The Bureaucracy and Accumulation

Abstract

The significance of the higher bureaucracy has been somewhat obscured in the literature on African underdevelopment, perhaps under the influence of Fanon (1965), who appeared to run together the idea of the higher bureaucracy and that of the bourgeoisie or would-be bourgeoisie when he wrote of a “bourgeoisie of the civil service”. But the important point about higher echelons of the state apparatus is less their class origins or ambitions than their specific function in relation to the ruling alliance of classes and class-strata. Concentrating on the tendency of state officials to try to acquire property is apt to divert attention from this more important point.