What Is Bureaucracy?

What is bureaucracy?

In simple terms, bureaucracy can be defined as administration characterized by excessive red tape and routine. Bureaucracy has much in common in capitalism. Max Weber considered the growth of large, rational organizations one of the defining traits of modern societies. This organization is commonly known as bureaucracy. He finds aspects of bureaucracy in today’s businesses, government agencies, labour unions and universities. Max Weber considered bureaucracy highly rational because of its elements such as offices, duties and policies that help to achieve specific goals as efficiently as possible. Weber saw capitalism, bureaucracy and science as the highly disciplined pursuit of knowledge as all of them had a common factor: rationality.

Max Weber agreed with Karl Marx that modern society generates wide-spread alienation, although his reasons were different. While Marx thought that alienation was caused by economic inequality, Weber blamed alienation on bureaucracy’s countless rules and regulations. Weber argued that bureaucracy treated human beings as “numbers” or “cases” rather than unique individuals. Weber also argued that working for large organizations demands highly specialized and often tedious routines (similar to Marx’s argument of Alienation from the act of working)

Weber saw modern society as a vast and growing system of rules trying to regulate everything.

He feared that modern society would end up crushing the human spirit. Both Marx and Weber found it ironic that modern society that was meant to serve humanity, turns on its creators and enslaves them.

Why, in your opinion, is bureaucracy considered the basis of modern society?

In my personal opinion, bureaucracy is considered the basis of modern society because we