Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), p. 341Google Scholar. For Durkheim's, own statement, see his Le Socialisme (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar, especially Ch. 2. The present writer is preparing an English translation of this volume.

2 Bertrand, and Russell, Dora, Prospects of Industrial Civilisation (New York, 1923), p. 14Google Scholar. Compare this with the discussion of Stalinist Communism by a postwar Russian refugee, Achminow, G. P., Die Macht im Hintergrund: Totengraber des Kommunismus (Ulm, 1950)Google Scholar, which is discussed in Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright, Character and Social Structure (New York, 1953), p. 477Google Scholar.

3 Parsons, p. 509. See also the provocative fuller development of this argument as it applies to industrial organization: Homans, George C., “Industrial Harmony as a Goal,” in Industrial Conflict, eds. Kornhauser, , Dubin, , and Ross, (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

4 Lange, Oskar and Taylor, Fred M., On the Economic Theory of Socialism, ed. Lippincott, (Minneapolis, 1948), p. 109Google Scholar.

5 Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p. 11Google Scholar.

6 Vieg, John A., “Bureaucracy—Fact and Fiction,” in Elements of Public Administration, ed. Marx, Fritz Morstein (New York, 1946), p. 52Google Scholar.

7 Monograph #11, Temporary National Economic Committee, Bureaucracy and Trusteeship in Large Corporations (Washington, D. C., 1940), p. 36Google Scholar.

8 Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, translated and edited by Henderson, A. M. and Parsons, Talcott (New York, 1947), p. 334Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., p. 338.

10 See Bendix, Reinhard, “Bureaucracy: The Problem and Its Setting,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 12, pp. 502–7 (Oct., 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the other hand, there are theoretically significant cases of small organizations which are highly bureaucratized, for example, the Boulton and Watt factory in 1775–1805. This “case illustrates the fact that the bureaucratization of industry is not synonymous with the recent growth in the size of business enterprises.” Bendix, Reinhard, “Bureaucratization in Industry,” in Industrial Conflict, p. 166Google Scholar.

11 Vieg, pp. 5–6.

12 Parsons, Talcott, The Social System (Glencoe, Illinois, 1951), pp. 507–8. Italics addedGoogle Scholar.

13 Drucker, Peter, Concept of the Corporation (New York, 1946), pp. 183–84Google Scholar.

14 Dreyfuss, Carl, Occupation and Ideology of the Salaried Employee, trans. Abramovitch, Eva (New York, 1938), p. 17Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 75.

16 Ibid., p. 77.

17 Warner, W. Lloyd and Low, J. O., The Social System of the Modern Factory (New Haven, 1947), pp. 78, 80, 174Google Scholar.

18 Michels, Robert, Political Parties (Glencoe, Ill., 1949), p. 400. Michel's work was first published in 1915Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 401.

20 Ibid., p. 402.

21 Ibid., p. 405.

22 Ibid., p. 408.

23 Selznick, Philip, TVA and the Grass Roots (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949), p. 9Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 220.

25 Loc. cit.

26 Loc. cit.

27 Ibid., p. 259.

28 Ibid., p. 252.

29 Ibid., p. 265.

30 Ibid., p. 252.

31 See Schweitzer, Arthur, “Ideological Groups,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 9, pp. 415–27 (Aug., 1944)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly his discussion of factors inhibiting oligarchy. For example, “A leadership concentrating all power in its hands creates indifference among the functionaries and sympathizers as well as decline in membership of the organization. This process of shrinkage, endangering the position of the leaders, is the best protection against the supposedly inevitable iron law of oligarchy” (p. 419). Much of the research deriving from the Lewinian tradition would seem to lend credence to this inference.

32 We have sought to develop the positive implications of this approach to bureaucratic organization in Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (Glencoe, Ill., 1954)Google Scholar.