The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in the World

A politically technical subject covered with great clarity. Hard to believe it was written as long ago as 1940. Well worth a read.

It’s baffling how this book and the social theory it contains have not become mainstream. The Managerial Revolution is what we’re living though. Begun through super-organisms like the European Union and United Nation, and expedited as of 2020 through the Covid pandemic. It’s important to remember that the author admits his personal opposition to this future, yet, as a true scientist which is also proclaims himself to be, he cannot but state what appears to be most in accordance with the current (1940s) facts, and the most probable theory against all others.

I listened to the sample of this book and was impressed at how engaging the narrator made the subject material. It is interesting to note how Capitalism has made a decline since 1940s and I found that the narrator made this complex political theory appealing and easy to absorb!

-and reviewed it in the Tribune newspaper of the Labour Party. The ideas of convergence theory and the world divided in to three power blocs was a strong influence in his writing of 1984.

James Burnham's THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION is over seventy years old (published in 1940) and yet it predicts and explains a great deal of modern society with a skill and insight beyond most modern publications. Marxists imagined by the middle of the 20th century that capitalist was doomed. Burnham, himself a former Trotskyite, agreed. But whearas the Marxists saw only two choices, capitalism or communism, Burnahm predicted the rise of the managerial society (indeed much of the book is simply a very successful attack on the intellectual thesis of Communism). The managers are the middle link between the bourgeoisie (owners) and the proletariat (labourers). Many people would look at Western society today and call it capitalism, yet this is not the laissez faire capitalism the Victorians were familiar, rather it is managerial capitalism, with plenty of state intervention, a large class of managers organising society (because society became too complex) and attempts to regulate both economic activities and stability.Incidentally, if you doubt that we live under managerial capitalism today, then merely ask yourself who the majority of people in Britain today rely on for their livelihoods: the state or the private sector? Or, if that doesn't convince you, then join the NHS. Alternatively look at the way in which the British legislature has been undermined and power shifted to an Alphabet soup of organisations, from supra-national ones like the IMF and EU to the NGOs and Quangos.Burnham predicts the demise of capitalism because it is unable to end mass unemployment, whereas managerial societies (he uses the examples of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany) can and do (the modern welfare state is a form of this). He sees the technocrats of the New Deal as fulfilling a similar managerial role, albeit less developed (which ties in fascinatingly with Wolfgang Schivelbusch's book THREE NEW DEALS). He argues that Communism will fail to provide a workable alternative because the complexity of modern society has led to increased specialisation (expert workers - engineers, technicians etc.) which fractures the unity of the proletariat and because every great social change is led by an elite but the proletariat lacks this, which results in the formation on a non-proletarian elite by Marxists who invariably end up merely replacing the capitalist elite with their own and leading to a continued exploitation of the workers (see: Soviet Russia).Burnham made a number of predictions based upon his theory and some have tried to use his failed predictions to argue that the theory is flawed or wrong. In particular they point towards his prediction of a German victory in the Second World War. Yet he got a lot more right that wrong. He accurately predicted that the totalitarian states would become democracies (which are more conducive to managerialism), that the British Empire would collapse (as it was an empire based on capitalism) and that Europe would become politically unified (albeit not under the Germans because although they do economically underpin it, the memory of the Holocaust prevents them providing political leadership). Burnham simply underestimated the ability of Britain and America to transform themselves into managerial states and defeat Germany.If you have any interest in politics and society today then this book is essential because its analysis of the managerial class has never been surpassed. Modern scholarship might frown on the book as it eschews footnotes and a bibliography but the argument is clear and time appears to have validated many of Burnham's arguments. It is valuable to read this alongside his critics, notably George Orwell's interesting criticisms.

Review of James Burnham's Managerial Revolution.I'm very surprised at the apparent lack of reprints of this book, its one of the most referenced at one remove influential books that I know of, inspiring great literary works such as  Nineteen Eighty-Four  (explicitly) and  Brave New World  (at the very least implicitly). Its influence can be traced in dystopian or science fiction classics like  Logan's Run [DVD] [1976 ] or  Fahrenheit 451 [DVD] [1966 ] and  Gattaca [DVD] [1998 ].Burnham was a trotskyist whose some what gloomy realpolitik lead to his slow but sure gravitation towards American neo-conservatism, eventually contrasting the status quo with alternatives and considering them all "wishful thinking", the central thesis of The Managerial Revolution was that trends in management and ownership (specifically their divorce) had rendered many of the classical definitions of capitalism and socialism or communism redundant and obsolete.In this respect Burnham's conclusions, which draw mainly upon observation and induction, are an interesting example of an examination of trends which are largely ignored but none the less have sweeping and paradigm challenging or shifting impacts. These unrealised trends and impacts can make transform business practices, politics and ideologies. In 1984 Orwell attempted to import this all into literary form to ensure that it would reach a wider readership and lead to the dissemination of Burnham's perspective which he felt, with justification, had been ignored by politicians and the public wether they were left or right or in the dubious position of claiming to be operating outside of those parameters.While Animal Farm was a simple fable about betrayal, 1984 was more complex, parodying and criticising authoritarianism per se and the authoritarian personality but drawing heavily upon Burnham. Unfortunately, just as Burnham's original source has been largely neglected and ignored, Orwell's portrayal of a managerial elite's expedient and capricious exploitation of socialist ideology, abbreviated as IngSoc (English Socialism), was miscontrued and distorted into a criticism of socialism per se.Burnham's book does not examine the ascendency of elites, elite recruitment and reproduction of elitist social relations in the way that more recent (but still dated) books do, such as  The Power Elite  or even Tom Bottomore's  Elites and Society . Not a lot of space is given over to considering the professionalisation of politics or public life, the rise of a political class, media class, expansion of social services or state functions. However it does demonstrate how social trends can defy the expectations, forecasts and suppositions of sociologists and social theorists, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and others all believed that ownership and control/administration would all remain more or less synonymous with one another.The insights herein, I believe, also go some way to explain the problems which contributed to the investment capital and financial trends and scandals beginning with Enron and ending with the present economic crisis and recession.