On Bureaucracy

(1) The fact that in the historical development of political and economic forms there has come to be formed a type of “career” functionary, technically trained for bureaucratic work (civil and military), has a primary significance in political science and in the history of State forms. Was it a matter of necessity or of a degeneration from self-government, as the “pure” liberals pretend? It is certain that every form of society and State has had its own problem of functionaries, its own way of presenting and solving it, its own system of selection, its own type of functionary to be educated. It is of capital importance to reconstruct the development of all these elements. The problem of the functionaries partly coincides with the problem of the intellectuals. But, if it is true that every new form of society and State has had need of a new type of functionary, it is also true that new ruling social groups have never been able to put aside, at least for a certain time, the traditional and established interests, that is, the formation of functionaries already existing and preconstituted at the time of their advent (especially in the ecclesiastical and military sphere). Unity of manual and intellectual work and a closer link between the legislative and the executive power (by which the elected functionaries concern themselves with the execution of State affairs as well as with control), can be inspiring motives for a new line in the solution of the problem of the intellectuals as well as for that of the functionaries.

(2) Connected with the question of the bureaucracy and its "best" organisation is the discussion of so-called "organic centralism" and "democratic centralism" (which, on the other hand, has nothing to do with abstract democracy, since the French Revolution and the Third Republic have developed forms of organic centralism of which the absolute monarchy and Napoleon I knew nothing.) The real economic and political relationships which find their organisational form, their articulation and function in the different manifestations of organic and democratic centralism in all fields, will have to be researched into and examined: in State life (centralism, federation, union of federated States, federation of States or federal State, etc.); in inter-State life (alliances, various forms of international political "constellations"); in the life of political and cultural associations (Free Masonry, Rotary Club, Catholic Church); economic unions (cartels, trusts); in the same country, in different countries, etc.

Poleemics arose in the past (before 1914) about the German predominance in the life of high culture and of some international political forces: was then this predominance real, or in what did it really consist? It can be said: (a) that no organic disciplinary link established this supremacy, which was therefore merely a phenomenon of abstract cultural influence and very shaky prestige; (b) that this cultural influence did not in any way concern effective activity, which vice versa was disconnected, local, without a unifying direction. One cannot speak therefore of any centralism, neither organic nor democratic nor of any kind or mixture. The influence was felt and sustained by small intellectual groups, without ties with the popular masses; and precisely this absence of ties characterised the situation. Nevertheless, such a state of affairs is worth examining because it is useful in explaining the process which led to the formulation of the theories of organic centralism, which were a one-sided criticism by intellectuals of disorder and dispersal of forces.

At the same time it is necessary to distinguish, in the theories of organic centralism, between those which conceal a precise programme of the real predominance of one party over everything (whether it is a party composed of a group, like that of the intellectuals or made up of a “privileged” territorial group) and those which are a purely one-sided standpoint of sectarians and fanatics, and which, though they may conceal a programme of predominance (usually of a single individual, like that of Papal infallibility by which Catholicism was transformed into a kind of cult of the Pope), do not immediately appear to conceal such a programme as a conscious political fact. The more correct name would be that of bureaucratic centralism. “Organicness” (organicità) can only come from democratic centralism which is “centralism” in movement, so to speak, that is, a continuous adjustment of the organisation to the real movement, a tempering of the thrusts from below with the command from above, a continuous intrusion of elements which emerge from the depths of the masses into the solid frame of the apparatus of rule, which assures continuity and the regular accumulations of experiences; it is “organic” because it takes account of the movement, which is the organic means for the revealing of historical reality and does not become mechanically stiffened in the bureaucracy, and, at the same time, it takes account of what is relatively stable and permanent or what at least moves in an easily foreseeable direction, etc. This element of stability in the State is embodied in the organic development of the central nucleus of the ruling group, just as happens on a more restricted scale in the life of parties. The prevalence of bureaucratic centralism in the State indicates that the ruling group is saturated, becoming a narrow clique which strives to perpetuate its selfish privileges by regulating or even suffocating the birth of opposing forces, even if these forces are homogeneous to the fundamental ruling interests (for example, in the protectionist systems in their struggle to the bitter end with economic liberalism). In parties which represent socially subordinate groups the element of stability is necessary in order to ensure hegemony not for privileged groups but for the progressive elements, organically progressive in comparison with other related and allied, but composite and wavering, forces.

In any case, it needs to be pointed out that unhealthy manifestations of bureaucratic centralism occurred because of a lack of initiative and responsibility below, that is, because of the primitive politics of the peripheral forces, even when these were homogeneous with the hegemonic territorial group (the phenomenon of Piedmontesism in the first decades of Italian unity). The formation of such situations can be extremely damaging and dangerous in international organisations (the League of Nations).

Democratic centralism provides an elastic formula, which lends itself to many embodiments; it lives to the extent to which it is continuously interpreted and adapted to necessity: it consists in the critical research into what is uniform in the apparent irregularity and on the other hand of what is distinctive and even contrasting in the apparent uniformity, in order to organise and connect closely together what is alike, but in such a way that the organising and connecting appears as an "inductive" and experimental necessity and not as the result of a rationalistic, deductive and abstractive process, that is, one which is peculiar to pure intellectuals (or pure asses). This continuous effort to separate the "international" and "unitary" element from the national and local reality is in fact concrete political action, the only activity which produces historical progress. It requires an organic unity between theory and practice, between intellectual groups and popular masses, between rulers and governed. From this point of view the formulae of unity and federation lose a great part of their significance, while they preserve their poison in the bureaucratic conception, as a result of which we end up with no unity, but a stagnant marsh, superficially calm and "dumb", and with no federation, but a "sack of potatoes", i.e. a mechanical juxtaposition of individual "unities" without any link between them.