Rejecting parliamentarianism need not entail rehabilitating bureaucracy

Evidence

The point is to establish whether the representative and party system, instead of being a suitable mechanism for choosing elected functionaries to integrate and balance the appointed civil servants and prevent them from becoming ossified, has become a hindrance and a mechanism which operates in the reverse direction—and, if so, for what reasons. Moreover, even an affirmative reply to these questions does not exhaust the problem. For even allowing (as it must be allowed) that parliamentarianism has become inefficient and even harmful, it is not necessary to conclude that the bureaucratic system must be rehabilitated and praised. It has to be considered whether parliamentarianism and representative system are synonymous, and whether a different solution is not possible—both for parliamentarianism and for the bureaucratic system—with a new type of representative system. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 948

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci’s refusal to collapse critique into its opposite anticipates later arguments that critique of exclusionary state mechanisms must not rehabilitate older ones. — connects to: Soviet bureaucracy is replaceable without exploding the system’s institutions. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 216; The third way’s real content is bureaucracy, not ideology — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 488; Neoliberalism expanded bureaucracy rather than eliminating it — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1581
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 948