Editing James Burnham (section)

==<u>Later life, neoconservatism</u>==
After he dropped his Marxist veneer, he joined the OSS and headed the "Political and Psychological Warfare" division of the Office of Policy Coordination, writing in 1944 a document advocating aggressive US action to curtail "Soviet expansionism", which he would expand into a 1944 book, ''Struggle for the World''. He also openly advocated for a globalist American empire that would keep a monopoly on nuclear weapons to stop the "Communist World Empire":

''[A non-communist world bloc] can be brought about only if the United States, retaining for itself monopoly control of atomic weapons, assumes responsibility for world leadership.''

''A federation, however, in which the federated units are not equal, in which one of them leads all others, to however slight a degree, and holds the decisive instrument of material power, is in reality an empire. The word is unacceptable, as distasteful perhaps to citizens of the United States as to those of most of the rest of the world; and therefore the word would in practice doubtless never be employed. Whatever the words, it is well also to know the reality. The reality is that the only alternative to the communist World Empire is an American Empire which will be, if not literally worldwide in formal boundaries, capable of exercising decisive world control. Nothing less than this can be the positive, or offensive, phase of a rational United States policy.''

''In the creation of this Empire there would be necessarily involved the reduction of communism to impotence. The threat of a communist World Empire would therefore be eliminated. Once functioning, the primary political business of the American Empire would be the restriction of warfare within limits that would permit civilization to continue. To accomplish this, the crucial step would be to safeguard the monopoly of atomic weapons. There would have to be the continuous assurance against possession of atomic weapons * or their means of manufacture by two or more rival centers; there would have always to be one and only one control.'' (Struggle for the World, 1947, James Burnham, pp. 181-182)

After this, he remained linked with the OSS' successor, the CIA, being one of the founders of its anti-communist psyop organization, the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] along with aforementioned Sidney Hook:

''The Congress for Cultural Freedom [first] convened in Berlin's Titania Palace on 26 June 1950. American delegates Hook, James Burnham, James T. Farrell, playwright Tennessee Williams, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., actor Robert Montgomery, and chair man of the Atomic Energy Commission David Lilienthal had been greeted on their arrival the previous day with the news that troops of North Korea had launched a massive invasion of the South. This pointed reminder of the vulnerability of Berlin itself heightened the sense of apprehension in the hail. The Congress's opening caught and reflected this mood. Lord Mayor Reuter asked the almost 200 delegates and the 4,000 other attendees to stand for a moment of silence in memory of those who had died fighting for freedom or who still languished in concentration camps.'' https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/origins-congress-cultural-freedom.pdf

In 1955, he would help found, with William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative ''National Review'' magazine, and was named “the number one intellectual influence on National Review since the day of its founding.” by Buckley himself. He would continue to write anti-Soviet propaganda until his death in 1987 - being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983 by Reagan for his tireless efforts to demonize the international proletariat - utilizing every anti-communist trope in the book, as can be seen in this 1955 article which the hacks at NR thought was good enough to republish in 2020:

''For Moscow, the policy of election-year coexistence is precisely a renewal of the offensive, and on what Communists would call “a higher plane.” In this round, Moscow is leaping the Eurasian limits that she has hitherto observed. Guaranteed against war by the President’s promise in July, relying on the election neurosis, the Communists launch a rapid series of new and audacious moves.''

''Jumping over the southeast Asian peninsula, they prepare the absorption of Indonesia à la Prague. They fly on their political carpet over the land bridge into North Africa and the southwestern shore of the Mediterranean; and while choice elements of the enemy’s forces are there pinned in Morocco and Algeria, they quickly turn to build up Near Eastern steppingstones through those channels of world force that are left unwatched as the British complete their exodus from Suez. As far away as the eastern bulge of South America, they get ready for actions that are foreshadowed by the coming inauguration of their Brazilian friend, President-elect Juscelino Kubitschek. Meanwhile they block unification of Germany on Western terms, hammer at the joints of NATO, and press their wooing of Southeast Asia.''

''All this, and more, with the election still nearly a year away! Unresisted — and they are being resisted only as Hitler was resisted in 1936 — they will not quiet down. Rather will their blows increase in boldness and power. The détente is a rhetorical diversion. Egypt is not the last of the election-year surprises. And while new areas are tested, they will not have forgotten such old favorites as South Vietnam, Formosa, and West Germany.''https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/the-third-world-war/

Overall, Burnham's transformation from Trotskyite scribbler to anti-communist Cold Warrior shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's read the other articles about Trotsky on here, or another platform which also publishes the truth about this fascist, anti-communist tendency. The essence of Trotskyism is painting over anti-communism and support for bourgeois reaction with more revolutionary than thou phrase-mongering, adventurism, pseudo-Marxist theory, and "not real socialism" accusations. Most of these Trotskyist to neocon cases simply realized that they would be more effective in overthrowing socialism if they dropped the Marxist phraseology.