The bureaucratic class’ self-interest

For understandable reasons, the IRS scandal largely has focused on the political question of whether the White House deliberately targeted opponents. To date there's no evidence that it did. That's good for the president, but it may not be good for the country, because if the administration didn't target opponents, that would mean the IRS has become corrupt all on its own.

In 1939, Bruno Rizzi, a largely forgotten communist intellectual, wrote a hugely controversial book, 'The Bureaucratization of the World.” Rizzi argued that the Soviet Union wasn't communist. Rather, it represented a new kind of system, what Rizzi called 'bureaucratic collectivism.” What the Soviets had done was get rid of the capitalist and aristocratic ruling classes and replace them with a new, equally self-interested ruling class: bureaucrats.

The book wasn't widely read, but it did reach Bolshevik theoretician Leon Trotsky, who attacked it passionately. Trotsky's response, in turn, inspired James Burnham, who used many of Rizzi's ideas in his own 1941 book, 'The Managerial Revolution,” in which Burnham argued something similar was happening in the West. A new class of bureaucrats, educators, technicians, regulators, social workers and corporate directors who worked in tandem with government were re-engineering society for their benefit. 'The Managerial Revolution” was a major influence on George Orwell's '1984.”

Now I don't believe we are becoming anything like 1930s Russia, never mind a real-life '1984.” But this idea that bureaucrats - very broadly defined - can become their own class bent on protecting their interests at the expense of the public seems not only plausible but obviously true.

Working for the federal government simply isn't like working for the private sector. Government employees are essentially un-fireable. In the private sector people lose their jobs for incompetence, redundancy or obsolescence all the time. In government, these concepts are virtually meaningless.

In 2010, the 168,000 federal workers in Washington, D.C. - who are quite well-compensated - had a job-security rate of 99.74 percent. A HUD spokesman told USA Today that 'his department's low dismissal rate - providing a 99.85 percent job security rate for employees - shows a skilled and committed workforce.”

Obviously, economic self-interest isn't the only motivation. Bureaucrats no doubt sincerely believe that government is a wonderful thing and that it should be empowered to do ever more wonderful things.

We constantly hear how the evil Koch brothers are motivated by a toxic mix of ideology and economic self-interest. Is it so impossible to imagine that a class of workers might be seduced by the same sorts of impulses?