Duplicated offices destroy responsibility and competence while serving the Leader’s power

Evidence

The multiplication of offices destroys all sense of responsibility and competence; it is not merely a tremendously burdensome and unproductive increase of administration, but actually hinders productivity because conflicting orders constantly delay real work until the order of the Leader has decided the matter. The fanaticism of the elite cadres, absolutely essential for the functioning of the movement, abolishes systematically all genuine interest in specific jobs and produces a mentality which sees every conceivable action as an instrument for something entirely different. And this mentality is not confined to the elite but gradually pervades the entire population, the most intimate details of whose life and death depend upon political decisions—that is, upon causes and ulterior motives which have nothing to do with performance. Constant removal, demotion, and promotion make reliable teamwork impossible and prevent the development of experience. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 923

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the scaffold of how totalitarian bureaucracy operates — will echo in Arendt’s later discussion of the leader’s word as the only source of truth, and in Weber’s rational-legal authority and its inversion.
• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism by which ‘the rule by nobody’ operates: multiplying offices eliminates accountability so that only the Leader’s word resolves conflict.