"THE BEST-LAID PLANS . . ."

...Reviewed by MORROE DERGER AFEW YEARS BEFORE WORLD WAR I. Robert Michaels, a European social scientist, wrote that "socialists might conquer, but not socialism...

...Spina, anxious to work among the Italian masses for the social revolution, hears Uliva, a disillusioned socialist who has withdrawn from political life, claim that the leftists will set up merely another variety of totalitarianism in place of fascism...

...First, bureaucracies tend to be apolitical...

...This trend is said to be a dangerous one for democracy...

...this is what TVA did, according to Mr...

...This included such apparently noble aims as getting "close to the people," "working through established agencies," getting the "participation of the people" and insuring genuine "coordination...

...TVA's approach is to foster 'decentralization," to give the local agencies genuine powers, to secure the participation of the people through existing and new associations, to enable a regional agency to coordinate the programs of all levels of government and thus to deal with the area as a unity...

...COMMITMENTS (to the organization's own "needs" and to its subgroups, to other groups, and by the individuals who run the organisation), says Mr...

...As time went on, this means of bargaining one program to protect another was broadcast as a virtue: TVA, through its former chairman, David Lilienthal, became known as the champion of the grass roots idea...

...And Uliva answers: "It is not your ideal, but that is your destiny...

...There is another side to it, thus fatgiven less consideration, that offers more hope for a democracy almost deluged with technical bureaus...

...Selznick's account...

...He contends that, whatever the motive of TVA leaders, the grass roots approach in agriculture neutralized local opposition to the power program and to TVA's status as a federal agency seeking to carry on functions which the private farm bureaus and the agricultural extension departments of the land grant colleges had long considered their own province...

...Selznick's point has been often made by earlier writers, but be makes it with special cogency and on the basis of an analysis of a pet New Deal agency which is said te exhibit the most democratic relationship to the local population...

...This aspect can be stated only briefly hero...

...They do...

...First, TVA, considered a typically liberal New Deal agency on the frontier of planning and social reform, found itself opposing the agricultural programs of other New Deal agencies which had no commitment to the private farm interests and the land grant colleges...

...Earlier studies of these political problems proceeded from occasional brilliant insights and generally concluded on a pessimistic note...

...There is no escape...

...Selznick, are a fertile source of influence which deflect organizations from their original goals...

...Monroe Berger is a frequent contributor to The New Leader...

...By what specific means such a relationship can be developed is beyond the scope of this book...

...With respect to the main thesis of TVA and the Crass Roots that the nature of formal organization acts as a constraint upon the realization of aims and upon the implementation of a genuinely democratic relationship with the people it is supposed to serve, there are several relevant comments one can make...

...One must accept as fact Mr...

...Selznick next shows the unforeseen consequences of this particular way of reaching the local population...

...THESE AIMS MR...

...The TVA grass roots doctrine asserts that centralization stifles initiative and takes the power of decision from the smaller groups which are affected by the action of organizations not indigenous to the local area...

...By far the most important job of TVA is in the Held of electric pbwer...

...In TVA and the Grass Hoots the subject is handled rather systematically, and while the pessimistic note remains, the theoretical system outlined in the book docs not completely deny the reasonableness of entertaining some hope for the future...

...Upset...

...because he concentrates upon one side of the problem of formal organization...

...Selznick outlines, also, the theory of formal organization by which he has analyzed TVA...

...Second, TVA could not get to the people of the Tennessee Valley directly, but only through the wellorganized, conservative agencies already in the area...

...Selznick studies in detail...

...All is not lost as yet, and it may be possible to do what sounds like a contradiction: plan for spontaniety...

...this puts them at the service of whichever party is voted into power by the electorate...

...The relation between an~organi/.ation and the people it is supposed to serve can be one of two kinds: it can either share power with the people, or it can share only the burdens and responsibilities of power without sharing the power itself...

...The grass roots idea was interpreted to mean the placating of vested organizational farm interests in the Tennessee Valley...

...From this case study, in part, Mr...

...Selznick may give some readers the impression that he believes in administrative changes as a means of meeting the problem of bureaucracy in a democratic state...

...the author simply offers a criterion (sharing of real power or only its semblance) by which a relationship can be judged to be democratic or otherwise...

...Actually he does not hold so naive a view...

...Second, bureaucracies, in their own technical spheres, are rather stable in procedure and personnel...

...This theory stresses the influence of aims other than those formally set out for the organization, the informal structure, the "needs" of the organization, its relation to other groups, and the constraints which operate simply as a consequence of the nature of formal organizations...

...Second, the reader is at a disadvantage similar to one he faces in anthropological studies of primitive (and, to some extent, contemporary) communities...

...By his emphasis upon formal organization Mr...

...The application of these views to the TVA agricultural relations program (not ijs electric power policy) is what Mr...

...Selznick's many descriptions of TVA agricultural policy for which he offers no documentation other than his word that this is what he saw in the Valley or this is what TVA people told him...

...A few years before World War II, Ignazio Silone wrote a remarkable scene in Bread and Wine...

...Selznick, that a reader must constantly bear in mind in going through this book...

...Selznick is aware that his conclusions sound pessimistic...

...In one of the most interesting sections of his book Mr...

...The checks upon organization lie, of course, in a free and politically alert electorate (how to get that is something else again...

...Selznick's main purpose in this hook is to examine the way in which TVA's formal structure as an organization affects the execution of its assigned tasks He concentrates upon TVA's "grass roots" policy in its agricultural program, and in the course of the study explores or touches several of the most . important problems ot democratic polities, planning and bureaucracy...

...Selznick is discussing only a minor aspect of TVA's activities, its agricultural relations program...

...One of the mast perceptive of the recent treatments is TVA and the Grass Roots, by Philip Selznick, a member of the University of California sociology department...

...THERE ARE TWO FACTS, freely admitted by Mr...

...First, it must be remembered that Mr...

...The novelists, too, wrote in this vein, especially Kafka, Silone, Huxley, Koestler and now Orwell...

...Third, it format organisation works against the achievement of established goals, its constraints also tend te prevent the subversion of these goals by persons temporarily holding power...

...SELZNICK calls "unanalyzed abstractions" which are meaningful only when we see how they are applied in specific situations...

...Commitments, too, may enable or require an organization to sacrifice a minor aim in order to accomplish a more significant goal...

...Selznick draws some theoretical con elusions as to the relation between an organization and the people it is supposed to serve, and as to the nature of formal organizations...

...Selznick shows what these abstractions meant in practice: the accommodation of TVA's agricultural program to the conservative interests of the farm bureaus and the land grant colleges...

...Third, the program ol public ownership of land, contemplated in the original TVA plan, \v;is mini mized because it ran counter to the wishes of the powerful farm bureaus and the land grant colleges...

...Having shown the meaning behind the grass roots idea, Mr...

...This is undoubtedly so, but these types of commitment may also function to prevent an organization from straying too far beyond its established tasks...

...this tends to insure continuing efficiency (if there is efficiency to begin with) and a minimum of interruption of the routine affairs of state...

...Spina berates Uliva: "You know that that is not our ideal...

...A genuinely democratic relation, however, would not merely involve the people in the administrative work or hold them as passive recipients of services, but would result in the sharing of power with respect to policy...

...Thus a seemingly "democratic" or "liberal" concept worked to the advantage of "conservative" groups, while the concept itself continued to serve as an ideological mask...

...TVA, in its agricultural program, did the second because the grass roots advocates dominated the TVA agricultural department...

...The connection between ideals and the organizations which profess them, between democratic ideology and bureaucratic restraints, between ends and the means which seem to lead always to ends other than those intended, is a subject to which social scientists have returned in the last decade or so...