Research On Ernest Mandel’s Bureaucracy Criticism

Mandel’s bureaucracy criticism is based on the bureaucratic phenomena in the European workers’ movement and the workers’ state in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,absorbs the historical experience of the Paris Commune and the October Revolution,draws on the expositions of Marx,Engels,Lenin,Luxemburg and others on the problem of bureaucracy,inherits Trotsky’s criticism on bureaucracy,and after fierce debates with other theoretical schools such as Pablo and Cliff,has formed a whole set of critical ideas on bureaucracy.In terms of specific content,Mandel made a more three-dimensional exploration of the subjective and objective roots of bureaucratic phenomena,the causes of bureaucracy,and the specific manifestations of bureaucracy.Mandel pointed out that the origin of bureaucracy has a certain inevitability,objectively it is the result of the division of labor and specialization.In history,the formation of bureaucracy is due to the lack of productive forces,the failure of the organizational system,the passivity of the working class,and it is also related to the unexpected setbacks faced by the revolutionary cause,as well as ideological and psychological factors.From a philosophical point of view,bureaucracy can be described as the result of a "dialectic of partial results",that is,a conservative idea of stopping the revolution in order to preserve the existing results.Mandel believes that bureaucracy has a distinct code of conduct in practice,but the bureaucracy is not structurally monolithic,and its self-consciousness is unclear and unfixed.In terms of the method of eliminating bureaucracy,Mandel proposed from the three angles of leadership,the masses of workers,and the organizational system that there is a dialectical relationship between the vanguard and the masses in the workers’ movement,and from this dialectical relationship,we can explore ways to suppress the phenomenon of bureaucracy in the workers’ organizations.Mandel also proposed subjective measures to eliminate bureaucracy in the workers’ state,such as political democracy and political revolution,as well as objective conditions for the withering away of the state,social autonomy,and material abundance that would help to bring bureaucracy in the workers’ state to its demise.On the whole,Mandel’s critical thought on bureaucracy not only pays attention to the objective roots of bureaucracy,dissects the details of bureaucratic phenomena,and exalts the subjectivity of the working class,but also needs our attention to its obvious defects such as ultra-left,sectarian and utopian,which makes it difficult to become a set of powerful persuasive and influential theories.