James Burnham: Foreseeing Our Managerial Domination (Part II)

“Ultimately, in order to thwart the managerial system, the American conservative movement needs to co-opt the managerial system.”

Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part essay. Part one can be found here.

In part one, I briefly looked at James Burnham’s early life, as well as his belief in and ensuing break with doctrinaire Marxism. I discussed his views on social structures and the role power plays in their substance and how they change. Burnham’s theory of the managerial revolution was the center of that essay. Modern Europe and China illustrated the managerial form of politics and economics in action. Now, we bring managerialism home to the United States and Britain, looking at their political and economic circumstances to see whether they match Burnham’s vision. As we will see, these do bear a strong resemblance, albeit evolved to suit the times.

Modern conservatism, meanwhile, has enabled rather than resisted these trends. Understanding these facts is the only way for conservatives to resist and even win politically, by gaining hegemonic power to enact their vision of a flourishing, stable, and decent politics and economics oriented towards the common good of the everyday man and woman.

Re-cap

Let us restate the fundamental premises of managerialism. Our societies went through a revolution in size and complexity from the end of the 19th century. As Burnham argued, this revolution then culminated between 1914 and 1945. The increased complexity of political and economic systems meant increased bureaucratization. Bureaucracies are inherent to complex organizations, which cannot do without a bureaucracy; otherwise, they would devolve into chaos. Real work is, therefore, at risk of replacement by administrative roles and tasks, in service of perpetuating the organization. Bureaucracies occupy the public domain and the private corporate world and interweave the two. Different descriptive terms are used, but this does not alter the managerial reality, with “manager” and “expert” simply different labels for managerial positions.