ABSTRACT

Bureaucracy, as a social institution, has three fundamental characteristics. First, when administrative tasks are simple and undifferentiated, no specialized apparatus is necessary for their execution. Second, like money, the institution of bureaucracy has been known in all social systems, with the exception of primitive society. Third, it is a product of a particular type of authority. The Yugoslav example is typical for relatively modern cases of entire economies being run administratively. The bureaucratic apparatus is expected to carry out the commands of the authorities without questioning their validity. In order to insure precision, impersonality, and calculability, bureaucracy in action must be governed by rules that are, ideally, supposed to cover all possible cases. The fundamental principle of bureaucratic organization is obedience. By connecting the two loose ends of a formerly bureaucratic pyramid, the economic organizations are transformed into self-governing associations and capitalism is replaced by socialism.