Special edition on the Neo-Weberian State

Abstract

Experience tends universally to show that the purely bureaucratic type of administrative organization in its precision, stability, stringency of discipline and reliability ... is, from a purely technical point of view, capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency and is in this sense formally the most rational known means of exercising authority over human beings. ( Economy and Society ) 1 This passion for bureaucratization, such as we have heard expressed here, is enough to drive one to despair. … the central question is not how we further and accelerate it but what we have to set against this machinery, in order to preserve a remnant of humanity from this parcelling-out of the soul, from this exclusive rule of bureaucracy over the ideals of life.