BUREAUCRACY. By Ludwig von work, I believe a recital of the seven Mises. New York and London: Yale chapter headings is useful and elo- University Press. 1962. $1.45. Pages quent. They are: "Profit Manage- 125. (Reviewed by Frazer Arnold of ment"; "Bureaucratic Management"; the Denver Bar.) "Bureaucratic Management of Public- ly Owned Enterprises"; "Bureaucratic Judged by any standard of ex- Management of Private Enterprises"; cellence, this is a terrific little book. "The Social and Political Implications So brilliantly written and close-knit is of Bureaucratization"; "The Psycho- the development of the thesis that a logical Consequences of Bureaucratiza- reviewer finds himself marking nearly tion"; "Is There Any Remedy Avail- every paragraph for possible quota- able?" tion, while hoping at the same time Each chapter has several subhead- to achieve the impossible feat of con- ings. Those of the introduction are: densing the whole into a column or 1. The opprobrious connotation of two of summary. the term bureaucracy. The author does not indict bureau- 2. The American citizen's indict- crats and bureaucracy per se, for these, ment of bureaucratism. he reminds us, have always been es- 3. The "progressives' view of bu- sential in government. But he proves reaucratism. his case that, if we continue to let 4. Bureaucratism and totalitarian- bureaucracy expand from strictly gov- ism. ernment work into the domain of prof- 5. The alternative: profit manage- it management, we forfeit all liberty ment or bureaucratic management. along with the national genius for The book is not only easy to read, achievement. The notion that the it is exciting. For a sample of the American drift toward a "planned" in- author's style, there is space only to dustrial state, though far advanced, is quote the final two paragraphs of his glacier-like and inevitable, is an illu- conclusion: sion. The movement can be arrested The champions of socialism call and reversed. And the author exposes themselves progressives, but they rec- ommend a system which is character- the fallacy of those who imagine that ized by rigid observance of routine a "middle ground" can long be in- and by a resistance to every kind of habited between freedom and collec- improvement. They call themselves tivism. liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call them- Von Mises heads the internationally selves democrats, but they yearn for famous "Austrian School of Econom- dictatorship. They call themselves rev- olutionaries, but they want to make the ics" exact opposite of the Keynesian. government omnipotent. They promise Yet his book sounds wholly American the blessings of the Garden of Eden, and it attacks the disease that lodged but they plan to transform the world in our organs of government with the into a gigantic post office. Every man advent of the Sixteenth Amendment and but one a subordinate clerk in a bu- reau, what an alluring utopia! What the New Deal. Writing with profound a noble cause to fight for! knowledge, he lays bare the roots of Against all this frenzy of agitation evil that stemmed from Europe in the there is but one weapon available: rea- nineteenth and twentieth centuries. son. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illu- For a short view of what may con- sory fantasies and empty catchwords. ceivably be an epoch-making piece of FRAZER ARNOLD