The Bureaucratic Deformation of Consciousness and the Struggle against Bureaucratism

Abstract

Among the human aspects of management, there also exists the negative phenomenon of the bureaucratic deformation of the professional consciousness of employees in the state apparatus. It is one of the aspects of the phenomenon of bureaucratism—itself a serious social evil with many faces, the struggle against which has long been waged from the first years of the Soviet state apparatus, albeit with clearly insufficient success. Moreover, bureaucratism has grown during certain periods. The struggle against it in the present stage acquires special significance because it is an integral part of the program of radical management reform proclaimed by the Twenty-seventh CPSU Congress: "The Party must declare decisive, merciless war on bureaucratism. Vladimir Il'ich considered it especially important to struggle against it at critical times, during the transition from one system of government to another, when the demand for a businesslike attitude, speed, and energy was highest. Bureaucratism today is a serious obstacle on the road to solving our main problem: the acceleration of the nation's socioeconomic development and the basic restructuring of the management mechanism associated with it."¹