Soviet bureaucracy is replaceable without exploding the system’s institutions.

Evidence

In the Soviet system, the organization of the productive process certainly separates the “immediate producers” (the laborers) from control over the means of production and thus makes for class distinctions at the very base of the system. This separation was established by political decision and power after the brief “heroic period” of the Bolshevik Revolution, and has been perpetuated ever since. And yet it is not the motor of the productive process itself; it is not built into this process as is the division between capital and labor, derived from private, ownership of the means of production. Consequently, the ruling strata are themselves separable from the productive process—that is, they are replaceable without exploding the basic institutions of society. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 216

Categorization

• XREF: The distinction between politically-imposed (replaceable) and structurally-embedded (unreplaceable) domination offers a framework applicable to tech platforms whose dominance is structurally built into infrastructure vs. merely policy-level. — connects to: Rejecting parliamentarianism need not entail rehabilitating bureaucracy — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 948

Broader Connections

• Rejecting parliamentarianism need not entail rehabilitating bureaucracy #complicates (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 948