270
PARTISAN REVIEW
main sections. The approach is Social Democratic; it is characterized best
by Kingsley's statement acknowledging Harold
J.
Laski as his chief
mentor: "He brought me understanding and a point of view which has
ever since formed the focus of my thinking." So he employs a class
analysis-but of a kind. The British Foreign Office, for instance, is criti–
cized for its "mistakes" of the thirties; but these "mistakes," he says,
followed from its conservative, class composition. But this sort of thing
is the eternal burden which the reformist mind must bear.
The historical pattern the author presents is one of aristocratic
predominance in the machinery of government being replaced by actual
bourgeois control. The reforms of the 19th Century "altered the relation
of wealth to rank." Royal patronage gave way to appointments by exam–
ination, but examinations based on expensive classical education. While
the one class gradually encroached on the other's position in the bureau–
cracy, consolidating its political control, the class structure of the Service
remained intact. The British bureaucracy, like so many other things
British, exhibits a tendency to create form by the slow accretion of pre–
cedent. At first sprawling and shapeless, the Service became centralized
more and more under the control of the Treasury, until now this control
is autocratic and deadening.
Criticizing the structure of the bureaucracy, Kingsley makes many
notations pointing toward an effective rationalization. His criticisms, in
fact, are too constructive. The reasons for this are illumined, I think, by
the fact that he confuses the growth of bureaucracy-which he alternately
calls the advent of the "service state"-with socialization. (Engels long
ago pointed out the absurdity of viewing the Post Office as a socialist
institution.) One of the errors attendant on seeing the introduction of
socialism as a gradual process, continuous with the capitalist order, con–
sists in the necessity of discovering "roots" of socialism in the existing
capitalist society or state. Unilinear, not dialectical roots. It is especially
an error to describe elements of a capitalist
state
as "socialist."
The main thesis of the book is "that administrative arrangements
always reflect the character of the social structure of a nation." In this
sense, Kingsley believes, bureaucracies are representative. In other words,
they represent the ruling class; and, secondarily, mirror the relation of
class forces. Since Kingsley thinks the war marks "the eclipse of the
bourgeoisie as a ruling class," he can look forward to a postwar period
characterized by "centralized economies under state control"-these
require huge bureaucracies-not only without apprehension, but with
the belief that the period and the bureacracies both will be democratic.
Burnham, at least, was pessimistic. The British Labour Party is waging
capitalist England's war, which the ruling class nearly lost through its
own ineptness. Will that destroy the ruling class?
DAVID
T.
BAZELON
