The Politics of Bureaucratization and the U. S. Bureau of Corporations

The U.S. Bureau of Corporations, which existed from 1903 to 1914, is examined in the context of the transition from an electoral to a bureaucratic mode of politics. The rise of the Bureau is explained, in part, by conflict within the capitalist class over the relationship between the state and economy, resulting in a proto-bureaucratic organization incapable of solving the problem it was mandated to address. It lacked the anti-trust power desired by small businessmen but failed to rationalize the economy as desired by corporate capitalists. Its incomplete bureaucratization was both a result of this conflict and sustained the level of conflict. By the second decade of the century, the early supporters of the Bureau had abandoned it in favor of creating the Federal Trade Commission, which was nested with more formal authority than the Bureau but, because of its more bureaucratic structure was endowed with greater autonomy from instrumental political influence. The result was to depoliticize the anti-trust impulse. The paper’s conclusion discusses the relationship between class conflict and the historical construction of state autonomy.