Amerika

From Naked Lunch:

“The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principle of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action, to the complete parasitism of a virus…Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapses. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existences as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host. (67)

Why does democracy shift Leftward, inevitably and consistently? Democracy must create the State, because it has displaced leadership and at the very least needs an authority to administer elections. This creates bureaus, or managerial institutions composed of file clerks applying rules made by leaders. These tend toward an extreme egalitarian premise because the very nature of the bureau is that it knows nothing about the people who come in the door, so it treats them as anonymous citizens, i.e. equals who must subject themselves to procedure in exchange for results. This causes the bureau to act in loco parentis and therefore, to start demanding that everyone get along, always by protecting the clueless, weak, foolish, insane, etc. against the normal. From this comes a mentality of victimhood, and this encourages government and citizens to shift further Leftward.

Tags: administrative, bureaucracy, democracy, left-drift, leftism, managerial, william s. burroughs