Work takes all the time allotted for it. Parkinson's laws and their modification in the conditions of modern Russian bureaucracy. A person's expenses increase with the growth of his income.

If you want to do everything and do more, you definitely need to know Parkinson's first law. British historian, journalist and author Cyril Norton Parkinson came up with his own law in the middle of the 20th century. It first appeared in an article in The Economist in 1955, and later became the basis for the book Parkinson's Law.

Almost 60 years have passed, but the relevance of this work law will never disappear, and on its basis it is quite possible to build your own productivity methodology.

Work fills the time allotted for it.

Parkinson had full right make such assertions - for a time he worked for public service in Britain and saw how the mechanism of bureaucracy works. They adhere to the principle of "work harder, not better."

If you parse Parkinson's first law, it turns out that if you give yourself a week to complete a task that can be completed in two hours, then the task will adapt to your requests and become difficult, just enough to fill the week that you allotted for it.

Solution: set exactly the time for which you can complete the task, and no more.

There is one idea about Parkinson's law: if you carefully observe each task, then a person will spend exactly as much time on it as allotted, and if, for example, one minute was given for a task, it will be simplified so much that it can be done in that minute . And indeed it is.

Parkinson's Law works in a negative way only because people are used to giving themselves extra time for simple tasks. Sometimes this is done “just in case” to create some “buffer” of time for themselves, but most often because people have no idea how long this or that task will take. You will be surprised how quickly you can actually complete tasks that usually take several hours.

But not everyone will understand and accept it.

Most employees who reject the unwritten rule of “work harder, not better” know that, despite high performance, this is not always welcome in the company. This well-established opinion is to blame for everything: “The longer the work is done, the higher the quality.”

Fortunately, employees can now afford to work faster without being reprimanded by their superiors. It's just that they can get the job done faster and mind their own business, and employers who welcome long deadlines won't know what they're doing at all.

So, you have learned the basic principle of the law, it is worth moving on to practical application. Here are two ways to use Parkinson's Law in your life, get everything on your to-do list done faster, and just pretend to be busy the rest of the day.

By the way, it doesn’t matter if you work in an office or at home - as long as the idea of “working harder, not better” is firmly planted in your brain, you can become its victim, even if no one monitors your work and results. So let's get rid of it.

Outrun the clock

Create a to-do list and assign what you think is real time to each one. Ready? Now cut each time exactly in half. Now the main thing is to perceive the set deadlines as real deadlines. Imagine that these are the clients or the boss who have set such deadlines for you - they cannot be violated.

You can use a purely human quality - love for all kinds of competitions and excitement. Play against yourself for the time being, complete your tasks as if you were playing against an opponent who can do it faster, and forget about the belief that a job done quickly is a “bang-bang”.

This is a great test to find out real terms for the job. For some tasks, the deadlines will be suitable, for others you will not have time, no matter how hard you try, but you should not immediately give up and return the previous deadlines for them. Try to set a little more time for them, maybe the real deadline for their implementation is somewhere in the middle.

Instead of checking your email for half an hour, set aside 5 minutes for this. If you're ready to set a record, generally leave two minutes. And until you've done all the things on your list, don't even think about in social networks and entertainment sites.

By allocating a minimum of time for such classes, it is important to determine what is of paramount importance to you and what is of no importance at all. And don't think that you'll miss something important because of the reduced time - 5 minutes of concentration are worth more than half an hour of relaxed web browsing or reading all the e-mail.

You can experiment with Parkinson's Law in any area of life, both at work and at home. Find your indicators between "not enough time" and " necessary minimum”, and remember that your goal is to do the job well in the minimum time, and not do it “don't care how”, but as quickly as possible.

Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's law- an empirical law formulated by the historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson in his satirical article published in the British magazine The Economist in 1955 and later published together with his other articles in the book Parkinson's Law (eng. Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress ; London, John Murray, 1958). This law states that "Work fills the time allotted for it" . Subsequently, S. N. Parkinson published the books Law and Profits (eng. The Law and The Profits), "Sister-in-laws and strangers" (eng. In-Laws and Out-Laws), as well as "Mrs. Parkinson's Law", which formulated respectively the second, third laws of Parkinson, as well as the law of Mrs. Parkinson.

Parkinson based his reasoning on the extensive experience of British government agencies.

Parkinson's first law

Work fills the time allotted for it. So, according to Parkinson, if a grandmother can write a letter to her niece for a year, then she will write it for a year. The work will fill all the deadlines allotted for it. According to Parkinson, this law has two driving forces:

the official seeks to multiply subordinates, not rivals;
officials create each other's work.

Parkinson also noticed that the total number of people employed in the bureaucracy grew by 5-7% per year, regardless of any changes in the amount of work required (if any).

Parkinson's second law

Expenses rise with income

The consequence of this law - the growth of taxes - only feeds bureaucratic red tape.

Parkinson's Third Law

Growth leads to complexity, and complexity is the end of the road.

Mrs. Parkinson's law

The warmth produced by household cares builds up and overwhelms the given individual, from which it can only be transferred to a more cool-headed individual.

Other observations

The book "Parkinson's Law" also makes the following observations:

Life cycle of cabinets

The life cycle of an office consists of several stages:

The ideal number of members is five. With such a numerical composition, the cabinet will certainly take root. Two of its members can always be absent due to illness or for any other reason. Five are easy to assemble, and once assembled, they are able to act quickly, skillfully and quietly. Four of them can be entrusted with finance, foreign affairs, defense and justice. The fifth, ignorant of these subjects, will become chairman or prime minister.
As convenient as the number five is, it is not uncommon for seven or even nine people to enter the office. This happens almost everywhere and this is explained by the fact that there are not four, but more areas of control. Actually there is another reason. In an office of nine people, three make policy, two supply information, one reminds of finances. With an off-duty chairman, there are seven people. The other two, apparently, are needed for beauty. We know practically nothing about the appointment of two silent members, but we have reason to believe that at this second stage the cabinet cannot work without them.
At the third stage, new members enter the cabinets, sometimes they seem to know something else that is necessary, but more often they just do a lot of harm if they are not brought into the cabinet. To calm them down, you have to constantly consult with them. As they turn on, the number of members creeps from ten to twenty. In this third stage, things go much worse.
- First of all, it is very difficult to gather so many people.
- Only a few of the members were selected with the expectation that they would or could be useful. Most were introduced rather to please some external group, and their task is to inform their own how things are going. The secrecy is over.
- The stronger the unnecessary members are affirmed, the louder the bypassed groups demand that their representatives be brought in. The number of members creeps into the third ten. And the cabinet enters the fourth, final stage.
Fourth stage. When a cabinet has 20 to 22 members, it suddenly undergoes a special chemical or organic transformation, the nature of which is not difficult to understand and describe. Five useful members meet separately and decide something. The Cabinet has practically nothing to do, thus you can enter as many people as you like into it. Extra members will not need extra time, for all meetings are now a waste of time. The outer groups are satisfied, their henchmen are accepted by everyone without hindrance, and they will not soon realize that their victory is illusory. The doors are open, the number of members is approaching 40, growing further. Maybe it will grow to a thousand. Never mind. The cabinet is no longer an office, and another, small community performs its former functions.

Parkinson came up with a semi-joking formula for calculating committee futility ratio. Coefficient of Inefficiency) from several parameters, from which he obtained a coefficient of uselessness lying "between 19.9 and 22.4 (tenths show partial presence, that is, those who sat and left)".

In 2008, a statistical analysis was carried out of the relationship between the effectiveness of government and the size of the cabinet of ministers in 197 countries of the world according to data for 2007 and an inverse relationship was revealed: the increase in the cabinet was accompanied by a statistically significant decrease in the human development index, political stability (according to the World Bank) and the quality of governance . The same authors calculated the mathematical model of Parkinson's law (an increase in the number of officials regardless of the amount of work done) and the retirement age. In addition, the mathematical model confirmed the existence of the “Charles I phenomenon”. Parkinson drew attention to the fact that no country had cabinets with eight members. The only exception in history, according to Parkinson, is “Exactly 8 members were on the Cabinet Council of Charles I. And how did it end for him?!” The phenomenon of Charles I was clearly noted in the State Emergency Committee in 1991.

High financial policy

Law of habitual sums- the time spent discussing the item is inversely proportional to the amount in question. Justification of the law - “two types of people understand high financial policy: those who have a lot of money, and those who have nothing. A millionaire knows perfectly well what a million is. For an applied mathematician or professor of economics (living from hand to mouth, of course), a million is as real as a thousand, because they had neither. However, the world is teeming with intermediate people who do not understand millions, but are used to thousands. These are the main financial commissions.

The finance committee will argue until it's hoarse about how to spend $100 and will easily agree to an allocation of several million.

Life and death of institutions

The administrative building can reach perfection only by the time the institution falls into disrepair.

NON-PROVIT, or Parkinson's disease

Consists of three stages.

A person appears among the employees who combines complete unsuitability for his work with envy of other people's successes. Its presence is determined by external actions, when a given person, unable to cope with his work, always pokes his head into someone else's and tries to enter the leadership.
The carrier of the infection to some extent breaks through to power. Often everything starts right from this stage, as the carrier immediately takes a leadership position. It is easy to recognize him by the tenacity with which he survives those who are more capable than him, and does not allow those who may be more capable to advance in the future. The result is that the states are gradually filled with people who are more stupid than the boss. Signs of the second stage - complete complacency. The tasks are simple, and therefore it is possible to do, in general, everything. Bosses get what they want and become very important.
Throughout the institution, from top to bottom, you will not meet even a drop of reason. Signs - complacency is replaced by apathy.

In the first stage, the disease can be treated with injections. “Intolerance is very strong, but it is not easy to get it, and the danger in it is great. It is extracted from the blood of army foremen and it contains two elements: 1) "it can be better" (MP) and 2) "no excuses" (BUT).
The second stage requires surgical intervention. The patient and the surgeon should not be combined in one person, so "a specialist is needed, sometimes the largest of the big ones, Parkinson himself."
The third stage is still incurable. Therefore, “employees must be provided with good advice and send to the most hated institutions, things and deeds to be immediately destroyed, and the building to be insured and set on fire. Only when everything is burned to the ground can you consider that the infection has been killed.”

Retirement age

Any worker begins to lose grip three years before reaching retirement age, whatever that age is. When calculating the true retirement age, one must proceed not from the age of the person whose resignation is in question (X), but from the age of his successor (Y). On its service path, X will go through the following phases:

Ready time (G)
The time of prudence (B) - G + 3
Extension time (V) - B + 7
Time of responsibility (O) - V + 5
Time of authority (A) - O + 3
Achievement time (D) - A + 7
Time for awards (N) - D + 9
Time of importance (VV) - N + 6
Time of Wisdom (M) - VV + 3
Poru dead end (T) - M + 7

G - the age at which the person begins his professional career. With G=22, person X will reach T only by the age of 72. Based on his own abilities, there is no reason to kick him out before 71. The age difference between X and Y (successor) is 15 years. Based on this figure, with G = 22, person Y will reach D (time of achievement) by the age of 47, when person X is still only 62. This is where the break occurs. Y, clamped by X, instead of phases 6-9, passes other, new phases, such as:

6. Time of collapse (K) - A + 7 7. Time of envy (Z) - K + 9 8. Time of humility (S) - Z + 4 9. Time of oblivion (ZZ) - S + 5

In other words, when X turns 72, 57-year-old Y enters a time of humility. If X leaves, then Y will not be able to replace him, as he resigned himself (having envied himself) to a miserable fate.

Invitee Research

A rule has been deduced that “is valuable only as long as no one knows about it. Therefore, consider this chapter secret and do not show it to anyone. People studying our science should keep all this to themselves, and there is no need for the general public to read it.

The Law of Renunciation of Idea Authorship

Skill in getting subsidies consists mainly in the ability to impress financial officials that it was THEY who initiated the research on your topic, and you just follow their lead, reluctantly, contrary to your own convictions, agreeing with all their proposals.

Aphorisms

We will not get tired of repeating that Parkinson's law is a purely scientific discovery and it is applicable to current politics only at the theoretical level. A botanist should not weed weeds. He calculates their rate of growth, and that's enough for him.
We know how to retire our predecessors. And how to survive us, let our successors come up with themselves.
... the word "honesty" is especially often used by crooks ...
People are not inclined to forgive those whom they have harmed, and a person whose good advice has been neglected is difficult to endure.
A person completely immersed in papers inevitably loses independence. He does only what is offered to his attention, but he himself can offer nothing to anyone.
He, for example, never arrives unannounced. Why? Yes, because, as he explains, the preparation for his arrival is already beneficial in itself - employees clean up the office, push urgent matters. So, even if he fails to come, some useful work will still be done. (job description of officer Boykins)
The number of scientific publications is inversely proportional to the progress in science.
If the creator earns less than the steward, then decay has already begun.
When large empires decay, the petty-dictatorial fuss in the center is often accompanied by neglect of the main problems and remote provinces.
When modern women study art family life just as carefully as their grandmothers, they will finally understand that charming modesty can get their husband in their hands much more reliably than belligerent attempts at self-assertion.

Laws attributed to Parkinson

law of information

With regard to computers, Parkinson's law is formulated as follows:
« The amount of data grows so as to fill all the space on the media»,
or: " Increasing memory and storage capacity leads to new technologies that require more memory and space».

Parkinson's Law is often generalized: " The demand for a resource always grows in line with the supply of the resource.».

Law for Scientific Research

Successful research stimulates an increase in funding, leading to the complete impossibility of further research.

law of a thousand

An institution with more than a thousand employees becomes "administratively self-sufficient." This special term means that it creates so much inner work that it no longer needs contact with the outside world.

Law of Delay

Postponement is the surest form of denial.

phone law

The effectiveness of a telephone conversation is inversely proportional to the time spent on it.

Notes

Literature

Parkinson S. N. Parkinson's laws / S. N. Parkinscon; [per. from English]. - M .: Eksmo, 2007 ISBN 978-5-699-24807-0

Parkinson's laws

Work fills the time allotted for it

That is, if you were assigned some even simple task and provided quite optimal deadlines, you are likely to complete it throughout the allotted time. By the way, that's exactly what it looks like.

Remember the well-known examples of students who start preparing for exams at the last moment, although they receive a list of topics and tickets almost at the beginning of the school year.

If you understand that you have, say, a week to submit a new project, you will find good reasons for all 7 days that you can rely on to postpone this task until later.

And already at the last moment, when there is no time left, quickly complete the planned. Or, some difficulties will simply begin to arise that will delay obtaining the desired result.

Subconsciously, a person understands that, having coped with one thing, he will not just be inactive, it will be necessary to proceed to the next. Then on to the next one, and so on ad infinitum.

There is also an illusory feeling that there is enough time and at any moment you can do this important business. It's just that there are more urgent matters that require attention at this time.

The impact of Parkinson's idea is most pronounced in fixed-wage employees. They simply do not need to "jump out of their pants", performing the assigned tasks immediately after the occurrence. Because the volume of work will gradually increase, bringing absolutely no benefit, but only exhausting and causing stress.

In general, if the task takes only two hours of work, complete it in two, you should not give yourself “indulgences” and spare minutes, hours and days in case of force majeure situations.

Because most often we create a kind of “buffer” of time due to the fact that we don’t understand how many resources a business actually requires. Why do we assign much more than necessary. Try to assess the situation more rationally and you will be surprised how quickly you will begin to cope with your duties.

A person's expenses increase with the growth of his income.

Think back to when you got a pay raise, how did you do it? Did you start spending money, or did you put aside the “excess” for unforeseen circumstances, continuing to lead the same way of life?

Most people prefer the first option. Yes, and an increase in expenses is inevitable due to the increase in taxes along with income.

Any life development leads to complication, which, in turn, to decomposition

Cyril was of the opinion that a person must strive to rise above these provisions, in particular about development. Otherwise, he is threatened with degradation, stop, or such a level of stress and amount of work that he will no longer be able to cope with.

As an example, it is worth simply remembering all the great civilizations that existed before. They simply disappeared.

That is, the further we advance, the more difficult it is for us then. Let's say you decide to start a business. We organized it ourselves, paying taxes for only one person, doing accounting, purchasing and sales at the same time.

But gradually achieved such success and popularity among customers that it became quite a logical question to expand. Having hired staff, new difficulties and troubles arose.

For example, registration of social packages, vacations, payment of salaries, sick leave. Expenses for taxes have increased and purchases have become more voluminous, which also complicates everything.

And not everyone is able to simultaneously solve a lot of issues and conduct such active image life, if used to live measuredly and calmly. Therefore, the chores grow in proportion to the increase in income.

Development, no matter in what area, gradually leads to perfection, after which, roughly speaking, the final. Therefore, they usually say that you should never stop there. And when completing one project, it is important to already sketch out options for the next, more complex one, so as not to “fall out” completely from the process.

Lesser known, but no less significant laws of Cyril

If you want to know more about them, I recommend reading the books Parkinson's Law or Mrs. Parkinson's Law, In-Laws and Strangers.

It is indicated here summary each of them.

So there is a law:

Thousands. This means that any organization with a thousand or more employees automatically becomes independent and does not need to interact with the outside world.
delays. In Cyril's opinion, delaying or postponing a response is the most effective form of denial. When a person delays fulfilling this promise, they stop relying on him and automatically, unofficially, obligations are removed. Since they cannot rely on him and come to the conclusion that a refusal has been received.
Phone. The effectiveness of a telephone conversation is directly proportional to the amount of time spent on it. Most likely, because, having resolved the main issues and not saying goodbye, empty chatter begins. People are literally "marking time" on the spot, discussing the same thing.
scientific research. Each successful study leads to the need to increase financial costs, which sometimes causes a complete cessation of work.
Information. Quite relevant in the field of computer technology. An increase in the amount of data leads to the fact that the media itself runs out of free space. As a result, it is necessary to invent more advanced devices that can store a large amount of information than the previous ones. And consumers need to buy them, abandoning the "ancient" models.

By the way, the wife of Cyril also brought out, so to speak, the formula for a happy life. According to her notes, the warmth and tenderness that arose during household chores can become more intense, gradually not only filling, but also overflowing the person experiencing them.

Therefore, it is important to share such valuable feelings so that there is space for new ones. Only the transfer of positive emotions is possible to a more, so to speak, cold-blooded person.

Be sure to control your expenses. Otherwise, even an increase in profits will not help you feel freedom and financial independence. It is clear that when you start getting more, you want to buy better goods. But more often than not, money is wasted. For example, twenty-fifth jeans, just because "I can afford it." Therefore, make it a habit to set aside capital for a more expensive, but important purchase, a dream. In terms of, if you dream of a car, with an increase in salary, increase the amount of savings for it.
Avoid credit and debt. Increasing income creates an illusion of stability. That for certain it will be possible to cope with the credit with such remuneration. But in fact, you fall into a debt hole.
Regardless of the amount of money and success, be sure to organize yourself a passive income. That is, one that requires a minimum investment, but at the same time consistently brings some dividends. For example, it can be renting out housing, investing in a promising company, an idea, and so on.
Lead. This will make it easier to keep track of expenses, especially unforeseen and sometimes completely unnecessary.
Avoid the temptation of satisfying momentary desires. Weigh the pros and cons and only then proceed with the implementation of the planned. Because otherwise you run the risk of wasting money on those services, things, and so on, which are completely unnecessary and which are, for example, a successful attempt to manipulate the minds of consumers. When the media form the wrong values in society. For example, that the main sign of a rich person is that he has an expensive car, telephone and apartment. Why do most people acquire movable and immovable property on credit for the sake of illusory status and recognition. Denying yourself the rest of the benefits, starting with vacations and quality rest. The one who has no debts and who is able to create capital is rich. At least, being “at zero”, and not “in the red”.

Time

Give up the idea that you have to work harder to achieve desired results. Your priority should be the result, so the most appropriate motivation would be a focus on quality. That is, work better, not harder. Then in a short period of time you will be able to achieve what, out of habit, you would spend much more effort and other resources on.
Write a to-do list and put next to each time, which, according to your feelings and previous experience, is enough for their implementation. Now your task will be to organize the deadline. Cut your time in half by banishing ideas of unreality. Imagine that these deadlines have been set for you and you cannot influence the decision in any way. As non-fulfillment threatens to reduce the time for the next case. And on a significant "piece".
In order not to be so cruel to yourself, come up with the most suitable motivation. For example, a large number of passion gives energy. Test your strength, what are you capable of? Can you manage or not?
I want to recommend

For some (probably political) reasons, his writings were not recognized by official classical sociology, but Parkinson's writings often contained deeper intuitive insights and had more wisdom than the books of many recognized authorities in the fields of business and management of the 1980s and 1990s. His books, using clear and imaginative arguments, written in excellent language, are far superior, including many recent scientific work in terms of the reliability of their findings and results. original style his work opened up the opportunity to look at familiar social phenomena from an unexpected perspective, which made him one of the founders of a new original direction of philosophical and sociological research.

No less prominent representative of this trend at about the same time was the Canadian writer Lawrence J. Peter, whose book "The Peter Principle or Why Things Go Wrong" became no less popular in the world than "Parkinson's Law". Peter refers to all sorts of administrative hierarchies created by people as the subject of his research, believing that it is this phenomenon of the structural organization of human society that deserves the most in-depth study. He even suggested calling the area of sociological science that he discovered with his works - "hierarchology".

It can be said that the subject of research in Parkinson and Peter coincide, in any case very close. They also have a similar attitude to this subject - both authors consider social structuring to be a generally useful phenomenon, and their criticism is directed mainly to negative phenomena that reduce the effectiveness of the functioning of these structures.

However, one can also see the fundamental difference between Peter's idea and Parkinson's idea. Parkinson explains the operation of his law by some selfish motives of individuals who form a hierarchy and are vested with power. Peter, on the other hand, believes that negative phenomena in administrative and public life stem rather from unintentional incompetence, professional unsuitability for their official duties of people holding responsible positions in institutions or society.

Tracing the chain of reasons why so many people find themselves in positions where they are unable to cope with their duties, Peter derives his famous Peter Principle - "Everyone reaches the level of his incompetence." The main meaning of this principle is that any employee, as a rule, is promoted until he sooner or later finds himself in a place that will require him to have higher professional qualities than he has. Only then it becomes obvious to the authorities that the employee in the new place is incompetent, and he is no longer promoted, but, according to the unwritten rules of the administrative game, he can neither be demoted nor fired - thus the employee gets stuck for a long time in the place where he is unable to cope with your work. It is obvious that the more such workers in the institution who have reached the "level of their incompetence," the author summarizes, the more inefficient the work of the institution. The more such ballast accumulates in society, the closer this society is to its decline and, on the contrary, all useful activity in society is carried out precisely by those who have not yet reached the "level of their incompetence."

Peter describes in great detail the sophisticated administrative techniques that are used in institutions to eliminate or minimize the damage from such workers. In the same place, he also gives numerous comic recommendations to employees, how, in an effort to move up the career ladder, to recognize and bypass dead ends created by someone else's incompetence.

Peter's book is not inferior to the works of Parkinson, neither in the figurativeness of the language, nor in the subtlety and versatility of humor. Like Parkinson's book, Peter's book is valuable mainly for the discovery (primarily to the general public) of many non-obvious regularities in the life of modern society.

Parkinson devoted an entire chapter to a sarcastic (and fairly valid) critique of the Peter Principle. The essence of this criticism was that incompetence does not surround us from all sides, as Peter wrote about it. On the contrary, we completely entrust our lives to the bus driver, the pilot of a civil airliner, etc. - precisely because we are sufficiently confident in their competence. In Peter's defense, it can be pointed out that there are indeed a lot of examples of blatant incompetence in society. Numerous army of "expert-intellectuals" highly scientifically defending completely opposite statements; politicians who systematically fail to keep their promises; seismologists unable to predict an earthquake; even meteorology is all clear evidence that Peter was right.

Peter also mentioned in his book on Parkinson and his law, where he praised the merits of his colleague.

It must be admitted that, in the philosophical aspect, Peter's ideas surpassed the achievements of Parkinson. This is especially true of the last part of his book, which goes beyond the scope of dispassionate satirical analysis and moves into the field of philosophical understanding of modern life and progress. Some of the author's doubts about the reasonableness of the modern social order in itself are also manifested there. Then, through the dispassionate teacher's bravado, obvious anxiety and even pessimism begin to emerge.

In fairness, it must be said that the work of both researchers organically complemented each other. Each of these books contains a whole palette of generalizations, the result of careful observations of the events of our real life and allowing a new understanding of the essence of these events.

In concluding the chapter on Parkinson's law, it is necessary to mention also the so-called Murphy's law, which in general states that "if something can go wrong, it will certainly go wrong."

Running a little ahead, we can point out the obvious connection between this law and a technical term common in Russia - the so-called "fool protection". The essence of this term is that any technical structure must be designed in such a way as to exclude its incorrect use (or its failure as a result of such abnormal use). It is assumed that if a thing fundamentally (constructively) does not exclude the possibility of incorrect connection, then sooner or later there will definitely be a "fool" who, despite all the instructions and manuals, will connect it in such an improper way. Unlike Peter and Parkinson, Murphy was neither a writer, nor a philosopher, nor a sociologist, he was a simple engineer, and formulated his law quite by accident, based on personal sad experience (this case is described in detail by Peter in his book). And he hit the mark - with one laconic formula, Murphy expressed what many inventors-designers probably already intuitively understood - his phrase became a catchphrase.

Murphy's law turned out to be more general than just a technical principle (this was just one of its particular manifestations), it turned out to be quite applicable to sociology. This law has taken its rightful place on a par with Parkinson's Law and the Peter Principle.

Despite the fact that this chapter is devoted primarily to Parkinson's Law, it is not by chance that we mentioned here similar things discovered by other authors. The thing is

that the expression "Parkinson's Law" is often used in a broader and nominal sense, as a form of apt generalization, in one short witty phrase that allows you to express the essence of events in their interconnection. In this broad interpretation, Parkinson's Law, Murphy's Law, and Peter's Principle are only the most famous and popular of the many similar laws formulated by both Parkinson and Peter, and a number of other authors.

In Arthur Bloch's book "Murphi's Law" (Arthur Bloch. Murphi "s law) a set of such laws is compiled that are in circulation on a par with Parkinson's Law. Below we give a selected part of this list, which is mainly related to bureaucracy:

Parkinson's first law. Any work fills all the time allotted for it. Its significance and complexity grow in direct proportion to the time spent on its implementation.

Parkinson's third law. Expansion means complication, and complication means decomposition.

Parkinson's Fourth Law. The number of people in a work group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work that needs to be done.

Fifth Law of Parkinson. If there is a way to delay an important decision, a real official will always use it.

Parkinson's sixth law. The progress of science is inversely proportional to the number of published journals.

Axiom 1. Every boss strives to increase the number of subordinates, not rivals.

Axiom 2: Bosses create work for each other.

The 20/80 rule. 20% of people drink 80% of beer. The same ratio is observed in other areas of human activity.

The golden mean rule. Any worker who is two years younger than you is inexperienced. Any worker who is five years older than you is a retarded old man.

Peter principle. In any hierarchical system, each employee strives to reach his level of incompetence.

Corollary 1. Over time, every position will be occupied by an employee who is incompetent in the performance of his duties.

Consequence 2. The work is done by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

Peter's transformation. Internal consistency is valued more than work efficiency.

Peter's observation. Overcompetence is more undesirable than incompetence.

Placebo Peter. An ounce of reputation is worth a pound of work.

Murphy's Law - If something bad can happen, it will happen.

Corollary 1. As soon as you start doing some work, there is another that needs to be done even earlier.

Corollary 2. Every solution breeds new problems.

Chisholm's second law. When things are going well, something must happen in the very near future.

Corollary 1. When things go from bad to worse, they will go even worse in the very near future.

Consequence 2. If it seems to you that the situation is improving, then you have not noticed something.

Chisholm's Third Law. People understand any proposals differently than the one who makes them.

Corollary 1. Even if your explanation is so clear that it excludes all false interpretation, there will still be a person who will misunderstand you.

Consequence 2. If you are sure that your act will meet with universal approval, someone will definitely not like it.

Everitt's second law of thermodynamics. The confusion in society is constantly increasing. Only by very hard work can it be reduced somewhat. However, this attempt itself will lead to an increase in the total confusion.

Padder's law. Everything that starts well ends badly. Everything that starts badly ends worse.

Meskimen's law. There is never enough time to get the job done right, but there is time to redo it.

Heller's law. The first myth of management science is that it exists.

Johnson investigation. No one knows what is really going on within a given organization.

Weil's axiom. In any organization, work gravitates towards the lowest level of the hierarchy.

Imhoff's law. Every bureaucratic organization is like a cesspool: the biggest pieces always strive to rise to the top...

Cornwell law. Bosses tend to give work to those who are least able to do it.

Zimergi's law of voluntary labor. People are always willing to do a job when it's no longer necessary.

The law of connections. The inevitable result of expanding connections between different levels of the hierarchy is a growing area of misunderstanding.

Law H.L. Mencken. Who knows how to do - does. Who does not know how - teaches.

Martin's addition. Who cannot teach - governs.

Old and Kahn's law. The effectiveness of a meeting is inversely proportional to the number of participants and the time spent.

Hendrickson's Law. If a problem requires multiple meetings, they will eventually become more important than the problem itself.

Falkland's rule. When there is no need to make a decision, it is necessary not to make it.

etc.

Of course, one can treat such laws with a sufficient degree of irony, which, moreover, have a completely different quality. Here it is appropriate to recall one more aphorism, which with all obviousness can be attributed to the same category of Parkinson's laws: "In every joke there is only a fraction of a joke."

1.3 The manifestation of Parkinson's laws in modern Russia

Parkinson's first book, published in 1957, introduced this Law to a wide circle of readers and it was unconditionally accepted that it has global significance, that all the bureaucracies of the world are in its field of action.

With regard to Russia, with its traditional bureaucracy and over-centralization, one can expect that it is a truly fertile field for the manifestation of Parkinson's laws. The extremely large size of the centralized administrative apparatus should obviously lead to extreme manifestations of Parkinson's laws.

Indeed, many representatives of other countries who visited Russia invariably noticed the absolute omnipotence of the bureaucracy reigning here, surpassing everything they had seen before. Many confirmations of this can be found in Russian historical literature, in particular, in Saltykov-Shchedrin and Chekhov.

One of the works devoted to the manifestation of Parkinson's laws in Russia was written in the late 90s by Moscow Mayor Yu Luzhkov. Speaking about Parkinson's laws, he noted - "For some unknown reason, these humorous laws, discovered" somewhere "in the West, turned out to be adequate precisely to our situation. Moreover: what" they "have" is only an exception against the background general rational arrangement of life, for us the usual everyday life.

One cannot but agree with his remark that many long-known Russian proverbs and sayings are in many respects an analogue of all the same Parkinson's laws, for example:

"Work is not a wolf - it will not run away into the forest"

This is from the old Russian peasant folklore. Modern realities have given rise to new expressions:

"No matter what the Russians try to do, a Kalashnikov assault rifle always comes out"

"We wanted the best, but it turned out as always"

It is interesting to follow the metamorphosis of the law that has passed through all the social formations through which Russia has passed, and which Luzhkov called "if you don't break it, you won't fall asleep." IN Soviet time: "Drag every nail from the factory, you are the master here, not a guest!" (as an option - "everything around is collective farm, everything around is mine"). From Dahl's dictionary (tsarist time): "Drag from the treasury, that from the fire - the treasury is given for profit."

From the old bureaucratic folklore: "We are children of Mother Russia, she is our uterus - we suck her."

And very briefly in Karamzin: "They steal ..."

In the most general view this is obviously connected with the traditional disrespect for the law expressed in the well-known Russian proverb: "The law that drawled, where it turned there and left."

This series of laws can be continued, for example, with the following observations made by experts from Europe:

"The Russians themselves create difficulties for themselves, then heroically overcome them, and then they themselves give themselves awards for overcoming them."

It is not superfluous to cite (although it was not included in Luzhkov's article) the last catchphrase that belongs to the chairman of the Moscow City Duma Platonov: "We are not idiots - we are Russians!" Here there is an obvious connection with Tyutchev's "the mind cannot understand Russia ..."

If we summarize Luzhkov's ideas, we can say that he sees the soil on which the Russian laws of Parkinson manifest themselves in the mentality of a Russian person, in his special character. Accordingly, he believes that by cultivating certain useful traits in Russians, one can achieve their correction to the level of a Western person. Alas, those reformers whom he criticizes at the beginning of his work most likely initially thought the same:

"Our brave radical reformers proceeded from the postulate that 'no need to invent anything', that 'twice two makes four both here and in Paris,' as one young prime minister liked to repeat. With reckless perseverance, these zealous young people copied one by one everything , which is alien to the local economic tradition, the historically established skills of economic thinking and behavior ... And here is the result.

Instead of recognizing the simple truth - that the failure of reforms is a natural result of a careless attitude to Russian realities - they began to blame the country and its people. It has come to assertions that "this wrong country" has no right to exist, it only harms the world, that its destiny is to be a "black hole", turn into a "global sump", from which, in the opinion of one of the recent privatizers, they will be forced to leave all thinking people...

Here, Luzhkov obviously believed that a more gradual transition to a market economy was necessary, but his method of forming the "new man" surprisingly resembles both the Petrine and Stolypin reforms and the strategy of the Bolsheviks. One way or another, they are based on the same violent coercive measures to create, mold a "new man". That is, again we see the artificial imposition of their "enlightened will" on people, which was the case with the reformers criticized by him.

"What kind of mentality is this, how to make it serve the prosperity of Russia? How to comprehend the fundamental features of the business and work ethics of Russians?" Luzhkov exclaims. And he immediately admits - "There were many such attempts, we are not at all pioneers here. Almost every domestic thinker, not to mention foreigners, tried to give his own description."

Yes, there were many reformer tsars, both evil and kind, both strong and weak, and stupid and smart (presumably they were no more stupid than Luzhkov), and they possessed all the fullness of autocratic power, all the levers of influence on the Russian population, but, as says, - "and things are still there." This, obviously, is also the fundamental Russian law of Parkinson, in which, however, the old formulation of the same "law of the Kalashnikov assault rifle" is guessed.

Further, Luzhkov, in general, correctly notices some features of a typical Russian - "I would say this. We observe two interrelated tendencies, two inclinations of a Russian person: the need for a leader, a king, a strong supreme power, and the need to deceive this power without fail. These are complementary things."

From this follows another Russian Parkinson's law: "The strictness of Russian laws is compensated by the optionality of their implementation"

Here Luzhkov comes to the following thought: “The classical method of control is based on the fact that orders are executed more or less accurately. It has a lot of advantages, this method, but on one condition: orders must be reasonable. For with incompetent management, such a mechanism quickly ruins the system We have a different one: each individual order is executed poorly, but the whole system as a whole is more stable. Because it has adapted to survive in conditions of bad management."

A perfectly reasonable guess. True, Luzhkov did not disclose where bad management comes from, apparently it is assumed that it is from incompetent rulers. Here it is implicitly implied that he (Luzhkov) is competent. Then we read “the main task, first of all, is to gain trust in order to lead society ... yes, precisely to the market, where else?” Of course, “society must be led…” here it begs to be continued “towards a brighter future.” In general, one can even guess who will be the guide.

Oddly enough, gaining trust is not such a big problem; in the 20s, trust in Lenin and the Bolsheviks was even more than enough. A little later, people showed no less confidence in Stalin. Of course, it is apparently impossible to win absolute trust, but an absolute "overwhelming" majority, with the help of correctly staged propaganda, as Russian practice shows, is quite possible. The distrusting minority, usually in such cases, can either be ignored or, as is most often the case in Russian realities, destroyed.

Another law from the category of "Russian Parkinson", which Luzhkov cites in his article, he calls the "no" law. It characterizes the difference in the mentality of Western and Russian people. It is natural for a Westerner to look for a solution to the problem that is put before him. If the same task is set for a Russian, the Russian, as a rule, looks for various reasons not to solve it. What surprises Luzhkov, not finding an explanation for this, is the fact that this law is also successfully operating in the corporate sector.

Of the laws cited in Luzhkov's work, the following can also be mentioned: "Maybe", "Here and immediately", "The principle of manna from heaven".

"Repair cannot be completed, it can only be stopped",

More generally: "It is somehow possible to achieve 95% of the work, the last five are almost impossible", it looks like an extreme manifestation of one of the laws from Bloch's collection of A, the so-called "Project deadline rules (90/90)": "The first 90% of work takes 10% of the time, and the last 10% takes the remaining 90% of the time."

The "temporary law" is based on a Western analogue - the principle of Meskimen: "There is always not enough time to do the job properly, but there is time for rework"

One way or another, Luzhkov's idea is that all these hypertrophied manifestations of Parkinson's laws are consequences of one common cause. Luzhkov sums up: "The problem is not that Russia is a country of bad people, but that it is a country of bad governance"

Nevertheless, Luzhkov, in addition to general recommendations not to blindly copy someone else's experience, does not give new answers to the question of what exactly are the root causes of such poor governance in Russia. And in this, he, perhaps, only repeats the sad experience of Stolypin.

2 Analysis of the essence of bureaucracy

2.1 History of bureaucracy.

Apparently, such a phenomenon as bureaucracy also existed in the ancient world.

There is a Chinese parable that compares bureaucracy to a weed that has its roots intertwined with a cultivated plant so that they cannot be separated - "I planted an orchid, but I did not plant sagebrush. An orchid sprouted, sagebrush sprouted with it." The poet-gardener Bo Juyi (772-846) then tells how the roots and shoots of noble and evil plants intertwined. He cannot weed out the latter without damaging the former, nor can he water the former without making the latter watered. As a result, wormwood grows with the orchid."

Max Weber, at the beginning of the century said that on the horizon modern civilization looms the bureaucracy of the ancient Egyptian type, improved with the latest science and technology.

On the other hand, if you look back, deep into history and try to look more closely at primitive society, or read detailed descriptions customs of tribes living on the newly discovered continents of America and Australia made several centuries ago by eyewitnesses - European colonists, or refer to those few primitive societies still preserved in our days in remote corners of the earth, we probably will not see there even timid signs of that social phenomenon that has now flourished so magnificently in modern society, which surrounds modern man from all sides.

This is perfectly illustrated by the language vocabulary of these tribes, which reflects the deep relationship of their way of life and lifestyle with nature, but practically does not include any bureaucratic concepts.

On the other hand, the Roman Empire already had a developed administrative and bureaucratic apparatus, an illustration of which, of course, is primarily the well-known Roman law with an appropriate judicial system, and the relevant bodies providing it.

From a comparison of these facts, it can be assumed that bureaucratic tendencies began to manifest themselves as statehood developed, and, moreover, they found their most noticeable development, which is important to note, with a specific, special statehood - the so-called imperial type.

Here it is necessary to introduce some concepts about the two types of statehood.

At all stages of development from a family to a tribal tribal community, then to an even larger ethnic community - an ethnos or people, and finally to a nation with clearly defined sovereign territory and state institutions, we can see forms of voluntary organization of people. For such associations, it is typical that they are not static, as a rule, they are dynamic objects, organisms living their complex lives, changing in time, migrating in space, separating, merging or branching like tree shoots. They often lose their representatives or take in new ones, usually in numbers that do not pose a danger to the existence or stability of the way of life of the tribe itself.

From the history of the tribes of North America, for example, it is known how a large group of their representatives separated from the tribe of the Mohicans (also called "River Indians") living in the mouth and valley of the Hudson River, who moved to the neighboring Susquihanna River. This was the beginning of the Delaware tribe, related to the Mohicans, but with its own special culture and way of life. Moreover, according to Indian legends, the Mohicans were considered the progenitors of all or most of the tribes that settled on the American continent after the distant ancestors of the Mohicans once crossed the narrow isthmus between Siberia and Alaska and first set foot on the land of America.

A similar phenomenon occurred in Europe, for example, in Switzerland - here the creation of statehood took place through the voluntary and gradual unification of several mountain tribal communities - cantons. The Swiss still speak 4 languages, nevertheless they form a single stable community with statehood, represented primarily by developed social institutions.

We can observe a similar process now - an attempt at a voluntary unification of Europe.

Let us once again note the voluntariness, non-violence of all these dividing or unifying processes.

But, as can be seen from history, the creation of societies, countries and states did not occur only voluntarily. Whenever one community forcibly annexed (did not exterminate or expel) another, usually with the aim of seizing its territory, collecting tribute, or in an effort to impose its culture, that is, to dominate economically, culturally and politically, a state was thereby formed imperial type.

Quite a few states of this type were known - these are the Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, the empire of Genghis Khan, the Golden Horde, the British, Austro-Hungarian, Russian empires, the USA (in relation to the Indians), etc. An unsuccessful attempt to create a statehood of this type was also Short story III Reich in 1939-1945.

It can be argued that the III Reich was also a kind of attempt to unite Europe, but, unlike the EU, on opposite, imperial principles. It is on the example of comparing the European Union and the Third Reich that we can see the systemic difference between these two types of states, with the almost complete identity of their territory and population.

The non-obvious connection of states of this type, practicing systematic violence and waging colonial wars, with the development of bureaucracy can be found in Parkinson's book. Thus, studying the Malaysian bureaucracy in action and comparing it with his experience as a staff officer during the Second World War, Parkinson noted that it would take years to create organizational structures that took a couple of weeks in a military environment, now in a peaceful environment, it would take years. - "When there is a war, bureaucracy is able to arise, grow and spread so quickly that the whole process is at a glance and easily amenable to study." Thus, it can be concluded that for the growth of the bureaucracy the factor of forcible management of society is very essential. That is why, subject to the dominance of bureaucracy, one can see it least of all in imperial-type states, policemen who systematically suppress rebellions - "pacifying" the population or constantly waging war against some external or internal enemy ("cleansing" on class, ethnic or some other basis ).

In contrast to societies of the imperial type, in which the metropolitan and colonized groups of the population are clearly expressed - the oppressor and the oppressed, in voluntary societies (strictly speaking, only the concept of "community" corresponds to them) can often not find a trace of bureaucratization at all.

To the horror of modern lawyers - "How?!! So anyone can hit another with a club on the head with impunity?", in these societies there is no written law and law (sometimes, however, due to the lack of writing itself). Nevertheless, such communities have existed and still exist, and often thrive quite well.

An example is the community we call family. Probably rarely did it occur to any of the spouses to create a family constitution, draw up civil codes of the rights of the husband and the rights of the wife, document the rights of the son, or certify with a legal document the percentage of the salary that the husband is obliged to give to his wife. Although, of course, it should be recognized that in recent times the practice of concluding marriage contracts has appeared - thus administration, and with it bureaucratization, also penetrates into this voluntary social institution.

As for more complex communities, such as ethnic ones, a closer look reveals that here, too, people's relations are mainly regulated not so much by a set of written laws with a judicial apparatus attached to it and a corresponding coercive apparatus, but are built mainly on people's deep trust in each other - similarly , however, as in the family institute.

The code of laws here is replaced by a code of unwritten customs polished over the centuries and inspired from childhood (they were called adats among the mountain peoples) and a set of ready-made precedents for resolving disputes and conflict situations accepted in the community.

As an example of such well-known and previously practiced, non-legal customs, one can cite, for example, a duel (not all peoples duel involved death, it often prescribed a competition in will, courage or in the ability to endure pain)

As another such custom, blood feud can be cited. With its seeming cruelty, it should be noted that it was practiced in a society in which there were no prisons, no punitive bodies, no professional executioners. In the so-called modern "civilized" society, cruelty is no less - it's just that, just like the right to violence, the state monopolizes.

Apparently, the modern legislative system was not accidentally created precisely in the imperial states (its foundations were laid in the so-called Roman law). It was the need to maintain a homogeneous order from a single center in a vast area that required the creation and development of a complex administrative and management apparatus.

Speaking about such an important factor contributing to the development of bureaucracy as writing, it is obvious that it made the existence of large multi-tiered permanent administrative hierarchies technically possible, covering vast territories with its influence. It was writing that provided information support for the real functioning of such formations.

In conclusion, we can conclude that history clearly shows the obvious relationship between the bureaucracy and the state of the imperial type and the imperial style of governing society.

2.2 Bureaucracy in the works of Peter and other scientists and writers.

There is an ancient parable about three blind wise men who were asked to describe an elephant. One was given to hold the elephant's leg, the second by the tail, and the third was given to touch the trunk. When asked what an elephant is, the first sage replied that the elephant is like a column, the second - like a rope, the third - like a thick rope.

Attempts to describe bureaucracy as a holistic phenomenon are sometimes very reminiscent of the experience of those blind wise men from the parable, the theories presented by different researchers are so different from each other. Does this mean that all such attempts to study the bureaucracy eventually turn out to be useless, leading to no results?

In order to explain this paradox, it should be clarified that each test-study, albeit generally erroneous, often contains a certain proportion of true facts and open particular patterns from which it is gradually possible to build a more and more complete picture of the phenomenon under study. Often even a negative experience often carries a positive impulse in advancing towards the knowledge of the truth.

This method is practiced in astronomy, geology (when many individual geological samples are used to build an integral geological map of the occurrence of all layers over a vast territory), geography (when, based on a combination of various facts, people made a completely correct conclusion about the spherical shape of the Earth, long before they saw it from space), astronomy and many other sciences that base their conclusions on the accumulated experience of many researchers, both past and present.

If we assume that those sages were allowed to repeatedly touch the elephant from all sides, exchange their observations among themselves, we would soon see that the descriptions of the blind sages of the elephant would come much closer to each other and, most importantly, to the correct idea of the elephant itself.

It is obvious that the same methodology should be tried in the study of bureaucracy, it is worth looking for rational seeds in the theories and observations of our predecessors.

Peter and Parkinson raised the study of this social phenomenon to a new level, for the first time focusing on the very essence of bureaucracy, highlighting it from the totality of other social phenomena. But not less interesting descriptions this phenomenon can be found in some works of art of the past.

First of all, the literary works of the Austrian writer Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) stand out against the general background. His most famous works, The Castle and The Trial, depict societies that are very similar to those that are usually called legal in our time. In these societies there are no dictators or tyrants, the main organizing role in them is played by law, norms and regulations, and officials of various ranks are called upon to provide them.

The "Castle" shows, drawn somewhat abstractly, a certain administrative body - the Castle. Next to the Castle is the society he manages - the Village. As a result of a clerical error, the main character, a land surveyor, enters society, but turns out to be superfluous in it. All his attempts to correct the mistake run into the lack of interest of officials in this. Nevertheless, the land surveyor retains the hope that, having reached some sufficiently high authority, he will receive the desired resolution of his issue.

In this society, there are living people with their own characters, passions, advantages and disadvantages, these are, as a rule, ordinary villagers. But the higher they go up the administrative ladder, the more distinctly the human element disappears in them and the features of the cogs of a huge bureaucratic mechanism appear. Cogs individually are quite harmless and vulnerable, but in general, this whole well-coordinated mechanism has tremendous irresistible power.

It is interesting to note that corruption in Kafka does not play a primary role, the emphasis is on the opposition of bureaucratic law and the rule of law of real human life and common sense.

There is an opinion that Kafka only described in the Castle the rejection of the “stranger” by the society. But perhaps this is too narrow a view of Kafka's idea. If you look closely at the inhabitants of the Village, then even among them you will rarely be able to find happy faces - it seems that the oppressive shadow of the Castle hangs over all the inhabitants. Even among them there are outcasts, thrown out of life, whose only fault was that they dared to act not in accordance with the law, but in accordance with common sense, conscience and human dignity. Probably, Kafka wanted to show that any of the members of this society can be in the role of a land surveyor of the "alien".

Kafka's novel "The Castle" was unfinished. But this incompleteness, as it seems, carries a certain artistic meaning. Rising to higher and higher administrative levels, the land surveyor, however, seems to be eternally doomed to climb this endless ladder, without any prospect of any end - happy or unsuccessful. Here, in the image of the Castle, we see in a peculiar perspective, but quite clearly, the contours of a phenomenon that later became the subject of in-depth studies by Parkinson and Peter.

In his second novel, The Trial, Kafka bases his plot on the functioning of the bureaucracy in jurisprudence. And there main character as if he gets into the gears of a gigantic bureaucratic mechanism, the functioning of which is completely impossible to influence, despite any of his most desperate tricks to call this machine to common sense. As in "The Castle", the plot of the plot is not so important here (if in "The Castle" it all started with a routine clerical error, then in "The Trial" with a false denunciation.) And not the final tragic denouement is the culmination of this novel. Rather, the ideological peak and the deepest mental penetration into the essence of the bureaucratic organism is the conversation of the hero with the priest and the parable told to him by the priest.

Both novels can be attributed to the genre of the so-called dystopia. Nevertheless, despite all the grotesque and fantastic nature of Kafka's novels, as well as Orwell's novels, these dystopias were destined to have their tragic incarnations in real life.

The embodiment of Kafka's "Process" can, for example, be seen in the latest Soviet history with its troikas of 37-53s. In this regard, there are some doubts about the exclusive personal responsibility of Stalin for those events - and whether those events were a manifestation of the collective will of the entire bureaucratic machine that grinds people. In this case, it can be assumed that another person could take the place of Stalin, but, most likely, the result would be the same.

An even clearer confirmation of this is the dispossession of the kulaks in the 1930s. It is known that it was supported by the rest of society, not to mention the state apparatus, including many of those who later themselves fell into the repression machine of the 1937s (such as Tukhachevsky).

Another literary treatment of this theme is Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There are two storylines in the novel - one is the actual life of the inhabitants of the asylum, the second is the story of an Indian leader, his family and tribe, his growing up and their interaction with modern industrial society.

Kesey's bureaucratic machine does not immediately become the protagonist of the novel, as it happens in Kafka's novels, at the very beginning it is present somewhat implicitly, in the form of a mysterious and fantastic "combine", which may well be mistaken for the fruit of the leader's sick imagination. Only gradually, in the reasoning of the leader of the Mop, does it take on its increasingly clear outlines. The author obviously puts his thoughts and feelings into the words of the leader, gradually revealing the whole dramatic essence of the reality surrounding him.

As in the case of Kafka's The Castle, there is sometimes a very narrow and obviously misunderstanding of Kesey's idea. Often the meaning of this novel is interpreted only as a protest against abuse with psychiatric patients.

A more complete and correct understanding of Kesey's idea lies precisely in the fact that this clinic is a small model of a real human society. The nurse, obviously, personifies the bureaucratic apparatus, a kind of generalized official trying to fit the real world of living people to those invented by someone. paper charts, instructions and accepted routine of the hospital. The primary value for her is the Order, not the people, here, obviously, there is a clear connection with the characteristic psychological feature officials. The pacifier nurses, if you like, can be interpreted as the power structures of this small clinic state. It is no coincidence that by the end of the novel it is revealed that many patients are in the clinic voluntarily, vainly trying to escape behind the doors of the clinic from the outside world, which, in essence, repeats the same madhouse, but on a larger scale.

It can be said that the tragic fate of the lonely rebel McMurphy is a reduced mirror copy of the sad history of a whole tribe - the people to which the protagonist of the novel, the leader Mop, belonged. By opening two storylines in parallel, Kesey illustrates the analogy between order in a madhouse and order in a real human society. Kesey's culminating allegory seems to be that this originally living, full-blooded people was (figuratively speaking) subjected to a lobotomy, as they eventually did with McMurphy in the clinic.

In the imagination of the leader, Kesey draws a whole image of the bureaucratic power machine - the "combine" (which obviously corresponds to the image of the Castle in Kafka). The image of a cog-man is reflected in the leader's idea of the goals of the Combine - to make all people the same, (law) obedient, predictable and ideally fitted for the places allotted to them in the structure of the social order. A clear parallel with this can be found in the book of Lawrence Peter, for people of a similar warehouse, he introduced the term - "puppet in the ranks."

Like Kafka, Kesey penetrates the essence of bureaucracy much deeper than many less sophisticated researchers who believe that the main problem of bureaucracy lies in corruption. It is the idea of bureaucracy as an integral organism that is perhaps the main thing that unites the views of people as diverse in profession and worldview as Parkinson, Peter, Kafka and Kesey. And this represents a significant step forward - referring again to our parable of the elephant, let's say that only the realization by the sages that their so different sensations (from the tail, leg or trunk) are elements that make up one common whole, will allow them to move further in comprehending truth.

Another case of unusually deep artistic comprehension can be found in the preface to Leo Tolstoy's novel Hadji Murad. In this short but surprisingly expressive passage, one senses the spirit of the same idea as in Kesey's novel.

We are talking about a flower of a wild burdock-thistle "Tatar", which people plowed up with a plow and ran over with a ruthless cartwheel. But the crippled, wounded, doomed plant continues to fight for its life with all its last strength - "But it still stands and does not surrender to the man who destroyed all his brethren around him. What energy! - I thought. - Man conquered everything, destroyed millions of herbs, and this one doesn't give up."

Tolstoy draws a parallel with Caucasian war The 19th century, when the gigantic military-bureaucratic machine of the Russian Empire, like a merciless plow plowing space and grinding wild herbs, suddenly stumbled upon a small mountain people desperately resisting its expansion.

This metaphor - the image of a human plow - personifies the same irresistible force of the bureaucratic state apparatus, "plowing" and "cultivating" the wild human "field" with the "weeds" that have bred on it - naturally formed peoples and tribes.

A remarkable passage called "Shadows of the Past" is found at the beginning of E Salgari's novel "In the Far West". Salgari wrote it under the influence of past Indian wars in North America. Like Tolstoy, it presents two worlds - the world of bureaucratic civilization and the world of natural primitive peoples - "...two worlds collided, two civilizations collided. One is the world of primitive people, nomads, hunters. The other is the world of iron culture, the world, the whole seized with a thirst for profit at all costs, capture, plunder the natural wealth of mother earth, accumulated over tens of millennia ... "

The novel was written in 1909, Salgari already had the opportunity to observe the result of this collision, and the whole story happened quite recently and was known to him and his contemporaries in all details. Salgari writes: "Even then (when it all began), no one had any doubts about how this struggle would end" ... ... Then there was a stormy era, an era of struggle, full of dramatic episodes. Now this struggle has receded into the realm of legends and ended tragically for the vanquished: they almost disappeared from the face of their native land. They died out, as the herds of bison died out.

The image of the integral "world of iron culture" is quite consistent with the image of the "plow" in Tolstoy, or the "combine" in Kesey.

An interesting quote about the psychology of the "cogs" of the bureaucratic mechanism can be found in M Reid's novel "Osceola the Seminole Chief". Mine Reed describes the traits of one of the heroes of the novel, a government agent, as follows - "He himself did not harbor enmity towards the Seminoles. He was indignant only at those leaders who had already spoken out against his plans. He simply hated one of them. But the main goal that inspired him , there was a desire to fulfill the task entrusted to him by the government in the best possible way, and in this way to win for himself the authority and glory of an experienced diplomat... On this altar, he was ready, like most other government officials, to sacrifice his personal independence, freedom of opinion and honor "It's not a matter of necessarily serving the king. Replace "king" with the word "congress", and here is the motto of our agent!"

Perhaps without realizing it, Reed wrote an accurate psychological portrait of a typical official, a separate brick of which the bureaucratic organization is composed. Although such factors as greed or corruption are not present here, nevertheless, those forces (or motives) that set the entire bureaucratic machine in motion are clearly shown. More than a century later, N Parkinson and L Peter came to a close understanding of the psychology of bureaucracy in their works.

Description of various aspects of bureaucratic regularities can be found in S Lem's "Sum of Technology", in the famous Indian pentalogy about the Leather Stocking by D. F. Cooper, in William Golding's story "Lord of the Flies", and in the philosophical reflections of some other authors.

One way or another, from these examples it becomes clear that for a comprehensive understanding of the essence of bureaucracy, the means of management theory or psychology alone are not enough. The most effective here seems to be the application of methods of philosophical research. That is why all further analysis will be based mainly on the philosophical understanding of reality.

III Ways to fight bureaucracy

Nevertheless, it is necessary to formulate what we mean by the concept of bureaucracy, that is, what exactly needs to be fought against, corruption, self-interest of officials in the administrative apparatus (bureaucracy of the first kind) or autocracy of the bureaucratic apparatus itself.

If we accept the first evil as the main evil, then probably the administrative apparatus of Germany during the Third Reich can be considered the closest to the ideal free from corruption - with its clear formulation and organization of work in concentration camps, general registration of the population and its mobilization for socially significant tasks of the front and rear. According to many historians, the German army of that time - the Wehrmacht was the best in terms of discipline, training, technical equipment and quality of organization among all the armies of the world. To a large extent, this can be explained by the apparently national character of the Germans, a tendency to accuracy, discipline and law-abiding. The same can be said about the German war economy, according to well-known evidence, at that time there was a sharp reduction in unemployment and an increase in incomes of the population. According to some historians, only economic exhaustion led Germany to defeat in World War III - as a result of political miscalculations and by coincidence, it ended up in a confrontation with a coalition of opponents with much greater economic and human potential

Stalin's Russia can also serve as an example of such a rational organization of socially significant labor. People who lived in those days remember that they could be imprisoned for being late. But, - they unanimously note, - but there was order. And, perhaps, we should not doubt the reliability of these testimonies.

We deliberately gave examples of two, as it is now recognized by many, sinister totalitarian regimes. However, paradoxically, they are examples worthy of emulation in terms of overcoming bureaucracy of the first kind - corruption. Strange as it may sound, this would probably be recognized by many narrow specialists in management, economics or jurisprudence.

It is only in the moral aspect that the ideality of these regimes is clearly doubtful. Indeed, a lot of works have been written on the topic of economics and management theory, which, as a rule, do not affect the moral aspects of personal existence in society at all. They mainly focus on how to ensure the greatest economic growth or how to ensure the correct behavior of people in society (demographic, economic, etc.) with the help of the legal (legal) system.

So, for example, from the point of view of economic theory, any rare resource should be given to someone who is able to pay the state more for it. From here, apparently, it should be expected that the criminals who stole and robbed (having a lot of money) will gradually degenerate into conscientious bourgeois developing the economy for the benefit of society. The fact that hundreds of people robbed and robbed by these criminals remained poor, often without means of subsistence, remains beyond the scope of economic theory, but the maximum GDP will be achieved.

Another version of the same economic paradigm - the resource should be given to those who can use it most efficiently. In other words, land - to peasants, factories - to workers, money - to bankers and financiers, computers - to programmers, forest - to lumberjacks, etc.

From this, meanwhile, it should follow that the best and most expensive car should not belong to the one who created it or bought it, but to the one who drives it best, for example, Schumacher. And, for example, North American Indians or other aboriginal peoples who did not know how to use the land efficiently (for example, to develop minerals) remained completely outside the framework of both economic paradigms, and did not have money to buy it.

Similar problems can be found in the legal aspect - the ideal and at one time progressive Roman law, nevertheless, fixed slavery, just like serfdom in Russia - the feudal enslavement of people. Is there any doubt that in Nazi Germany concentration camps operated strictly within the framework of its own legal field (as well as the Gulag system in Stalin's Russia).

From all this it is clear that economic and legal analysis alone is not enough to understand the essence of the issue. Moreover, they are even more likely to be harmful, since they significantly narrow the view of the problem, which seems to be much deeper and more complex.

From these same examples, it becomes clear that the level of corruption or the effectiveness of the organization alone is not enough to evaluate the bureaucratic mechanism. From a general philosophical point of view, the main criterion for the usefulness of any phenomenon is the difference between the benefits and costs (harm) brought by it to each individual (concrete) person. We will also adopt this principle for evaluating the effectiveness of the administrative apparatus. Another important philosophical and moral concept underlying our methodology is justice.

Here it is necessary to clarify that although law and legality are often understood as justice (justice in translation - justice), in reality they are not synonymous. So the well-known saying "Let the world collapse, but justice will reign" is inherently more philosophical than legal, since it introduces a non-legal concept of "justice", proclaiming it the highest value. The slogan "The law is harsh, but it is the law" is more in line with legal law. It proclaims the law as the highest value, that is, a certain logical-conceptual formula expressed on paper, regardless of how fair it is in reality.

As discussed above, any human society can be either voluntary or coercive. From a moral point of view, it hardly makes sense to consider the effectiveness of the bureaucratic apparatus in coercive societies, since it is obvious that the more perfect the administrative apparatus of suppression and coercion functions in the legal, economic and organizational aspect, the more injustice it generates.

Therefore, we will first consider a voluntary society, which is usually called democratic (in the Western sense). Ideally, it is believed that in such societies the entire population (more precisely, all its citizens - the people) is the owner of the territory and the state. Government officials, from lowly employees to the highest rank (president or prime minister, etc.) are only employees. A democratic country can be thought of as an analogue of a corporation whose shares are distributed equally among all its citizens. For comparison: the monarchy is also a kind of corporation, all the shares of which belong to only one person - the monarch. One can also find obvious formal similarities between the constitution of a country and the charter of a corporation. In general, the state has many properties that can be observed in corporate governance.

As in any joint-stock company, shareholders, of course, are interested in reducing the costs of maintaining the administrative apparatus, in its effective work in the interests of each individual shareholder. But effective management in such a state is hampered by the fact that no one has a controlling stake, and minority shareholders, as Parkinson noted, show little interest in influencing everyday business life. In general, the interests of small shareholders are associated with the receipt of dividends. "Meal'n'Real!" - Citizens of the Roman Empire demanded such dividends from their state. In our time, the population usually requires the government to provide a certain standard of living, various social services, security, etc.

As a consequence, in order for such a democracy to function, a cumbersome electoral system, a system of parliamentary representation, separation of powers, and other democratic institutions are necessary. Unfortunately, all of them are a favorable environment for the development of the first kind of bureaucracy - corruption.

One way or another, with all its shortcomings, the democratic form of social organization is recognized as the most just of all. This is perhaps the only thing that is difficult to dispute, since there is no clear evidence that a democracy will necessarily be more successful than a dictatorship in economic or military terms.

One of the principles of justice was formulated by Confucius - "Do not treat others the way you do not want to be treated yourself."

Another principle is most clearly proclaimed in Islam: "Repay equals, but do not transgress." There is also its analogue in the Old Testament: "A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye."

The third principle was introduced by Henry George and well covered in L Tolstoy's article "To the working people": "All people have exclusive property rights to the products of their labor, and equal rights to natural (not created by anyone) values (in particular, to land)" .

The fourth principle can be called the principle of the sovereignty of the individual, it recognizes for each person the natural right to self-ownership - the exclusive possession of himself, his body and consciousness. For example, no one has the right to use the organs of another person (no matter how bad he may be) without his consent for a donor transplant (even to the best of people). One of the embodiments of this humanistic principle is known to us from history - the prohibition of slavery. Its expression is also the declaration of human rights.

The fifth principle was formulated, it seems, by Voltaire: "The freedom of one person ends where the freedom of another begins." Although, perhaps for completeness, it would be worth supplementing it with the requirement of equality of freedoms of both individuals.

All these natural principles come from one fundamental principle - the equality of the natural rights of people.

Paradoxically, these fundamental principles of humanity are rejected by lawyers and many other modern narrow specialists - doctors, politicians, economists. In reality, these natural principles are violated everywhere. These violations in most cases have a legislative justification, which is the legal embodiment of a particular social, economic or scientific dogma. For example, the doctrine of socialism directly violates the third principle of justice.

If we take a closer look at the modern Western democratic society, we will see that, to put it simply, justice is considered to be the will of the majority of society. The subordination of the will of the minority to the majority is considered lawful and just.

VI Lenin, apparently, also supported such a simplified "vulgar" understanding of democracy for some time. So speaking of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and its correlation with the construction of a truly democratic and just society, he emphasized: "that, unlike the autocracy, this is the dictatorship of the majority over the minority." Nevertheless, this alone already contains a violation of the fundamental principles of justice.

Indeed, in such a case, one should also recognize the justice of the desire of the German majority to exterminate the Jewish minority in Hitler's Germany. Therefore, after the 2nd World War, some amendments had to be made to such a vulgar understanding of democracy. The concept of fundamental human rights emerged.

The concept of human rights partially embodies the fourth natural principle of justice, that is, they introduce some protection for minorities from encroachment on them by the will of the majority, in other words, they recognize the limited sovereignty of minorities.

The state bureaucracy in a democratic society is precisely why, unlike authoritarian regimes, it is extremely complex, because it has to constantly coordinate the numerous, diverse and often conflicting interests of a large number of population groups. It consists of many developed social institutions designed to determine the will of both the majority and the will of minorities and to implement effective feedback from society to the government.

This mode of production limits people's ability to real self-esteem, limits their economic independence and breaks the interests of society along professional lines.

An interesting description of the atmosphere that arises within such professional clans was given by L Peter. Such clans or classes create their own rather narrow world with their own language, jargon-slang incomprehensible to the uninitiated and with their own special non-national interests. It is no coincidence that the military and special services, even in opposing states, easily find mutual language with each other. Also, the slogan "Proletarians of all countries unite" was far from empty words. It can also be added that in such a society people are extremely dependent on each other and on the society itself and its bureaucratic structures.

For comparison, it is necessary to consider another type of society, usually they are called the East or patriarchal and are considered industrially undeveloped. These are many Asian, predominantly agrarian countries - Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, etc. Production there is concentrated mainly in autonomous family communities, which themselves control the entire production process, right down to the finished product, as well as all their costs and income. An interesting consequence of this, for example in India, is natural difficulties with the collection of taxes, which financially hinders the development of the state bureaucracy. I must say that Russia was partly a country of this kind, before the industrialization of the 30s, and to an even greater extent - before the reforms of Peter I.

You can notice another feature of human existence in modern industrial society. Modern man has to interact and fight for survival, for his place under the sun, for leadership, mainly with society, while in societies of the eastern and primitive type - with nature. The isolation of modern man from nature, which served as the supreme and independent arbiter in evaluation and natural selection, leads to the dependence of human evaluation on the subjective and in many cases erroneous views of society. IN modern world man has to pay for the miscalculations of society, while before nature he always had to pay only for his own mistakes.

Maybe society, by definition, cannot make mistakes? Here we can recall the "witch hunt" in the Middle Ages, and the Nazi period in Germany and the 70-year building of communism in Russia. Then, with the consent of the overwhelming majority of society, millions of people were killed, most of whom would undoubtedly have survived in the natural environment.

More than a century and a half ago, Fenimore Cooper was equally skeptical about the phenomenon of public opinion, so popular in democratic circles and absolutized even today:

"Wa-ta-Wa, as best she could, translated Hetty's words to the wary Indians, who reacted to this with the same surprise with which a modern American would hear that the great ruler of all human affairs - public opinion - can be mistaken ..."

A similar point of view was held by another great literary classic - M Reed.

To complete the picture of classical modern Western society, one should apparently mention such an important social phenomenon as socialism. Despite the fact that the orthodox socialist model was defeated in Russia, the socialist idea itself continues its successful existence and has become widespread in many Western countries. This is, for example, the "Swedish model of socialism", the rule of the socialists in France, to one degree or another, socialist elements are now present in the state institutions of almost any Western democratic society, including the United States.

First of all, it is necessary to define what is meant by the concept of socialism. The term itself comes from the word social, which means society. From this we can conclude that socialism presupposes the priority of the public over the individual. Its opposite should, apparently, be considered liberalism.

In contrast to liberalism, which is based on natural human rights, the concept of personal freedom and independence, and the concept of justice, close to the one outlined above in the four principles we have cited, socialism is based on the doctrine of the so-called "social justice". The concept of social justice is built on the idea that, in principle, it is possible to achieve justice greater than natural justice - due to only one equality of people's rights. One way or another, if, without going into details, to single out its very essence, socialism proposes to solve the interests of some people or groups of the population, so to speak, "disadvantaged", at the expense of others who are more prosperous and viable. Thus, it is believed that a society built on socialist principles is inherently more humane, although here it is quite obvious that one of the principles of natural justice is violated - the exclusive right of a person to the works of his labor.

Under socialism, society forcibly (involuntarily) takes away from a person a significant part of the product produced by him. In the modern world, this is done, as a rule, through taxation mechanisms. In the political economy, socialism can be characterized as the social redistribution of a part of the useful product produced by people. Thus, we can conclude that the measure of the socialism of society is the share of the total product produced by people, which is withdrawn by the state from some people for redistribution in favor of others.

In this perspective, we see that the socialist experiment in Russia was an example of 100%, or, as one might say, an attempt at "orthodox" socialism - almost everything produced by a person was seized and then redistributed (in accordance with the principle of "social justice") . The degree of socialism in many Western countries can be approximately estimated based on the average percentage of taxation of the population's income for subsequent redistribution through social institutions.

With regard to bureaucracy, socialism, like any system of coercion, requires the creation and maintenance of various kinds of analytical and law enforcement bureaucratic institutions - the tax inspectorate, the police, etc. This bureaucracy is all the more cumbersome, the greater the share of the produced product withdrawn from the population. In addition, the burden of control partially falls on the producers themselves, they have to keep rather complicated accounting and reporting, purchase cash registers, pay for the services of a legal service, etc. Thus, we see that socialism is an essential factor in bureaucratization.

With all the listed glaring shortcomings of the democratic system, we nevertheless see quite a few democratic countries in which people are very successful. Democratic institutions function quite tolerably in them, society's feedback on the authorities is effective, people have a high standard of living, acceptable security, at the same time, there is no significant infringement of rights and freedoms by the state.

And often these are not only European countries like Luxembourg, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This includes Eastern, Asian, Arab countries such as Kuwait, Dubai, Oman. This is all the more surprising because formally they still have monarchical rule.

A close examination of them nevertheless reveals something in common that connects them - countries with successful democratic rule are usually quite small.

Here we can also recall ethnic communities - in these small voluntary human associations, as a rule, on a kindred basis, an amazing, almost family-like atmosphere of trust between people was established. An atmosphere that makes neither the constitution nor any laws with an army of lawyers and "siloviki" unnecessary.

This is what impressed Mine Reed so much in the Indian communities he saw in Florida that prompted him to talk about it in his famous historical novel, Osceola. The same can probably be said about the Swiss cantons or the Scottish highland clans, which M. Reid cites for comparison.

An obvious feature of ethnic associations is that they usually do not have large sizes.

From the history of the tribes of North America it is clearly seen how, in its development, an overgrown ethnos will naturally split into two or more - here the analogy with the development of a bee swarm suggests itself.

On the contrary, in large states, we often observe completely egregious examples of injustice, when the powerful bureaucratic machine of a seemingly democratic state begins a real hunt for its citizens, suppressing and crushing the natural interests of ordinary people in favor of bureaucratic interests.

Here we are approaching the identification and analysis of yet another factor, suspected, in the future, perhaps, as the most significant - the factor of the size of the bureaucratic apparatus.

Strange as it may seem, but in control theory (system theory and cybernetics) there is already a very clear law that sheds some light on this dependence. This law, called the "Law of Large Systems" in systems theory, states that "ceteris paribus, the cost of centralized control grows exponentially with the size of the system." This law was derived in cybernetics, and was originally applied only to the construction and study of computer system architectures. However, gradually, in many ways, its more universal character became apparent.

The widespread introduction of computers in modern life has led to the fact that the vast majority of control systems, including administrative ones, began to belong to the class of automated systems - automated control systems. Unlike completely automatic systems, in an ACS, people in its nodes are functionally the same elements of information processing as computers. This suggests the idea of interchangeability and some functional relatedness of a person and a computer. It is worth turning again to the books of Peter and Parkinson to see confirmation of these conjectures - in them the danger of assimilation of modern man to some kind of machine, to a primitive mechanism is shown very clearly. This is expressed most clearly by Peter in his excellent last chapter of The Peter Principle, where the author literally cries out to the reader to remain human in our crazy and increasingly technologically overwhelmed modern life. The same thought is unequivocally present in one of the ideological lines of the novel by Kesey "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Therefore, we can assume that within purely human systems, the law must operate with the same inevitability.

It is probably worth turning to extensive historical experience to try to find signs of the manifestation of this law in the past. From history, we know that already in the distant past, people voluntarily united into tribes and peoples, which, as a rule, did not reach large sizes. Such associations helped people to survive together in the wild. These communities developed their own culture and traditions of adaptation to the natural features of the inhabited territory. These cultural and everyday traditions were passed down from generation to generation. Due to the small size of the bureaucracy in such associations was not expressed, the community was successfully and quite democratically self-governed, by one or more leaders or leaders who were chosen from all well-known and respected people.

Even larger voluntary associations arose when it became necessary to defend their territory from the encroachments of other tribes. So the Indians of North America formed the "Union of Six Tribes" to protect themselves from a more powerful neighboring tribe. It was the external enemy, the Roman Empire, that caused the unification of the Gallic tribes into a single French state. To protect themselves from the imperial expansion of the Muscovite state, Poland and Lithuania united into a single state of the Commonwealth during the bloody Livonian War (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania lost half of its population in it). In the second half of the 20th century, a number of Western European countries and the United States united in the NATO military bloc in order to resist the expansion of Russia (at that time called the USSR).

It is also known that before the Mongol invasion on the territory Ancient Rus' eight relatively small states formed naturally, usually around large cities. This period is often called the feudal fragmentation of Ancient Rus'.

The invasion of the Mongols created the Golden Horde - a violent imperial association. As history shows, such associations usually occupy vast territories, and invariably rely on a despotic administrative apparatus - the state, fully characterized by Lenin, as an instrument of systematic violence of one group of the population over another.

In view of their enormous size, the law of large systems should already have fully manifested itself. We can say that there was no good manageability in this system - the Golden Horde, except for tax collection - tribute, the Horde had little effect on the religious and everyday consciousness of its subjects. Therefore, this empire did not last very long, and disappeared almost without a trace. Technically, it can be said that by softening the regime of despotism and allowing Moscow to collect tribute itself, the authorities of the Golden Horde made a fatal mistake. They allowed the emergence of an alternative center of power, which in a centralized empire leads to its destruction.

But after the collapse of the Golden Horde, now Moscow began to pursue a policy of territorial expansion. It is no coincidence that the founder of Moscow, Yuri Dolgoruky, received his characteristic nickname. Under the slogan of "gathering Russian lands," the Moscow principality forcibly annexed Novgorod and Pskov.

Many of the Slavic principalities were forced to join the Moscow centralized state "voluntarily-compulsorily" - under the threat of cruel reprisal, just as it happened to the population of Novgorod. In a similar way, the easternmost specific principality, Great Perm, was annexed.

The resulting Moscow centralized state was essentially as imperial as the Golden Horde it destroyed. The empire began to seize other peoples - in 1552 Kazan fell, soon Astrakhan also "voluntarily-compulsorily" became part of Russia. Even earlier, under the pretext of the spread of Christianity, Moscow began subordinating the northern Finno-Ugric peoples of Vychegda, Pechera and the Urals. The Komi-Zyrians were also forced to become its tributaries.

Mansi (Voguls) desperately tried to repel the advance of Russian settlements in the northern Kama region, the memory of the former owners of those places remained in the numerous Vogul names of rivers, tracts, mountains, coastal rocks. The memory of one of the numerous battles with the Voguls is kept in the Poboishche tract on the Usva River.

Ancient legends tell about the tribes of Chud, who flatly refused to accept the new faith and the new king, and buried themselves in the ground alive (which indicates how poor the choice was left for the peoples neighboring Russia).

From 1582, with the campaign of Yermak, expansion began in Siberia.

The expansion of the empire was temporarily reflected only in the West, by the troops of the Commonwealth under the leadership of Stefan Batory.

For four centuries, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Russian rulers and rulers seized neighboring territories, devouring approximately 80 square kilometers a day.

The stability mechanism of imperial control is based, as a rule, on the ultimate concentration of power in the metropolis, and the suppression of all possible alternative centers of power. The empire achieves the greater success, the more rigid (military, police) regime is established, moreover, this is a prerequisite for its stability.

And in general, from the history of Russia it is clearly seen that the moments of greatest expansion coincide with the periods of despotic rule of Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, Catherine II and Joseph Stalin.

Periods of regime softening and democratization (rulers in such eras were often called "weak kings") only led to the weakening of the empire, which often lost the territories it had acquired. So in 1918-1922, weakened by the defeat in the Japanese and World War I, the civil war, Russia lost Poland, Finland and, for a while, the Baltic states. In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union abruptly crossed out more than four hundred years of Russia's history, which returned to the borders before the reign of Peter I.

In fact, in the history of Russia in the 20th century, there were only two moments when it was in a state of democracy for a short time - approximately in 1924-1928 and 1991-1992 (parade of sovereignties). Both times this led to the destruction of the country.

It is noteworthy that the fragments separated from Russian Empire(Poland, Finland, the Baltic countries), were able to build a completely stable democracy. We note the fact that the size of these states is many times smaller than Russia, in addition, they were not states of the imperial type.

But maybe the failure of these attempts to implement democracy in Russia is the prevailing mentality of the population, some kind of genetic anomaly of the Russian people?

The answer is given by LN Tostoy's novel "The Cossacks". Tolstoy described the Russian ethnic community that had developed on the banks of the Terek - the Terek Cossacks, whose life and life he became a direct witness. Subsequently, he was long under the impression of this unexpected acquaintance of a community of people, undoubtedly Russian in blood and language, but so different from the mutilated peasantry in the Russian rural communities of the Russian Empire.

This experience suggests that the special mentality of the Russian population is only a consequence of the impact on it of the state bureaucratic machine, the power of which at that time the free Terek Cossacks managed to avoid. Moreover, Tolstoy also sees how, with the advent of Russia, the freedom-loving Cossack spirit is fading before our eyes, that the veche bell has already been removed, and the extinction of even a wild and completely non-Western, but nevertheless real intra-communal democracy, is imminently approaching. "Today there are no such Cossacks. It's bad to look." - the hero of the novel, grandfather Eroshka, exclaims with annoyance. From this we can conclude that there is no special genetic incompatibility of Russians with democratic rule.

So it was the huge Russian bureaucracy that made Russians the way they are now. On the other hand, it is obvious that without a powerful bureaucratic apparatus, Russia would inevitably crumble into small state formations. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that if some small territory with a Russian population (for example, the Kaliningrad region) manages to get out of the general system of centralized control, real democratic rule may well be realized in it.

It is worth dwelling in more detail on the mechanism from which the law of large systems is derived. Since in a hierarchical system, with the growth of its size, information flows through the top-level nodes grow exponentially, and these nodes begin to experience more and more overload. This is true for computer nodes as well as the people in these administrative nodes, forced to make more and more decisions in increasingly limited time. Increasing the staff of officials does little to solve this problem, because the volume of work is growing exponentially. On the other hand, this serves as an excellent incentive to increase the staff of officials - after all, the overload itself is obvious and undeniable. This is despite the fact that we went for a conscious simplification, not assuming and not taking into account the greed of officials or corruption. The fact of the matter is that for the manifestation of the law, these side effects are not of decisive importance, the law will manifest itself even if absolutely all officials are replaced by impassive computers, thus eliminating both self-interest and corruption.

Of course, huge administrative systems are somehow able to function, such as the Russian, American or Chinese state or, for example, the UN. What is the matter here? At a closer look, it turns out that officials in information overloaded administrative nodes do not solve most problems, focusing only on the most important ones. As a result, this leads to a sharp drop in the quality of managerial decisions. Outwardly, this just looks like a typical bureaucracy and red tape - you can once again recall Kafka with the misadventures of his land surveyor.

It was not at all the greed of officials that led the land surveyor into a vicious circle. It was the insignificance of his issue for the administrative system that led to the fact that he was apparently simply sacrificed to solve more significant and significant problems for the system.

This is how the administrative system begins to live its own independent life, getting out of the control of man and common sense. Parkinson called this administrative self-sufficiency or Parkinson's disease, while noting the need for a sufficiently large administrative system for this (in the original it sounds: "Any institution with more than a thousand employees can become administratively self-sufficient.")

It is interesting, however, what place corruption and bribes take in such an overstretched administrative system. It turns out bribes - excellent tool increase the importance of the issue being addressed for the official. Probably in this way it would be possible for the surveyor from the "Castle" to break his vicious circle.

Of course, one cannot deny the existence of "criminal" corruption - the purposeful extortion of bribes, but, without delving into further research, I assume that it is precisely this non-criminal motivation that dominates among officials.

Considering such overloaded administrative systems, one can derive an interesting extension of the Peter Principle. As you know, the Peter Principle states that “everyone reaches his own level of incompetence.” From this, in particular, it follows that in any hierarchy, each next step up requires more and more competence from a person. But imagine such a huge hierarchy that, starting from a certain level, everyone higher levels require from a person physical or intellectual abilities that no person on earth has at his disposal.

Everyone knows that human biological capabilities are limited. No one can long jump further than 9m, or run a hundred meters faster than 9 seconds. Obviously, the situation is also in administrative management - the ability of a person to take decisions on time. right decisions by no means limitless. So why not deduce another corollary (as a hypothesis) from the Peter Principle: "For some positions, there are no competent workers at all." That is, everyone who finds themselves in such a position automatically becomes incompetent.

Of course, modern technology has allowed a person to develop great speeds and perform a huge amount of calculations in a short period of time. Apparently for a huge overloaded managerial hierarchy, the introduction of computer technology is the only way to increase competence on their administrative steps. We see that often at high levels of the hierarchy, the place of a person is occupied by computers with appropriate programs. The computer is not subject to corruption, is not mercenary, is absolutely impartial, cheap and is thousands of times superior to any even the most talented person in terms of the speed of making managerial decisions. Probably from the point of view of administrative management, he would be an ideal official. And the person himself is more and more the weakest link in the control systems.

It would seem that there should be a tendency towards the complete displacement of a person from management structures. However, reality has revealed that the prevailing class of management tasks are not amenable to computer solution. For example, even in such a simple game as chess weak person with its intuition, it competes with a computer that produces billions of calculations per second. Some qualities are generally inaccessible to a computer - no one has been able to write a program that composes more or less meaningful poetry, or is able to compose at least a simple piece of music. Even what a person can do almost instantly - distinguish a cat from a dog - a modern computer is not yet able to do.

Now let's see what happens in our extra-large administrative hierarchy, with the introduction of computers. The management system is turning into some new semi-human reality, some kind of electronic brain that begins to dominate people and society.

It seems that computers, machines can never subjugate a person, because they cannot do without some of his qualities. But let's imagine that the system has been taught from a multitude of people to select exactly those who it needs to supplement its system functionality. For example, with the help of a set of special tests and competitions, she selects the most greedy, cynical, cunning and heartless individuals who are not burdened with conscience and entrusts them with those functions that she is unable to perform herself, generously rewarding them for this.

There are many synonyms in everyday life and literature, for its name, at different times it was called the command-administrative system, bureaucracy, bureaucratic system, System (when they stumble upon something administratively insurmountable, they often say "This is a system"), combine, civilization, progress, etc. n. As a rule, this system directs all funds to its own survival and interests.

For example, it creates a special category of people - the military, special services, selecting and educating from childhood in a special highly specialized system of values (educating, for example, the ability to kill people for the sake of a certain ideal of service, or something like samurai service to the "master", unquestioning execution of orders, etc. e). At the same time, which is rather paradoxical, the system is not even something animated, often individuals do not play a special role in it.

It is also interesting to look at the typical representative of the main circle of the population she brings up, apparently the standard here is the so-called "rentier" type in psychology. "Rentier" is a man of "low intellect, bourgeois in his tastes; rather civilized than cultured, unwilling to take risks ..., content with a low but strong social position ("it hurts to fly from a height"), not carried away; any creativity, the bulwark of any power; the guiding beacon for him in life is the instinct of self-preservation.

One can perhaps assume the main goal of such a system, as Peter and Parkinson defined it, is its own reproduction and preservation (integrity).

As Parkinson wrote in one chapter, the anti-terrorist department is interested in creating new terrorists by its actions, because if there were no terrorists, the existence of this department itself would disappear. The Ministry of Defense is interested, if not in wars, then in the constant existence of enemies and military threats, because it is the enemies that make it so necessary in their own eyes and increase its significance in society.

Therefore, a normal democratic society seeks to keep departmental interests and the interests of state structures within certain limits - usually there is feedback from society to power (through the mechanism of elections, referendums, the media, etc.).

Long-term observations of various states suggest that the larger the size of society, the worse this feedback works. This empirically introduced dependence, of course, also needs to be proved, but due to the limited scope of this work, we will not conduct a detailed study of this issue here.

So, with the growth of size, society's control over state structures is practically lost. But the state is not just a corporation from which a person can simply quit at any time. The state, as a rule, has powerful armed power structures, prisons, special services and other institutions of suppression, and has the full right to use them on the territory where a person is forced to live.

And if it suddenly turns out to be beyond the control of society, the common man finds himself completely defenseless against the all-powerful state Moloch.

As already discussed, democracy involves too cumbersome and complex governance mechanisms. But an administrative system overloaded due to its size is usually already at the limit of its stability and strives to increase its stability by sliding into simpler forms of administrative control - dictatorship, centralization of power, tightening of power vertical (hierarchical) ties.

This process was noticed and described even by such an idealist as Nikolai Ostrovsky in his autobiographical novel "How the Steel Was Tempered" and Vladimir Mayakovsky in his poetry.

So is it possible to talk about democracy in Russia, if in practice, sooner or later it will be transformed into totalitarianism. It is highly significant that democracy took root in small fragments that broke away from the mainstream society at these moments.

Of course, one can object that apart from Russia and the USA, China and India are also very large states. Here it is necessary to note the significant difference between Russia, which is a classical centralized empire, where all the fullness of judicial, legislative, executive and economic power is concentrated in the metropolis - Moscow, while other regions function as classical subordinate colonies (and not only national ones). In contrast, the US, India and even China are highly decentralized, even in China most of the taxes remain in the provinces, and the capital Beijing is neither the economic center of the country nor the largest city. In the United States, the executive legislature is even more divided, the capital Washington is a relatively small (the size of Yekaterinburg) city, the power and incomes of the population are historically concentrated in the states, and the population, as a rule, emigrants and their descendants, came to America voluntarily. And yet, peering into these vast countries, you notice the same ruthless bureaucratic Moloch over society, for which a simple person is dust, something that surprisingly does not exist in the Baltic countries, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg.

Another argument in favor of the effectiveness of the law of large systems is the economic collapse of the socialist model of management in the USSR. In fact, then the entire economy of the country worked as one huge unitary enterprise - it was the law of large systems that led to the fact that the costs of managing this enterprise outweighed the benefits of consolidation and production planning.

Although these huge systems, whether economic or political, are somehow able to function, the congestion of their administrative and economic system is manifested in an extremely low quality of management, especially at the upper levels of the hierarchy.

Known, for example, is the impression many Russian citizens get from their acquaintance with Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and other small Western European countries. The opinion was expressed that there is just "a lot of state" in contrast to Russia, which just "does not have enough state." But here, apparently, it means that in Europe officials are under tighter control of the state and society, state bodies are not overloaded and officials can more effectively cope with their duties. As another consequence - the ability to maintain a developed and effective system of social institutions - this also contains the quality of management. It is the quality of public administration in small European countries was much higher than in Russia.

Now we must also recall Luzhkov's study - it was precisely the quality of governance that he noted as Russia's main trouble. But the quality of control, as we have shown, directly depends on the size of the system. Here, at the intersection of all opinions, we can perhaps complete our study.

Summing up, we must conclude that it is not the climate, not the mentality of the people, not any socio-political model of the state structure, but precisely the factor of the huge size of the country that impedes its real democratization and social cohesion of people. It is the huge size of the country that leads to its social instability and strong social tensions in society, which are compensated only by a powerful bureaucratic and law enforcement apparatus working on the verge, and often beyond its capabilities.

Apparently, the only constructive recommendation for the fight against bureaucracy, which is possible in the current conditions, is the economic and political decentralization of Russia. Perhaps the best form of government would be a confederation, such as the British Commonwealth of Nations, also a former empire.

Conclusion

So, involuntarily, another attempt turned out to give an account of the two eternal Russian questions "Who is to blame?" and "What to do?".

The teachings of Parkinson and Peter on bureaucracy unexpectedly made it possible to take another step in explaining what happened and is happening in the vast territory called Russia. The conclusion is that bureaucracy is an integral system property of Russia.

After all this, it is difficult not to say, paraphrasing somewhat, in the words of a famous poet:

We say Russia, we mean bureaucracy

We say bureaucracy, we mean - Russia

Whether or not to accept this study is up to the people themselves. Our guiding star in this work was not economics, not law, not leadership, but justice. Perhaps, for the majority of Russians (and not only Russians), justice in their value scale is lower than the greatness of their country, or their own prosperity and well-being. For the sake of the greatness of their homeland (economic, political and territorial) and the harsh inevitability of its laws, they are ready to endure the ubiquitous arbitrariness of the bureaucracy. This is their choice and their right and, probably, their happiness.

Unfortunately, we have to admit that the unstoppable modern technocratic world, driven by "realpolitik" and cynical pragmatism, leaves little hope for the rest.

Once upon a time in "The Sum of Technologies", the coeval of "Parkinson's Law" and "The Peter Principle", the great Polish science fiction writer and philosopher Stanislaw Lem wrote very optimistically:

“Humanity is not like a promising, noble and intelligent young man, honest in his actions; rather, he is an old sinner who secretly relishes all sorts of abominations, and keeps a heap of hypocritical phrases at the ready. And yet this sinner, already touched by paralysis, wants to be treated, corrected, experiences - at least from time to time - attacks of prudence, especially after serious bloodletting. We must give him some chance, despite the recurrence of the disease, especially since we are all personally interested in this, and a poor prognosis would mean that any measures other than directly associated with the maintenance of vital functions are not worth the effort..."

At the end of his life, Lem, like Peter at the end of his book, admits that the future depresses and disappoints him.

And yet, in conclusion, a few words in defense of justice from the article I S Lurie about L Tolstoy: "The sad experience of the 20th century is that attempts to" make history "based on any social or national dogma are destructive. Victimized by such attempts the moral principles of mankind should not be offered."

One can only guess what kind of lessons the 21st century is preparing for us - probably no less severe and bloody. Probably among them there will be that truth, forgotten in our time, that it is foolish to demand justice for oneself, while denying justice to others.

Bibliography

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Peter L. D. “Peter's principle or why things go wrong” - M., 1990
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Weber M. Selected Works. M., 1990
Lenin V. I. PSS.
Marx K., Engels F. Op. - 2nd ed
Luzhkov Y. “ Russian Laws Parkinson” (public lecture at Moscow State University)
Fenimore Cooper D. "St. John's wort, or the First Warpath", M., 1981
Fenimore Cooper D. "The Last of the Mohicans, or the Narrative of 1757", M., 1981
Fenimore Cooper D. "Pathfinder, or on the banks of Ontario", M., 1981
Fenimore Cooper D. "Pioneers, or At the origins of the Susquihanna", M., 1981
Fenimore Cooper D. "Prairie", M., 1981
Kafka F. "Castle" M., 1999
Kafka F. “Process”, M., 1999
Golding V. “Lord of the Flies”, Syktyvkar, 1999
Kesey K. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Tolstoy L. N. "Hadji Murad", M., 1981
Tolstoy L. N. “Cossacks”, M., 1981
Salgari E. “In the Far West”, M. 1992
Reid M. "Oceola - the leader of the Seminoles", Perm, 1987
Lem S. "The sum of technologies", M., 1968
"Looking at History Through a Machine Gun Barrel" (BBC film) 2004
“Geography: Home Educational Library”, Minsk, 2000
"Pages of the history of the land of Perm I h". ( tutorial), Perm, 1995
Bukovsky V., Gluzman S “Psychiatry manual for dissenters”, 1973
Bukovsky V. “And the wind returns…”, 1978
Bukovsky V. “Letters from a Russian Traveler”, 1981
Ostrovsky N. “How steel was tempered”. M., 1978
Kilb A., Schwagerl H. “Lem S.: I hope that there are more terrible creatures in the Universe than people” (article in “Frankfurter Allgemeine”), 2003
Lurie Ya. S. “After Leo Tolstoy. Historical views of Tolstoy and problems of the XX century”, St. Petersburg, 1993
Tolstoy L. N. “To the working people” PSS, 1954
“Springs of Parma” (popular science collection), Syktyvkar, 1996

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Lurie Ya. S. “After Leo Tolstoy. Historical views of Tolstoy and problems of the XX century”, St. Petersburg, 1993

Cyril Northcote Parkinson is well known to readers as the discoverer of laws no less famous than the laws of Newton and Archimedes. Humor, ingenious inventiveness and paradoxical thinking made his book one of the most popular in the 20th century, which does not lose its relevance in the 21st century. Parkinson's Laws are addressed to "teenagers, teachers, history writers," housewives, and anyone else who thinks the world works reasonably well. Here you can find advice for everything from starting your own business to making a list of invitees to a party, and Mrs. Parkinson's laws will help you solve the most complicated problems in your personal life and cope with any troubles.

PARKINSON'S LAW 1

FAMILY AND STRANGERS 13

LAW OF DEFER 41

MOUSETRAP WITH FUR 60

LAW OF VACUUM 81

LAW MRS. PARKINSON 83

Notes 112

Cyril Northcote Parkinson
Parkinson's laws

Dedicated to Ann

FROM THE AUTHOR

To teenagers, teachers, and authors of manuals on the history of government institutions and politics, it seems that the world is comparatively reasonable. They think that people freely choose their representatives from among those in whom they have special confidence. They believe that the smartest and most efficient of these chosen ones become ministers. They imagine how the bosses of industry, freely chosen by the shareholders, invest business responsibility in those who have distinguished themselves in more modest jobs. All this is cheerfully stated or implied silently in many books. For those who at least somehow know business life, these assumptions are simply ridiculous. high council noble sages exist only in the brain of the teacher, and therefore it is useful to sometimes remind about the truth. Do not think, we do not want to ward off the inquisitive from learned books that tell about business and administrative life. Let them read if they perceive them as pure fiction. On a par with the novels of Haggard and Wells, writings about space or about a caveman, these books will not hurt anyone. If taken as a scientific aid, they will do more harm than it seems at first glance.

Alarmed by what others think of officials or new buildings, I tried to show those who were interested how things really are. A smart person will guess - even in order to somehow show the truth, it took a lot to see. Assuming, however, that not all readers are equally intelligent, I diligently recount on occasion how much research has been done. Imagine how many tables, cards, computers, directories and counters could be needed for such work. Believe that there were many more and that the truths revealed here are the fruit not only of an extraordinary gift, but also of great research work. Perhaps it will seem to someone that it would be necessary to describe in more detail the experiments and calculations on which my theory is based. Let him estimate, however, that such a long book is both longer to read and harder to buy.

Although years of painstaking work have gone into each of these essays, do not think that everything is said here. New discoveries pose new challenges for us. Thus, experts in military art have established an inversely proportional relationship between the number of enemy soldiers killed and the number of our generals. Recently, scientists have paid attention to the degree of illegibility of signatures and tried to establish at what point in a successful career the boss himself can no longer make out it. Every day there is a discovery, so, in all likelihood, this edition will be replaced by new, more complete ones.

I would like to thank the publishers for allowing some of the essays to be reprinted. The place of honor will be taken by the publisher of The Economist, in which Parkinson's Law first appeared to mankind. To him I owe the right of reprinting "Chairmen and Committees" and " retirement age". A few more essays were published in the magazines "Harper's Magazine" and "Reporter".

I am particularly indebted to the artist Osbert Lancaster for adding lightness to work that might have seemed dry to the general reader.

I am indebted to Houghton Mifflin, who first published the book in the United States. Without his support, I would not have dared to do much, and I would have achieved even less. Finally, I am indebted to a mathematician whose science will at times bewilder the reader. The book is dedicated to him (however, for a different reason).

PARKINSON'S LAW

PARKINSON'S LAW, or Growing pyramid

Work fills the time allotted for it. Everyone knows this, which is clear from the proverb: "The more time, the more things to do." Thus, an unoccupied old lady can write and mail a letter to her niece in Bognor Regis all day long. She'll look for a postcard for an hour, look for glasses for an hour, an address for half an hour, write for an hour and a quarter, and decide for twenty minutes whether an umbrella is needed to drop a letter in the next street. What a busy person can do in three minutes will exhaust another completely with doubts, anxieties and labor itself.

Since the work (writing in particular) is so stretched out in time, it is clear that its volume has nothing (or almost nothing) to do with the number of people doing it. When there is nothing to do, it is not necessary to be lazy. When there is nothing to do, it is not necessary to sit back. The matter is more important and more difficult, the more time is allotted for it. Everyone knows this, but the consequences of this rule, especially in the administrative field, have been little studied. Politicians and taxpayers almost never doubt that bureaucratic states are growing this way because there are more cases. Cynics, challenging this view, have suggested that many officials simply have nothing to do or that they can work less and less. But neither faith nor unbelief came close to the truth. The truth is that the number of employees and the amount of work are completely unrelated. The number of employees increases according to Parkinson's law, and the increase will not change whether the number of cases has decreased, increased or disappeared altogether. Parkinson's law is important in that it is based on an analysis of the factors that determine the above increase.

The value of this newly discovered law rests largely on the statistics that we will present shortly. However, the general reader is more curious to know what factors determine the trend expressed by our law. Leaving aside the technical details (of which there are many), we can distinguish two main driving forces. For our current needs, we will clothe them in the form of two almost axiomatic propositions:

1) an official multiplies subordinates, but not rivals;

2) officials work for each other.

To master factor 1, imagine that a certain official A complains about overload. In this case, it does not matter whether it seems to him or it is so; we note, however, that sensations A (true or imaginary) can also be generated by the breakdown that is inevitable in middle age. He has three exits. He can leave; he can ask official B to help him; he may ask for two subordinates, C and D. As a rule, A chooses the third path. If he left, he would lose his right to a pension. By dividing the work with his equal, B, he runs the risk of not getting into place W when it is finally free. So it's better to deal with two subordinates. They will give him weight, and he will divide the work between them, and only he will understand both the one and the other category of cases. Note that C and D are practically inseparable. It is impossible to take on the service of one S. Why? Because he would share the work with L and become equal to him, like the rejected B, and even worse, he would aim for the place of A. So, there should be at least two subordinates, so that each would hold the other, fearing that he would not galloped. When C complains about the overload (and he complains), A, with his consent, will advise the authorities to take him two assistants. To avoid internal friction, he advises taking two and for J. Now that E, F, G, H also serve under him, A's promotion is practically guaranteed.

When seven employees do what one did, factor 2 comes into play. Seven work so much for each other that they are all fully loaded, and A is busier than before. Any paper should appear before everyone. E decides that she is in the hands of F, F sketches the answer and gives it to C, C boldly corrects it and turns to D, and D to G. However, G is going on vacation and transfers the file to H, who again writes everything in draft and signed D and hands the paper to C, who, in turn, looks through it and puts it in a new form on the table to A.