Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes
root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic
Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own
kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised.
Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms.
(A cooperative on the other hand
can live without the state.
That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units
to meet the needs of the people who participate in the functioning
of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principle of
inventing
needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer,
a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite
potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action,
to complete parasitism of a virus.
--William S. Burroughs. Naked Lunch. (p. 134)