Weber & Bureaucracy (was: MO's Vision...

[David Morris]

>From: Terrance  At the most abstract level of analysis, modernization leads
>to what Max Weber called "the disenchantment of the  world."
>It eliminates all the superhuman and supernatural forces

Not to mention HUMAN ones...

>For Max Weber, the most careful student
>  of the process, it referred above all to the establishment
>of a rational system of laws and administration in modern
>society. It was in the system of bureaucracy, seen as the
>impersonal and impartial rule of rationally constituted
>laws and formal procedures, that Weber saw the highest
>development of the rational principle. Bureaucracy meant
>  a principled hostility to all traditional and "irrational"
>considerations of person or place, kinship or culture. It
>expressed the triumph of the scientific method and
>scientific expertise in social life. The trained official,
>said  Weber, is "the pillar both of the modern state and of
>the economic life of the West."

We all know what hogwash this is.

>  Weber was aware that bureaucracy has two faces. It can also
>be despotic and irrational in actual operation.

You can sat THAT again!  Everyone thesed days knows that in order to get 
around bureaucracy one needs to know somebody at City Hall, or be able to 
call up Robert Deniro.

>  Weber stressed another significant point. Rationalization
>does not connote that the populations of modern  societies
>are, as individuals, any more reasonable or knowledgeable
>than those of nonindustrial societies. What it  means is
>that there is, in principle, scientifically validated
>knowledge available to modern populations, by which
>  they may, if they choose, enlighten themselves about their
>world and govern their behaviour. In practice, as Weber
>knew, such knowledge tends to be restricted to
>scientifically trained elites.

This seems to be what divides his model from that of T.Jefferson, who did 
not champion Bureaucracy, but democracy (tempered though into "republic") 
and the education of the masses.

David Morris
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