Editing James Burnham (section)

==<u>From Trotskyism to The Managerial Revolution</u>==
James Burnham (1905-1987) was an American Trotskyite pseudo-Marxist and counter-revolutionary who became one of the founding members of the neoconservative movement. Burnham began socialist activism in 1933, forming the American Workers Party with [[Sidney Hook]], who would also go on to become one of the founders of neoconservatism. This became the US Workers Party in 1934, and then merged with the Socialist Party of America, and by 1935 he had become associated with [[Trotskyism]] as an acquaintance of [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]] himself and a frequent contributor to leading Trotskyite rag of the time, Partisan Review (which would later become associated with the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]], which should shock nobody). In 1937, the Trotskyites were expelled from the Socialist Party and formed the Socialist Workers Party. Here he allied with fellow future neocon [[Max Shachtman]]. They decided that Trotsky wasn't ''enough'' of an anti-communist and in opposition to the Trotsky backed line that the Soviet Union was a ''degenerated'' workers state that must be overthrown, but nonetheless still a workers state and more progressive than the bourgeois regimes, they argued, in a letter to Trotsky, that the Soviet Union was just a reactionary, perhaps even more reactionary, imperialist regime, just like capitalist powers:

''The Fourth International established, years ago, the fact that the Stalinist regime (even though based upon nationalized property) had degenerated to the point where it was not only capable of conducting reactionary wars against the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard, and even against colonial peoples, but did in fact conduct such wars. Now, in our opinion, on the basis of the actual course of Stalinist policy (again, even though based upon nationalized property), the Fourth International must establish the fact that the Soviet Union (i.e., the ruling bureaucracy and the armed forces serving it) has degenerated to the point where it is capable of conducting reactionary wars even against capitalist states (Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, now Finland, and tomorrow Rumania and elsewhere). This is the point which forms the nub of our difference with you and with the Cannon faction.'' [https://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1940/03/crisis.htm (https://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1940/03/crisis.htm])

Their conclusion? That the international proletariat should actively try to overthrow the "Stalinist regime", and in the event of a war with Nazi Germany, refuse ''any'' critical support, oppose any aid to it, and even actively support the Nazis.

''War is a continuation of politics, and if Stalinist policy, even in the occupied territory where property has been statified, preserves completely its reactionary character, then the war it is conducting is reactionary. In that case, the revolutionary proletariat must refuse to give the Kremlin and its army material and military aid. It must concentrate all efforts on overturning the Stalinist regime. That is not our war! Our war is against the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy at the present time! In other words, I propose, in the present war, a policy of revolutionary defeatism in the Soviet Union, as explained in the statement of the Minority on the Russian question – and in making this proposal I do not feel myself one whit less a revolutionary class patriot than I have always been.'' (ibid)

Although this line of argumentation garnered much support within the party, it proved too deviationist even for the other Trotskyites and was defeated 55-31. Schachtman, Burnham, and their supporters consequently left the party and Burnham abandoned Marxism altogether (Schachtman would follow suit later on, supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion in the 60s). He had by this time begun to formulate a theory for explaining the developments of his time not with Marxism, but with a theory he called "managerialism". As seen in his resignation letter:

''The faction fight in the Socialist Workers Party, its conclusion, and the recent formation of the Workers Party have been in my own case, the unavoidable occasion for the review of my own theoretical and political beliefs. This review has shown me that by no stretching of terminology can I any longer regard myself, or permit others to regard me, as a Marxist.''

''Of the most important beliefs, which have been associated with the Marxist movement, whether in its reformist, Leninist, Stalinist or Trotskyist variants, there is virtually none which I accept in its traditional form. I regard these beliefs as either false or obsolete or meaningless; or in a few cases, as at best true only in a form so restricted and modified as no longer properly to be called Marxist.''

''This communication is not meant to be an elaborate analysis or a lengthy personal credo. Nevertheless, I wish to illustrate my opinions with a few specific examples:''

''I reject, as you know, the “philosophy of Marxism,” dialectical materialism. I have never, it is true, accepted this philosophy. In the past I excused this discrepancy and compromised this belief with the idea that the philosophy was “unimportant” and “did not matter” so far as practise and politics were concerned. Experience, and further study and reflection, have convinced me that I have been wrong and Trotsky – with so many others – right on this score; that dialectical materialism, though scientifically meaningless, is psychologically and historically an integral part of Marxism, and does have its many and adverse effects upon practice and politics.''

''The general Marxian theory of “universal history,” to the extent that it has any empirical content, seems to me disproved by modern historical and anthropological investigation.''

''Marxian economics seems to me for the most part either false or obsolete or meaningless in application to contemporary economic phenomena. Those aspects of Marxian economics which retain validity do not seem to me to justify the theoretical structure of the economics.''

''Not only do I believe it meaningless to say that “socialism is inevitable” and false that socialism is “the only alternative to capitalism”; '''I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitive society (what I call “managerial society”) is not only possible as an alternative to capitalism but is a more probable outcome of the present period than socialism.''''' https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/burnham/1940/05/resignation.htm

===<u>Managerial revolution</u>===
In 1941 he published a book which fully elaborated on this idea, called ''The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World''. He thought that capitalism was disappearing and that "managerialism" was replacing it, with Stalin's Russia having achieved "managerialism", and FDR's America and Hitler's Germany tending towards it. He presented this as a great break from Marxism, in realizing that socialism wasn't "inevitable" and that it was possible the "managerial class" that now controlled the means of production would win a victory over the bourgeoise instead of the proletariat. 

One of his earliest reviewers, [[George Orwell]] (who was influenced by Burnham in his anti-communist novel [[1984]]) sums up the book thus: 

''Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralized society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham under the name of ‘managers’. These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organize society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial’ societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom.''

In reality the core of this theory wasn't in itself a great break from Marxism, it just showed how little he understood Marx and Engels in the first place, and his predictions were clearly inaccurate. What he was witnessing was the continuing development of the process Engels had witnessed the beginnings of when he wrote this back in 1877: 

''This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the capital class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of an industry in a particular country unite in a "Trust", a union for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of a particular industry is turned into one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion of 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a single plan, and with a capital of 6,000,000 pounds.''

'''''In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society.''' Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers.''

''In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.''

'''''If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.'''''

He was right in saying that capitalism was disappearing, but he misunderstood what was replacing it as some non-socialist "managerial" form of production. In reality, [[''We already live in socialism''|socialism was developing within capitalism,]] and many of these managers were simply the ones responsible for coordinating and managing this increasingly socialized production (although as he defines the "manager class" extremely broadly, others had different roles), and the managers of both the government and the corporations themselves had to increasingly cooperate. In the case of the Soviet Union, where he said managerialism had been most fully achieved, he simply renamed socialism to managerialism and then asserted it was a new system, when in reality all that had happened was that the USSR was the only country of the three to have fully socialized production. Essentially, nowadays, capitalism and "managerialism", which is really just socialism, coexist, and it's the duty of communists to finally destroy the by now solely parasitic capitalist vestiges and unfetter socialized production. Nonetheless, when its flaws are taken into account, his book can provide some value, as this managerial strata certainly came to exercise lots of influence and continues to do so even if it hasn't actually overthrown capitalism and instituted some new mode of production like he predicted.

This theory would go on to influence important paleoconservative author [[Samuel Francis]], who wrote two books related to Burnham: ''James Burnham: Thinkers of Our Time'', an overview of his thought, and ''Leviathan and its Enemies'', in which he attempted to update Burnham's analysis to America c. 1990, concluding that a managerialist elite with a globalist ideology had taken over from an older bourgeois capitalist elite and that the center of resistance had shifted from this older socially conservative bourgeois elite and its ideology of "small government" and "free enterprise" to what he called "post-bourgeois proletariat" and sometimes "Middle American Radicals", who generally supported social conservatism, but also, in contrast to earlier bourgeois resistance, "economic liberalism" or "big government" to assert their interests, what he called "working class anti-liberalism". Some see this as a prediction of [[MAGA]]. Francis' analysis suffers from some of the same defects as Burnham's, in that he doesn't recognize that the capitalists seemingly being shoved aside in comparison with the earlier capitalist epoch without socialism having been established doesn't mean that Marx was wrong and that we've entered some new mode of production, but only that most of these capitalists are now purely parasitic without even the managerial role their earlier equivalents held in their own enterprises, with actual management of every aspect of the enterprise being left to employed bureaucracies, while still reaping the rewards. 

Burnham also wrote another book called ''The Machiavellians'' which covered [[Italian elite theory]].