Typologies of Bureaucratic Collectivisms

Abstract

Defining countries as different as Russia and China, Egypt and Iran, as ‘bureaucratic collectivisms’ might raise doubts in readers unfamiliar with Marxist methodology. But to say that they are all collective bureaucracies is not to lump them together under the same head. There are considerable differences between societies founded on other modes of production too. Classical Greece and ancient Rome were both founded on slavery; tenth-century France and Tokugawa Japan were both feudal States; and monarchist, liberal England, social-democratic Sweden and Nazi Germany were all based on capitalism. So too there are fundamental differences between collective bureaucracies. To prevent misunderstandings we should therefore single out a few of the basic typical features of such societies.