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The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World Kindle Edition
'Burnham has real intellectual courage, and writes about real issues.' - George Orwell
Burnham’s claim was that capitalism was dead, but that it was being replaced not by socialism, but a new economic system he called “managerialism”; rule by managers. Written in 1941, this is the book that theorised how the world was moving into the hands of the 'managers'. Burnham explains how Capitalism had virtually lost its control, and would be displaced not by labour, nor by socialism, but by the rule of administartors in business and in government. This revolution, he posited, is as broad as the world and as comprehensive as human society, asking "Why is 'totalitarianism' not the issue?" "Can civilization be destroyed?" And "Why is the New Deal something bigger than Roosevelt can handle?" In a volume extraordinary for its dispassionate handling of those and other fundamental questions, James Burnham explores fully the implications of the managerial revolution.
Praise for James Burnham:
'The stoic, detached, empirical, hard-boiled, penetrating, realist mind of James Burnham is something to behold, to admire, to emulate.' - National Review
'James Burnham was an astonishing writer. Subtle, passionate, and irritatingly well-read.' - New Criterion
'The immense significance of Burnham’s approach is potential. We can ignore it only at the risk of being disarmed by the future course of events.' - Irving Kristol
James Burnham was an American popular political theorist. He was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years, as his thinking developed, he left Marxism and turned to conservatism, serving as a public intellectual of the conservative movement. He also wrote regularly for the conservative publication National Review on a variety of topics.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 10, 2019
- File size1510 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
'The stoic, detached, empirical, hard-boiled, penetrating, realist mind of James Burnham is something to behold, to admire, to emulate.' - National Review
'James Burnham was an astonishing writer. Subtle, passionate, and irritatingly well-read.' - New Criterion
'The immense significance of Burnham's approach is potential. We can ignore it only at the risk of being disarmed by the future course of events.' - Irving Kristol
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07MMDWBQN
- Publisher : Lume Books A Joffe Books Company (January 10, 2019)
- Publication date : January 10, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 1510 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 306 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #69,566 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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"...This is an important book to read and share because it reveals, plainly spoken, the contempt business managers have, and are taught to have, for the..." Read more
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Soon, however, Burnham's voice becomes more sincere: In the "drive for social dominance, for power and privilege, for the position of ruling class, by the social group or class of the managers.... This drive will be successful ... against the masses, who, obscurely, are a social force tending against oppression and class rule of any kind." [The mechanism is] "propaganda and ideologies, all under a bewildering variety of slogans and ostensible motivations" (Burnham, p. 166, 1941):
"The managers, the ruling class of the new society, will for their own purposes require at least a limited democracy. When the ruling group becomes more and more liable to miscalculate, a certain measure of democracy makes it easier for the ruling class to get more, and more accurate, information. Second, experience shows that a certain measure of democracy is an excellent way to enable opponents and the masses to let off steam without endangering the foundations of the social fabric. Democracy, freedom for public minority political expression within a class society, must be so limited as not to interfere with the basic social relations whereby the ruling class maintains its position of power and privilege.
"When the vote has been extended to wide sections of the population, including a majority that is not members of the ruling class, that problem is more difficult. In spite of the wider democracy, however, control by the ruling class can be assured ... when major social institutions upholding the position of the ruling class are firmly consolidated, when ideologies contributing to the maintenance of these institutions are generally accepted, when the instruments of education and propaganda are primarily available to the ruling class...." (Burnham, p. 168, 1941).
This is an important book to read and share because it reveals, plainly spoken, the contempt business managers have, and are taught to have, for the citizens of our nation and the world, as well as the strategies they use to control our actions and even our thoughts.
A must read for anyone who wants to step outside of the official narratives that'll tell you why it's just fine that you currently have less freedom, less opportunity, and less happiness than your great-grandfather did 100 years ago.
And that is what the book is about. Burnham was socialist who lost trust in his fellow Marxists but not in Marxism. He believed that Capitalism was on the way out but it seemed to him it was NOT going to be replaced by Socialism. As he watched and studied the very events happening in Europe, Asia, and within the USA, he came to the answer. Managers would become the next class. Neither owners nor producers, they would nevertheless, take reins in hand to control the nations, forming super-states and gaining power over the other classes.
He does a great job of tracing his logic, using history and current events (well, events that was current at the time), building up his predictions. In fact, some of the pages could be used, word for word, to describe events and movements happening now. For example, when talking about the youth of England, who no longer believe in the system they are living in and are showing a lack of willingness to support it, I could not help but think about the Occupy movement! On the other hand, he seems to have totally dismissed banks and other factors that we know would shape our future, for better or for worse.
Much of the events he talked about did not happen and may never happen, but his book did influence such authors as Orwell, who used Burnham's idea of three super-states always in conflict for the setting of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I plan to get The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom and read it to help understand more of his thoughts of political theory.
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