|
From Paris to Prague, and from New York to Tel Aviv,
nearly everyone talks about the bureaucracy, despises bureaucrats and
suffers enormous amounts of anxiety over any relationship they have
with the many governmental agencies that impose on their lives. All
of this for good reason: although it has never been formally stated
by those clerks and functionaries who represent the various offices
of our governments, bureaucracy exists primarily to ensure that the
populace will never rise up against the state. Toward that goal, government
employees have become experts in keeping the people so confused and
frightened that there is simply no time left over for revolution.
The bureaucracy of most countries is such that it ensures that theirs
will be a society of love, song and good will but one of property rights,
mortgages, annuities, permits and contracts, all of which fill, enhance
and justify the legitimacy of those who govern us. Of menial activities
there is no limit in governments where the registration of a birth has
come to be considered more important than the act of being born. Examine,
for example, the various rules and ordinances determining how we may
behave in most of our public parks: it is forbidden to fire any firearm,
to beat a drum or blow a bugle, to beat rugs, pillows or to make mattresses,
to take a bath, wash laundry, startle the birds or fly a kite more than1.5
meters in length.
The need for order and rationality that possesses government clerks
often goes to absurd lengths. There are laws concerning the size of
baby bottles, the cost of funerals, the profit margin for chicken pluckers
and the hours of opening for shoe stores. There are ordinances about
the feeding of silkworms, the importation of children's underwear, and
the size of the bubbles in sparkling wines.
Nor does the omnipresence of the state mean that the state is efficient.
One man received a notice from the Social Security authorities stating
that he was no longer eligible for payments because he had died two
years previously. Another was refused a passport because even though
he produced his birth certificate and a host of other documents it was
not certain whether he was born on North or South Peachtree Street.
It was in reaction to such situations that Arthur Koestler observed
that "in most modern cities in the world, asingle brick can be
laid in a new government building until ten paper pushers have written
their foolish and useless reports"
The pushers of papers are experts however, at least in assuring the
citizenry that they will invariably find themselves fighting a losing
battle with the state apparatus. The state seems to take great pleasure
in presenting us with hopeless intricacies, making citizens fill out
the same form six or more times, telling them that their dossiers are
incomplete, and in refusing to meet with them except during odd hours
on Monday mornings and Tuesday afternoons. In short, many citizens,
forced into the awareness that the purpose of the state is to protect
itself from the whims of its citizens, are eventually reduced to a state
of slavering paralysis.
As if they were not already doing enough harm, government bureaucrats
have even succeeded in mangling language to a point of absurdity and
have managed to turn language just a bit upside down. Clerks in the
income tax office, for example, are especially instructed in an intricate
form of written and spoken language that is directed towards "the
art of presenting decisions which do not conform to the personal interest
of those to whom they are addressed". Bureaucratic language is
so convoluted that anyone who can avoid crying about it laughs at it.
In bureaucratese a contract is defined as "a convention by which
one or several persons commit themselves toward one or several other
persons, to give, to do, or not to do something". That such a definition
covers everything from prayer to white slavery seems to escape the attention
of those in power.
One thing that always amazes is that despite their antipathy towards
the bureaucracy a good many people hold dearly to the belief that one
of the best ways for them to get ahead is to find a job with the government.
Clerks, especially those at the bottom or middle of the bureaucratic
totem pole, have a comfortable feeling that they are at the source of
power. No matter how menial their tasks, no government employee thinks
that his or her decisions are insignificant. Each and every clerk feels
that his or her hands are controlling the fates not only of their neighbors,
but of the nation itself. Every petty bureaucrat assumes that his or
her role is an agreeable combination of playing Solomon, confessor to
the masses and arbiter of issues critical to the survival of the state.
There are, one must admit, advantages to working within the bureaucracy.
Hard work is unknown here and job security is sacrosanct. Best of all,
perhaps, adventurous or threatening experiences are reduced to an absolute
minimum (there is a rule that covers absolutely every possibility, and
if one cannot find the rule, there is always a supervisor who specializes
in knowing all the rules). Government employees need never be self-reliant,
nor need they ever fear change, for in the deepest recesses of bureaucracy,
the status quo is king.
A few bureaucrats have become authors (Kafka, Borges and Gunther Grass),
but none has ever become a revolutionary. Come springtime when students
start whacking each other over the head or having occasional skirmishes
with the police, the bureaucrats remain comfortably behind their desks.
After the banners have been folded up, the streets hosed down and bail
posted for those who dared to raise their voice against the state, the
bureaucrats will, likely as not, be found with their feet still firmly
planted in their little cubicles.
We should consider the possibility, however, that the bureaucrat is
more to be pitied than censured. Bureaucrats have forfeited their autonomy.
They have assumed so solidly the force or tradition of bureaucracy that
they accept unthinkingly the claims to authority which are made by their
supervisors. It is the rare individual in the tax offices, land authorities,
or ministry of health who will rise even to the level of questioning
the right of his masters to command and the duty of himself and his
fellows to obey. That the bureaucrats reign roughshod and supreme over
our lives is pathetic but the saddest thing of all is that we and they
do not realize that there are no kings and that the line of prophets
has run out.
© Daniel Rogov
|
