Synopses & Reviews
Originally published by Yale University Press in 1944,
Bureaucracy is a classic fundamental examination of the nature of bureaucracies and free markets in juxtaposition to various political systems.
Bureaucracy contrasts the two forms of economic managementthat of a free market economy and that of a bureaucracy. In the market economy entrepreneurs are driven to serve consumers by their desire to earn profits and to avoid losses. In a bureaucracy, the managers must comply with orders issued by the legislative body under which they operate; they may not spend without authorization and they may not deviate from the path prescribed by law.
Writing in an age of exuberant socialism, Ludwig von Mises here lucidly demonstrates how the efficiencies of private ownership and control of public good production ultimately trump the guesswork of publicly administered planning” through codes and officialdom.” Although Mises aptly critiques bureaucracy and expounds thoroughly upon the immense power of law-like codes of commissions and administrations, he does not condemn nor dismiss bureaucracy but rather frames its proper bounds within constitutional democratic governments.
Ludwig von Mises (18811973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of Economics throughout most of the twentieth century. He earned his doctorate in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. In 1926, Mises founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. From 1909 to 1934, he was an economist for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. Before the Anschluss, in 1934 Mises left for Geneva, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940, when he emigrated to New York City. From 1948 to 1969, he was a visiting professor at New York University.
Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar, trustee, and longtime staff member of the Foundation for Economic Education. She has written and lectured extensively on topics of free market economics. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Human Events, Reason, and The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. A student of Mises, Greaves has become an expert on his work in particular and that of the Austrian School of economics in general. She has translated several Mises monographs, compiled an annotated bibliography of his work, and edited collections of papers by Mises and other members of the Austrian School.
Synopsis
Bureaucracy contrasts the two forms of economic management--that of a free-market economy and that of a bureaucracy. In the market economy entrepreneurs are driven to serve consumers by their desire to earn profits and to avoid losses. In a bureaucracy, the managers must comply with orders issued by the legislative body under which they operate; they may not spend without authorization, and they may not deviate from the path prescribed by law.
Ludwig von Mises here lucidly demonstrates how the efficiencies of private ownership and control of public good production ultimately trump the guesswork of publicly administered "planning" through codes and "officialdom."
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century.
Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.
Table of Contents
Editor’s Foreword ix
Preface to the First Edition xi
Preface to the 1962 Edition xiii
Introduction
1. The opprobrious connotation of the term bureaucracy 1
2. The American citizen’s indictment of bureaucratism 2
3. The “progressives’” view of bureaucratism 9
4. Bureaucratism and totalitarianism 12
5. The alternative: profit management or bureaucratic
management 15
CHAPTER I Profit Management
1. The operation of the market mechanism 17
2. Economic calculation 18
3. Management under the profit system 26
4. Personnel management under an unhampered
labor market 30
CHAPTER II Bureaucratic Management
1. Bureaucracy under despotic government 33
2. Bureaucracy within a democracy 34
3. The essential features of bureaucratic management 37
4. The crux of bureaucratic management 39
5. Bureaucratic personnel management 43
CHAPTER III Bureaucratic Management of Publicly Owned
Enterprises
1. The impracticability of government all-round control 47
2. Public enterprise within a market economy 49
CHAPTER IV Bureaucratic Management of Private Enterprises
1. How government interference and the impairment
of the profit motive drive business toward
bureaucratization 53
2. Interference with the height of profi t 54
3. Interference with the choice of personnel 57
4. Unlimited dependence on the discretion of
government bureaus 59
CHAPTER V The Social and Political Implications
of Bureaucratization
1. The philosophy of bureaucratism 61
2. Bureaucratic complacency 63
3. The bureaucrat as a voter 66
4. The bureaucratization of the mind 67
5. Who should be the master? 72
CHAPTER VI The Psychological Consequences
of Bureaucratization
1. The German youth movement 76
2. The fate of the rising generation within a bureaucratic
environment 79
3. Authoritarian guardianship and progress 82
4. The selection of the dictator 84
5. The vanishing of the critical sense 85
CHAPTER VII Is There Any Remedy Available?
1. Past failures 89
2. Economics versus planning and totalitarianism 90
3. The plain citizen versus the professional propagandist
of bureaucratization 94
Conclusion 99
Index 103