UNDERSTANDING BUREAUCRACY

The fact that a bureaucracy is the antithetical equivalent to an aristocracy, within an absolute context, was something we hadn't realized until Owen Carmichael pointed it out to us the other day, while we were having lunch together in the local café. I had never even associated the two before, let alone begun to think seriously about the nature or status of bureaucracies. But Kathleen and I were left in no doubt about the fact that, according to Owen, an aristocratic elite and a bureaucratic elite were as different as it is possible for any two elites to be.

For instance, Owen explained to us, and to me, Seamus Deane, in particular, that whereas the masses existed for the sake of an aristocracy, a bureaucracy, by contrast, existed for the sake of the masses. More explicitly, the peasants were tyrannized over by an aristocracy, whereas the proletariat are served by a bureaucracy. And just as, in the age of aristocratic absolutism, the peasantry and the aristocracy were two entirely different classes, the former existing to serve the class interests of the latter, so, in the age of bureaucratic absolutism, the proletariat and the bureaucracy are two entirely different classes, the latter existing to serve the social interests of the former. Therefore a bureaucrat was, in any absolute state, the antithetical equivalent of a tyrannical aristocrat.

Another thing that neither of us had realized, but which Owen had the spiritual generosity to inform us about, was that a bureaucracy stood to the leader of an absolute state as the aristocracy had formerly stood to the ruling monarch, in consequence of which a further distinction therefore existed between the leader and his bureaucracy, as between the monarch and his nobility. So just as a bureaucracy was the antithetical equivalent of an aristocracy, the leader of an absolute state was antithetically equivalent to reigning monarchs. Now, as if that were not enough, we also learnt that the party, particularly in its cabinet or central-committee manifestation, was to the bureaucracy of an absolute state what royalty had formerly been to the nobility. Thus the old distinctions between monarch, royalty, and nobility were paralleled, in their latter-day manifestations, by the new distinctions between leader, party, and bureaucracy, all of which stood to the proletariat in a relation diametrically antithetical to how the old distinctions ... had stood to the peasantry.

So whether or not anarchists or Marxists approved of the fact, class divisions had to be upheld in a bureaucratic state no less than (they had been) in an aristocratic one. In each case, the basic division was between an elite and the masses, though the constitution of the elites, no less than that of the masses, was radically dissimilar. Aristocratic tyranny stemmed from the root cosmic influence of the Diabolic Alpha. Bureaucratic service aspired towards the climax of evolution in the Divine Omega. The one was basically phenomenally selfish, the other ... phenomenally selfless. A bureaucrat was an altogether morally superior type of man to an aristocrat!

Of course, Owen had no intention of leaving relative civilization completely out-of-account, and so drew our attention to the fact that, when such relativity combines tradition with progress, both aristocrats and bureaucrats can co-exist within the overall context of bourgeois hegemony, as in England in the late-twentieth century. Given the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, however, aristocrats don't exist on quite such tyrannous terms as did their absolute forebears, while, conversely, bureaucrats don't exist to serve the people as extensively or comprehensively as do their counterparts in contemporary absolute states, whether corporate or social democratic in constitution. The relative bureaucrat, though entitled to a degree of prestige which distinguishes him from the people, is reined-in, as it were, by his bourgeois masters from too radical a degree of service. Similarly, the relative aristocrat, though still entitled to a degree of prestige which distinguishes him from the people, is reined-in, by these same bourgeois masters, from too radical a degree of exploitation. Both classes are like puppets dangling on bourgeois strings. Only a revolution could possibly free the bureaucrat from relative constraint. Yet it would put an end to the aristocrat's existence altogether, not to mention that of his bourgeois master.

Owen reminded us, that lunch time, how aristocratic tyranny stemmed from nature. Just as the leaves on a tree existed for the sake of the tree, conceived as roots, trunk, and branches (an analogy with monarch, royalty, and nobility), by drawing sunlight and moisture into it, so the peasantry, that great mass of naturalistic humanity, had existed for the sake of the aristocracy, working to make them richer in natural wealth. Thus a pattern originally stemming from the diabolical galactic roots of evolution and extending into nature and beyond could be discerned in the ordering of feudal society around the interests of a tiny but extremely powerful minority - an aristocratic elite who had fought their way to the top.

At the opposite extreme to such a natural state-of-affairs, however, the socialist society which employs a bureaucracy to serve the proletariat, or artificial humanity of an urban environment, bespeaks an arrangement aspiring towards the Divine Omega which could theoretically be defined as initiating a pattern that will eventually arrive at the converse situation to trees, with their enslaved leaves, by the time evolution attains to the superbeing millennium, in which an artificial support-and-sustain system, reminiscent of the roots, trunk, and branches of a tree, will serve the collectivized new brains of the earth's highest life-form, namely a Superbeing, and thereby enable it to hypermeditate towards transcendence. Thus what the leaves were to a tree, the support-and-sustain system will be to a Superbeing, though the terms of service and raison d'être of the life form served would be diametrically antithetical.

True to comprehensive form, however, Owen reminded us that just as apes in trees came at a later date than the trees as such, so, conversely, would Supermen in artificial 'trees', or support-and-sustain systems, arise at an earlier date than the Superbeings, being the collectivized human brains of the superhuman millennium, an epoch in time in which a life form antithetically equivalent to apes would prevail, compliments of the technological expertise of the millennial successors to bureaucrats, and live not for transcendental meditation but hallucinogenic contemplation - a kind of romantic, because apparent (rather than essential) religiosity between the preceding classicism of meditation, as germane to the transcendental men of the ultimate human civilization, and the succeeding classicism, through hypermeditation, of the new-brain collectivizations of the superbeing millennium.

Unlike the Superbeings, however, the Supermen wouldn't exist in a totally classless society, but in one where an external supervisory class of millennial technocrats served the spiritual interests of the superhuman masses, while maintaining contact, through artificial channels of communication, with a class of spiritual leaders, or priest equivalents, whose duty it would be to liaise between the external and internal classes (of the millennial technocrats and supermen respectively), their own lifestyle, although partaking of superhuman form, demanding a separate integrity from each of the other classes. Only, apparently, after the millennial technocrats had upgraded life from the superhuman to the superbeingful stage at some later juncture in millennial time, would a truly classless society be established, as the new-brain collectivizations of each Superbeing hypermeditated towards transcendence in complete self-absorption, requiring neither external assistance from technocrats nor the mediation of spiritual leaders, both of which classes would effectively cease to exist.

So a definitively classless society, analogous to though distinct from Marxist communism, is still some way into the future, that much Owen assured us, as we sipped cold lemonade and did our best, despite the general hubbub throughout the café, to concentrate on what he was saying, not least of all about the religious predecessors, so to speak, of the spiritual leaders, whom he defined as meditation masters, and who would develop alongside the bureaucracy as a new spiritual aspect of service - leadership eventually passing, as a matter of evolutionary necessity, from materialist to spiritualist hands, while the transcendental civilization progressed towards the post-human millennium.

So just as there had been priests and aristocrats in the pagan and early-Christian civilizations, so there would be meditation masters and bureaucrats in the coming transcendental civilization, the former gradually superseding the latter as circumstances permitted, men of science of a certain stamp likewise gradually superseding artists, so that, by the time the post-human millennium was properly attained to, a new breed of priest equivalents, namely spiritual leaders, and a new breed of scientists, namely millennial technocrats, would have come to the fore, to replace the older, pre-millennial manifestations of each class; politics, in the hands of bureaucrats, having been completely superseded, art likewise, since hallucinogenic contemplation would prove more than a match for any form of artistic endeavour, being, in a sense, the ultimate manifestation of the aesthetic ... conceived in terms of an intimation, through apparent means, of the Divine Omega. However, the bureaucratic control would necessarily continue to exist, in some degree, up until the post-human millennium, since evolutionary progress on the human plane demands regulation from outside as well as example and instruction from inside, and therefore couldn't be left to artists and priest equivalents alone, even if they were an indispensable factor in the overall process. Bureaucrats, though subject to modification in the course of time, would continue to serve the proletariat throughout the duration of the transcendental civilization, just as, in the context of state socialism, they had served them on a purely or predominantly materialistic basis, with no concern for religious progress. That, Owen told us, had been an integral part of historical necessity, not something to be derided. And Kathleen and I, being bureaucrats, were prepared to believe him.