BOOKS
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tic liberalism, there a re o bvious simil arities here
to
Weber's (much
mo re somber) appraisal of the " iron cage" of bureaucra ti c routiniza–
tion whi ch supposedl y cha racterizes the modern era, and it is no t
surprising tha t the theme of bureaucra tiza tion and its exigen cies has
been quite closely invo lved with this sort of standpo int (w ith the
Weber-Schumpeter line h elping to fos ter the so-call ed " theo ry of
democra ti c eliti sm" as a characteriza tion of the liberal-democratic
polity in industrial society). Marxism regards neither the character of
industri al organiza tion, n or bureaucra tic hierarchy as invio la te; on the
contrary, each is presumed
to
be capable of radical transforma tion in a
socialist o rder. Because bu reaucracy is traditionall y seen as an expres–
sion o f class domina tion in Ma rxi st theory, o rthodox Marxism, with
the exception of Maoism, has given little a ttention
to
wha t might be
call ed the "specificity of capitalism": i. e. , how far bureaucra tic domina–
ti on or inequa lities of power derive in a direct way from the capital
wage-labo r rel a tion , as medi a ted by the capitalist sta te. The New Left,
both in Eu rop e and in the United Sta tes, was in blunt oppos ition
to
the
older fo rms of o rthodox Ma rxi sm in thi s ma tter, and it is a no ticeable
contras t between these two books tha t the American authors, closely
affi lia ted to the student movement of the late I960s, g ive mo re a tten tio n
to such p roblems than do the authors of the British volume.
T he trea tment of the specificity of capitalism provided by the la tter
is of a traditi o na l and limited kind . All o f the various types and levels
of inequality are referred back
to
the continued exi stence of concen–
trated priva te capital ownership: the strong implica tion being th at the
abolition of such ownership would thereby produce the dissoluti on o f
these inequalities, and of the aliena ting modes of labor linked
to
them.
One or two comments the authors let drop about the sta te socialist
societi es sugges t they beli eve there is more to it than this, but these are
nowhere developed .
In
Eas tern Europe, Wes tergaard and Resler say,
"power is con centra ted still , becau se sta te ownership has no t been
transla ted into effective public ownership," but they do n o t provide
any coherent indica tion of wha t "effective public ownership" would
look like, nor do they give much sign of showing tha t they regard the
acquisition o f power by a centralized, bureaucra tic appa ra tus as a
major po tential source of domina ti on in a socia list order o f the future.
But surely such a possibility must be taken with the utmost seriousness
by socialists: the abolition of priva te ownership of capital is no
guarantee of the di ssolution of a profit oriented economy, and it can be
supplemented by a bureaucra tic sta te further removed from the hands
of the people than the sta te in libera l democracy. As far as educa tional
systems are concerned , it seems clear enough tha t whil e the degree o f
