| Abstract: | The assessments of the role of bureaucracy in socialism offered by Weber and Lenin are seriously weakened by their reliance on an inadequately developed category of rationality. A genuinely Marxist theory of bureaucracy presupposes a clarification of the category of rationality, and such is presented in accordance with the communicative model recently formulated by Habermas and Gouldner. Premised on several important features of this model, the Maoist ideal type of bureaucracy provides Marxist social theory with a solid basis for advancing a theory of bureaucracy and, at the same time, seriously challenges the Weberian claim that socialism can be either a modern society or revolutionary society, but not both. |
