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The bureaucracy must then occupy the position of [[master-signifier]] in the [[absence]] of a monarch. Žižek takes up one of Lacan’s examples of the [[power]] of the [[master-signifier]] as the minimal gap or delay in [[knowing]] the results of an exam. Even if a pupil provides perfect answers, it is not until those answers are confirmed by the teacher or another authority that the [[anxiety]] of testing is lifted. Žižek notes that it is the mystique of bureaucracy that also maintains this gap. He writes: “You [[know]] the facts, but you can never be quite sure of how these facts will be registered by bureaucracy” (''LC'': 22–3). The mystique of bureaucracy, or what Žižek describes as [[symbolic]] efficiency, “concerns the minimum of ‘reification’ on account of which it is not enough for us, all concerned individuals, to know some fact in order for it to be operative” (TS: 394). Symbolic efficiency or [[the symbolic]] institution, on the contrary, must know or “register” this fact if the performative consequences of [[stating]] it are to ensue.
Bureaucratic symbolic efficiency is capable of shaping perception and [[reality]]: “Symbolic efficiency thus concerns the point at which, when the [[Other]] of [[The Symbolic|the symbolic ]] institution confronts me with the [[choice]] of ‘whom do you believe, my [[word]] or your eyes?”, I choose the Other’s word without [[hesitation]], dismissing the factual testimony of my eyes” (''TS'': 394–5). To illustrate this point of symbolic efficiency within bureaucracy, Žižek uses what he describes as the well-worn [[joke]] [[about]] a young man who believes he is a grain of corn. After [[working]] with a doctor for some [[time]], the man is relieved to realize that he is a man, not a grain of corn. Upon leaving the doctor’s office, the man encounters a chicken and runs with [[fear]] back to the doctor. The doctor expresses surprise since the man no longer believes himself to be a grain of corn, to which the man replies: “I know that I am not a grain of corn, but has anyone told the chicken?” Žižek writes: “This story, nonsensical at the level of factual reality, where you are either a grain or not, is absolutely sensible if one replaces ‘a grain’ with some feature that determines my symbolic identity” (''TS'': 393). Žižek notes that within bureaucracy, for [[instance]], one can be promoted and then [[encounter]] a lower-ranking member of the bureaucracy who does not recognize the authority of the new position because it has not entered into the symbolic [[register]] of bureaucratic functioning. “Isn’t this a bit like telling you: ‘Sorry, to us you’re still a grain of corn, not yet a [[human]] being’? In short there is a certain mysterious moment at which a measure or decree becomes operative, registered by the [[big Other]] of the symbolic institution” (''ibid.'').
Perhaps because of its potential to take on the role of [[master-signifier]] and its symbolic efficiency, Žižek is wary of bureaucracy and its possibility for overwhelming leaders. He advocates, thus, for a strong [[leader]]: “We should not be afraid to draw all the consequences from this insight, endorsing the lesson of Hegel’s justification of monarchy and ruthlessly slaughtering many [[liberal]] sacred cows on the way” (''LN'': 1001). Separating the roles of the bureaucracy and the monarchy produces a necessary distance between bureaucracy and the king. This distance is what protects against [[totalitarianism]], which for Žižek is not a master who “imposes his unconstrained authority and ignores the suggestions of rational knowledge” (''LN'': 430). Rather, totalitarianism is “a [[regime]] in which knowledge (the rationally justified authority) immediately assumes ‘performative’ power” (''ibid.''). For Žižek, this is precisely the problem in perceptions of [[Stalinism]]: “[[Stalin]] was not (did not [[present]] himself as) a master, he was the highest servant of the [[people]], legitimized by his knowledge and abilities” (''LN'': 1000). Indeed, according to Žižek, Stalinism did not actually suffer from an “excessive ‘cult of [[personality]],’ but quite the opposite: [Stalin] was not enough of a Master but remained part of the bureaucratic-party Knowledge, the exemplary [[subject]]-supposed-to-know” (''ibid.''). Žižek also pushes back against the characterization of Stalinism as “Bureaucratic socialism” – the problem for Žižek is not that Stalinism was mired in bureaucracy as Stalin himself was wont to declare, but the contrary, that what “Stalinist regimes really lacked was precisely an efficient ‘bureaucracy’” – that is, to reiterate the definition of the term, “a depoliticized and competent administrative apparatus” that stood [[separate]] from Stalin (''LC'': 259).
