James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution: A Review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- A review of Jams Burnham's famous work "The Managerial Revolution." In this book he predicts the end of capitalism and its replacement with a new type of social system he called Managerial Society. What are the interesting aspects of this book and what is it that he seems to have gotten wrong?
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I think Burnhams thesis is correct and his predictions are also correct it's just that the Soviet society didn't really have corporate structures in the same way we have as now.
Could you say this agian, but in more detail?
If you view the managers as corporate rather than government than I think the thesis is correct. Now almost all production is publicly owned through large corporations who are in turn owned by large investment firms who are in turn owned by the average person's 401k. Companies manage things through a legion of middle managers and a few upper managers but none of them own anything. Even the CEO and board members are just employees of the company and will likely be replaced every few years. The board members, including the President, are just there to represent shareholder interests, which is really just to make sure the share price goes up. The days like the early 1900s where like 90% of the population was self employed are gone everyone is an employee and everything is managed by someone who doesn't own what he's managing.
I think communism has already come to pass and we're living in it right now for this reason. America has no bourgeois because it has no individual people who own any production except maybe Elon Musk and a few family farms but even then Musk will eventually die and all his companies will become publicly owned like GE, Boeing, Walmart, and everything else.
Does the USA have a legion of Quangos (Quasi-non governmental organisations, a better term than NGO as though unaccountable to the public, they often have remote control of regulation and excessive influence over and funding via the state) that lobby and consult and determine public policy and private possibility?
@@AURORA08A Why are you asking me this?
@@AURORA08A The US has think tanks who usually toe the party line, because that's how they stay relevant and are sought by government and donors.
Until it creates corporate monuments so towering and fragile that the tiniest tremor makes it's Jenga construction methods obvious and it collapses under its own hypicrisy
He didn't say Gov controls. He said Managerial class does.
Problem with USSR style we are heading at i.e. NeoFeudalism is ...like USSR or China, the loyal get precedent over competent. Thus the prosperity starts to dwindle and regime dies.
Yes, Burnham's theory did not predicted the future, but:
1) It is better and more close to reality, than Marxist analysis
2) Yes, USA does not look like USSR, here Burnham got it wrong, but menegirial class became more powerfull in unike American way, and equality and universalism looks like american managerial class ideology
And i agree his theory is not good enough to explain the present day
You've basically explained Canadas governence system.
No. James Burnham predicted the Canadian governance system, claiming this was a global trend. Communist China, the European Union, India and the US "mixed economy" governments are primary examples.
Samuel Francis has a good book on Burnham and his theories called Power and History
@tablelampdoor idk about a digital copy but I bought one from a used book site (abe books or thrift books) for like 15 dollars. Its old and out of print so used copies might vary in price. Like most of francis's published works, it's short and sweet (like 140 pages). It is basically a summary of Burnham and I preferred it to actually reading Burnham tomes (also its written in a more contemporary fashion, since burhnam was writing from the earl cold War era).
I'd say that while in the west it is kind of complicated. Burnham pretty perfectly describes China today, but then again, China has always been, since ancient times, the Bureaucrat/middle-manager Empire par excellence. Which kind of gives me a weird feeling when libertarians talk about going to far east Asia if the collapse happens, as without the CCP the region would supposedly be a paradise of freedom.
The CCP has been the final realisation of the dreams of the Legalists, (cf. Book of Lord Shang), attempted by the foundational Jin dynasty, and put on the back burner in favour of symbolic unity and central patronage holding hegemony over a hierarchy of local absolutists, since the Han. It is nightmarish but effective, with modern technology.
@@AURORA08A I'm not that well-versed in this, so correct me if I'm wrong, but don't traditional legalists value the power of the absolute ruler over that of the bureaucrats? Which isn't exactly how the CCP seems to operate. In a way, wouldn't the CCP be more of a combination of the worst aspoects of legalism (absolute deference to authority at all costs) with the worst aspects of confucianism (learned bureaucrat as the highest model of virtue)? Basically, they throw away confucianism's emphasis on the need for virtue and also ignore legalism's call of curbing bureaucrat's power and independence (instead concentrating it on the ruler) as its corrupting, because the nature of the bureaucrat is to embezle resources.
China is the prime example of what I would call "exceptional mediocrity".
I've never heard the words "Chinese" and "Craftsmanship" in the same sentence.
i'd like to have a response from academic agent on that
you sound tired mate. Are you getting enough sleep? Anyways, cool video. Keep it up.
Can you review The Machiavellians by Burnham
My favorite example of free market capitalism to explain to a socialist is that; 10 years ago and eight of good weed would cost most from 45-60$. It currently cost 20-25 for the same shit I could buy 10 years ago. That's a free market.
This is a really good summary!
Management just maximizes efficiency for the benefit of the shareholders. How did that simple reality escape him?
burnham has been on my reading list, and i dont see any reason to doubt the notion of the managerial elite. what i have a problem with burnham (as you disclose) however (and in spite of a confession of libertarian sympathies) is the use of 'capitalist' society. This is a bit of a red flag (no pun intended due to his history). Despite how the term may have become, 'capitalism' is not an ideology, it does not compete with 'feudalism' or 'socialism,' it is simply the 'private' (this can mean different things over different epochs, but we can take it as 'stable ownership') ownership of production, which together in the complex system of (add division of labour) extraction, production, and exchange of resources, results in the spontaneous order of what we would call an economic system - i.e. market. 'Capitalism' can operate under feudalism, or the scorned democracy, or any other, but it is not a political ideology in and of itself. Therefore, regardless of the etymology of the term 'capitalism,' its misuse and denegration in modern times, and equally the subsequent notion of 'capitalists,' the force of 'capitalism' has been apparent throughout history clearly back through to the bronze age at least (for example see the odyssey 1.180-4). There have always been 'capitalists' (i.e. landowners, elites, whatever have you) going back thru history, because if there weren't, there would be no such thing as civilisation, as without any wealth accumulation by anyone, which we can call 'elites', the malthusian trap would simply average out any economic gains to births/deaths and accomplish nothing. Perhaps we need a new term to differentiate the 'process' of 'capitalism' as i, and many legends before me describe it, and how sullied and misappropriated the term is used, not just today, but by burnham himself.
I think it's better described through the lens of Neo-Feudalism. Fealty still exists, as it is loyalty to the System/Cathedral and the "lordship" hierarchy within that system. Lords are determined based on their fealty rather than competence/merit as a reward mechanism for mobility among the gentry class/bourgeoisie (I'd go further to say that competency is the measure of fealty in this model). Serfs are still the bulk sum of proles, lumpen, petit bourgeoisie, etc i.e. those with virtually no upward mobility to vassalage/lordship. Except in the Neo-Feudal model, they are told they are not serfs and are "free" yet are completely bound by the economic and cultural system imposed on them else will face complete pariahood and destitution as implicit punishment for lack of fealty. One is bound to this system with no outlet, both Lord or Serf.
Overall, Neo-Feudalism is the telos of the Neoliberal process; where laissez-faire capital policy has run it's course and all spheres of life have been marketed and dominated by select lords while all serfs must acquiesce to no alternative. You have capitalism for the Lord class who are free to conduct their trade amongst Lords with an endless supply of serf production/consumption. Meanwhile it is socialism for the serfs who rely on the Lord's "estate" to provide for all aspects of their means of life (again, "or else"). I agree with Burnham that the State will be indistinguishable from the Lords (Managers) that rule these collective capital entities (banks, corporations, syndicates, cartels, etc et al). It's the shiny aesthetics that create disbelief of our current condition as a slave admires his new slightly slimmer iphone gadget / golden shackle.
Capitalism was a framework where the merchants, who knew how to be most productive with capital, should be allowed to organize and operate as he/she sees fit. Liberalism was the political philosophy to permit capitalism to reach its ends
Why do people on the spectrum always overpronounce words? It's a strange speech affectation that many on the spectrum share
Your message would be more widely heard and understood if you can soften the pronunciation when speaking publicly
Especially the ending T sounds
Burnham foresaw Canada circa 2023 clearly.
If the soviet Union wasn't socialist, what was it?
state capitalism
@@esoteric67 In what way was the Soviet Union State-Capitalist? By some notions, countries such as the United States or the post-Soviet Russian Federation would be considered state capitalist (American banks are "too big to fail"). Others would define Sweden, Denmark, Norway as being State Capitalist.
Money in the Soviet Union didn't function as Capital. It didn't matter if a factory was in possession of 0 rubles or a trillion rubles. Resources were allocated according to political decisions. Factories could be operated at a monetary loss and it wasn't a problem. This is the exact opposite of Capitalist logic. The point of Capitalism is to grow Capital. This is still true for state Capitalism.
From what I understand, the USSR didn't have a free market. It had a mixed market. The state had direct control over the majority of the economy. Private production was small in comparison.
Even the prices of goods were determined politically. Sometimes goods were sold below their market value (which did cause problems). In a capitalist economy, prices are primarily determined by market forces.
One can argue that the soviet nomenklatura was a class unto itself. But that class certainty did not reproduce itself by extracting surplus value though its own private property.
They were socialist; marxist or rather Leninist-socialist (communist). People focus to much of the economics vs the mission & purpose; it's more of a secular religion than economic system.
Economic issues are honestly more of a psyop for all forms of socialism. Marx, Hitler, Gentile, etc; they were materialist who wanted to create their own ubermensch; a new type of human.
Socialism is just public control:
Fascism - National syndicalism/corporatism
Nazism - Racial national socialism
Communism - dialectical materialism / Marxist-socialism
Bourgeosis-Socialism - Like corporatism with a expanded welfare state; think Denmark, using "capitalism" to produce the wealth to redistribute.
You need a pop filter
A request: actively try to cut back on the vocal fry? It does you no favours.