Word: burnham
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...author is James Burnham, assistant professor of philosophy at New York University, onetime co-editor of The New International, theoretical magazine of U.S. Trotskyists. He writes deliberately unemotional English with primer simplicity. The tone of his book is amoral, nonpartisan, scientific. The theory he expounds makes The Managerial Revolution as morbidly fascinating as a text book vivisection, possibly the most sensational book of political theory since The Revolution of Nihilism...
...Author Burnham's theory: World War II is a social revolution, but not the kind of social revolution almost everybody thinks it is. When World War II is finished, capitalism and socialism will both be finished. After some 50 years of ruthless struggle, there will emerge a "domination and exploitation by a ruling class of an extremity and absoluteness never before known." Author Burnham calls his new class "The Managers"-the one class in society which is indispensable in making modern industry productive. Moreover, in two decisive sectors (Germany with most of Europe; Russia with half of Asia...
First test of any new theory is that it must explain more simply and completely than the old theories the greatest number of things that need explaining. First test for Author Burnham was to explain the stupendous paradoxes that baffle and confuse the observers of World...
...answer, says Author Burnham softly, and the common factor in all these paradoxes, is to be found in the character of what he calls the managerial revolution. He says...
Their immediate drive, says Burnham, is to control the instruments of production. They do not want to own them. The managers prefer to control them through their control of the state. "The state-that is, the institutions which comprise the state-will ... be the 'property' of the managers. And that will be quite enough to place them in the position of ruling class...