James Burnham

James Burnham (1905–1987) was an American popular political theorist, former Communist activist and intellectual, known for his work "The Managerial Revolution", published in 1941, which heavily influenced George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

Life and work

Born in Chicago, Illinois, James Burnham was the son of Claude George Burnham, an English immigrant and executive with the Burlington Railroad. [http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/sempa_burnham1.html] James Burham was of English Roman Catholic stock and rejected Catholicism as a college student, becoming atheist for much of his life but nevertheless returned to the Catholic Church shortly before his death. [cite news | first=Priscilla | last=Buckley | title=James Burnham 1905-1987 | url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_v39/ai_5169255/pg_35 | work=National Review | pages= 35 | date=1987-07-11 | accessdate=2008-04-04 ] He graduated at the top of his class at Princeton University before attending Balliol College, Oxford.

As a member of the U.S. Workers Party Burnham was a leading Trotskyist in the 1930s, forming the Socialist Workers Party, which was a Communist and anti-Stalinist party. He allied with Max Shachtman in a faction fight with the majority in the party led by James P. Cannon over the question of the nature of the Soviet Union. Cannon, backed by Leon Trotsky held that the USSR was a degenerated workers state while Shachtman and Burnham contended that the Soviet Union was bureaucratic collectivist and thus not worthy of being supported even critically. The specific event which led to the dispute was the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939.

The party dispute led to Shachtman, Burnham, and their supporters leaving the SWP in 1940, but soon afterwards, Burnham broke with Shachtman and left the Communist movement and worked for the war time Office of Strategic Services. After the war, he called for an aggressive strategy to undermine the Soviet Union's power. During the Cold War, he regularly wrote for the National Review magazine. In 1983, President R.W. Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His ideas were an important influence on the neoconservative and paleoconservative factions of the American Right Wing.

The theory of the managerial revolution

As described in the "The Managerial Revolution", Burnham held that in the postwar period the world would divide into three super-states, with essentially enlarged versions of the existing the United States, Germany, and Japan, which would compete amongst themselves for world power.

More important, capitalism was disappearing, yet socialism would not replace it; neither, for that matter, would democracy ever be ascendant. A new, managerial class, rather than the working class, was replacing the old capitalist class as society's dominant power élite. The managerial class includes business executives, technicians, bureaucrats, and soldiers; example societies are Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This theory of Burnham's is thought to have been influenced by the book "La bureaucratisation du monde" (1939) Bruno Rizzi; but, despite similarities, there is no evidence Burnham knew said book, beyond Leon Trotsky's brief references to it.

It is important to note that Burnham defined capitalism as "the individual ownership and control of the means of production", which is distinct from the modern corporation, a legally established shareholders association with no direct control over the means of production.

In a later book, "The Machiavellians", he argued and developed his theory that the emerging new élite would better serve its own interests if it retained some democratic trappings — political opposition, a free press, and a controlled "circulation of the élites".

His 1964 book "Suicide of the West" became a classic text for the conservatives of the Right Wing movement in U.S. politics, defining liberalism as a "syndrome" rendering liberals ridden with guilt and internal contradictions. The works of James Burnham greatly influenced paleoconservative author Samuel Francis, who wrote two books about Burnham, and based his political theories upon the "managerial revolution" and the resulting managerial state.

Notes

Books

* "The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World" (orig pub, 1941, 1972 ed.) ISBN 0-8371-5678-5
* "Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism" (1964/1985) ISBN 0-89526-822-1
* "The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom" (1987) ISBN 0-895267853

Books and essays about James Burnham

* Kelly, Daniel "James Burnham and the Struggle for the World: A Life" (2002) ISBN 1-882926-76-5
* Francis, Samuel "Power and History, The Political Thought of James Burnham" (1984) ISBN 0-8191-3753-7
* Francis, Samuel "James Burnham: Thinkers of Our Time" (1999) ISBN 1-870626-32-X
* Orwell, George "James Burnham and The managerial revolution" (long essay).

ee also

* Elite theory

External links

* [http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf0p3000sz&chunk.id=c01-1.7.6.3&brand=oac Register of the James Burnham Papers, 1928-1983] , the Online Archive of California (OAC) initiative of the California Digital Library
* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_v39/ai_5169255 Obituary] , "National Review", September 11, 1987
* [http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh.html Second Thoughts on James Burnham] , by George Orwell
* [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/burnham/index.htm James Burnham Internet Archive] at Marxists.org
* [http://www.vdare.com/francis/burnham.htm James Burnham, The New Class, And The Nation-State] , by Samuel Francis,"VDARE.com", August 23, 2001.