Word: burnham
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Democracy Is Impossible. Burnham takes the black view that it is impossible. Member of an intellectual Roman Catholic family,* he was for years an outstanding U.S. Trotskyite, but a few years ago he abruptly abandoned leftist politics and Karl Marx. In The Managerial Revolution (TIME, May 19, 1941) he developed the large but rather fuzzy thesis that whatever political terms are used to describe the societies of the future, they will really be governed by a managerial elite consisting of specialists, technicians...
...Burnham now produces additional arguments for the inevitability of a governing elite (if not necessarily his elite). The few genuine political realists, he feels, belong to the school of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). Its cardinal principles...
...Burnham discusses at length the leading modern followers of Machiavelli...
Democracy Is Difficult. Professor Sidney Hook, unlike Professor Burnham, has not turned his back on Marxism...
Democracy, says Hook in effect, is possible if the general social tendency and the event-makers (if any) favor it. A democratic state must follow the leader, but should also be vigilant against his autocratic tendencies. Like Burnham, Hook recognizes the persistent power of the elite. But he thinks that democratic forces may overcome a ruling class. In Burnham's view, man is a long shot and history is doom. In Hook's view, man has the odds. For Burnham, Machiavelli is an aid to pessimism. For Hook, the concept of the hero bolsters optimism...