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{{Quote|No battle — Tarutino, Borodino, or Austerlitz — takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an essential condition. | {{Quote|No battle — Tarutino, Borodino, or Austerlitz — takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an essential condition. | ||
:—Tolstoy, ''War and Peace''}} | :—Tolstoy, ''War and Peace''}} | ||
This one goes to the top of [[JC]]’s 2020 lockdown re-reads. It was published in 1998, so it’s a bit late to get excited — but while it addresses the | This one goes to the top of [[JC]]’s 2020 lockdown re-reads. It was published in 1998, so it’s a bit late to get excited — but while it addresses the “[[high modernism]]” of 20th Century government, the read-across to the capitalist market economy, and beyond that into the interior workings of ''any'' large corporation — are you reading, boss?<ref>Boss: “Yes, [[JC]], I am. Now, [[get your coat]].”</ref> — shrieks from every page. These are profound ideas we all ''should'' recognise, and which could transform the effectiveness of what we all do, but — being, well, citizens of a “prostrate civil society” — either we can’t or we ’’won’t.’’ | ||
{{br|Seeing Like a State}} takes as its thesis how well-intended patrician | Exactly ''why'' there is this collective affliction of [[wilful blindness]] to our administrative compulsion is a great, unexplored topic of our age. That so many, great and small, have so much to lose by exploring it may explain the mystery. | ||
{{br|Seeing Like a State}} takes as its thesis how well-intended patrician government can, in some circumstances, lead to utter disaster. While Scott’s examples are legion, one could — and some do — criticise him for his anecdotal approach: he has curated examples that best fit his thesis, and it therefore suffers from insoluble [[confirmation bias]]. That may be true, but I don’t think it matters, for Scott’s thesis is so ''familiar'', so ''plausible'' and its exhortations so consistent with other theories in adjacent fields,<ref>{{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} theory; [[Systems Theory]] as expounded by {{author|Donella H. Meadows}}, {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}’s {{br|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}}</ref> that it is hard to be bothered by a lack of empirical rigour. This stuff all stands to reason. Data is not its value: Scott’s ''[[narrative]]'' is its value, as a counter-narrative to modern statist (and corporate) orthodoxy, and that in itself is valuable and enlightening. | |||
In any case, bureaucratic disaster is not inevitable, but the same four conditions are present wherever we find it: a will to bend nature, and society, to the administrator’s agenda; a [[high modernism|“high modernist” ideology]] believing that all problems can be anticipated and solved ahead of time; an authoritarian state with machinery to impose its ideological vision; and a subjugated citizenry (or staff) without the means (or inclination) to resist the machinery of the administrator. | In any case, bureaucratic disaster is not inevitable, but the same four conditions are present wherever we find it: a will to bend nature, and society, to the administrator’s agenda; a [[high modernism|“high modernist” ideology]] believing that all problems can be anticipated and solved ahead of time; an authoritarian state with machinery to impose its ideological vision; and a subjugated citizenry (or staff) without the means (or inclination) to resist the machinery of the administrator. | ||
''All'' of these qualities feature in the modern multinational corporation. If you are interested in how not to run one, {{br|Seeing Like a State}} is worth a close read. | ''All'' of these qualities feature in the modern multinational corporation. If you are interested in how ''not'' to run one, {{br|Seeing Like a State}} is worth a close read. | ||
===[[Legibility]]: the administrative ordering of nature and society === | ===[[Legibility]]: the administrative ordering of nature and society === |