happiness any nearer. More recently, writers like Peter Drucker and F.A.
Voigt have argued that Fascism and Communism are substantially the same
thing. And indeed, it has always been obvious that a planned and
centralised society is liable to develop into an oligarchy or a
dictatorship. Orthodox Conservatives were unable to see this, because it
comforted them to assume that Socialism "wouldn't work", and that the
disappearance of capitalism would mean chaos and anarchy. Orthodox
Socialists could not see it, because they wished to think that they
themselves would soon be in power, and therefore assumed that when
capitalism disappears, Socialism takes its place. As a result they were
unable to foresee the rise of Fascism, or to make correct predictions
about it after it had appeared. Later, the need to justify the Russian
dictatorship and to explain away the obvious resemblances between
Communism and Nazism clouded the issue still more. But the notion that
industrialism must end in monopoly, and that monopoly must imply tyranny,
is not a startling one.
Where Burnham differs from most other thinkers is in trying to plot the
course of the "managerial revolution" accurately on a world scale, and in
assuming that the drift towards totalitarianism is irresistible and must
not be fought against, though it may be guided. According to Burnham,
writing in 1940, "managerialism" has reached its fullest development in
the USSR, but is almost equally well developed in Germany, and has made
its appearance in the United States. He describes the New Deal as
"primitive managerialism". But the trend is the same everywhere, or
almost everywhere. Always LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism gives way to planning
and state interference, the mere owner loses power as against the
technician and the bureaucrat, but Socialism--that is to say, what used to
be called Socialism--shows no sign of emerging:
Some apologists try to excuse Marxism by saying that it has "never had a
chance". This is far from the truth. Marxism and the Marxist parties have
had dozens of chances. In Russia, a Marxist party took power. Within a
short time it abandoned Socialism; if not in words, at any rate in the
effect of its actions. In most European nations there were during the
last months of the first world war and the years immediately thereafter,
social crises which left a wide-open door for the Marxist parties:
without exception they proved unable to take and hold power. In a large
number of countries--Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, England,
Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France--the reformist Marxist parties have
administered the governments, and have uniformly failed to introduce
Socialism or make any genuine step towards Socialism.... These parties
have, in practice, at every historical test--and there have been
many--either failed Socialism or abandoned it. This is the fact which
neither the bitterest foe nor the most ardent friend of Socialism can
erase. This fact does not, as some think, prove anything about the moral
quality of the Socialist ideal. But it does constitute unblinkable
evidence that, whatever its moral quality, Socialism is not going to come.
Burnham does not, of course, deny that the new "managerial" r�gimes,
like the r�gimes of Russia and Nazi Germany, may be CALLED Socialist. He
means merely that they will not be Socialist in any sense of the word
which would have been accepted by Marx, or Lenin, or Keir Hardie, or
William Morris, or indeed, by any representative Socialist prior to about
1930. Socialism, until recently, was supposed to connote political
democracy, social equality and internationalism. There is not the
smallest sign that any of these things is in a way to being established
anywhere, and the one great country in which something described as a
proletarian revolution once happened, i.e. the USSR, has moved steadily
away from the old concept of a free and equal society aiming at universal
human brotherhood. In an almost unbroken progress since the early days of
the Revolution, liberty has been chipped away and representative
institutions smothered, while inequalities have increased and nationalism
and militarism have grown stronger. But at the same time, Burnham
insists, there has been no tendency to return to capitalism. What is
happening is simply the growth of "managerialism", which, according to
Burnham, is in progress everywhere, though the manner in which it comes
about may vary from country to country.
Now, as an interpretation of what is HAPPENING, Burnham's theory is
extremely plausible, to put it at the lowest. The events of, at any rate,
the last fifteen years in the USSR can be far more easily explained by
this theory than by any other. Evidently the USSR is not Socialist, and
can only be called Socialist if one gives the word a meaning different
from what it would have in any other context. On the other hand,
prophecies that the Russian r�gime would revert to capitalism have
always been falsified, and now seem further than ever from being
fulfilled. In claiming that the process had gone almost equally far in
Nazi Germany, Burnham probably exaggerates, but it seems certain that the
drift was away from old-style capitalism and towards a planned economy
with an adoptive oligarchy in control. In Russia the capitalists were
destroyed first and the workers were crushed later. In Germany the
workers were crushed first, but the elimination of the capitalists had at
any rate begun, and calculations based on the assumption that Nazism was
"simply capitalism" were always contradicted by events. Where Burnham
seems to go most astray is in believing "managerialism" to be on the
up-grade in the United States, the one great country where free
capitalism is still vigorous. But if one considers the world movement as
a whole, his conclusions are difficult to resist; and even in the United
States the all-prevailing faith in LAISSEZ-FAIRE may not survive the next
great economic crisis. It has been urged against Burnham that he assigns
far too much importance to the "managers", in the narrow sense of the
word-that is, factory bosses, planners and technicians--and seems to
assume that even in Soviet Russia it is these people, and not the
Communist Party chiefs, who are the real holders of power. However, this
is a secondary error, and it is partially corrected in THE
MACHIAVELLIANS. The real question is not whether the people who wipe
their boots on us during the next fifty years are to be called managers,
bureaucrats, or politicians: the question is whether capitalism, now
obviously doomed, is to give way to oligarchy or to true democracy.
But curiously enough, when one examines the predictions which Burnham has
based on his general theory, one finds that in so far as they are
verifiable, they have been falsified. Numbers of people have pointed this
out already. However, it is worth following up Burnham's predictions in
detail, because they form a sort of pattern which is related to
contemporary events, and which reveals, I believe, a very important
; weakness in present-day political thought.
To begin with, writing in 1940, Burnham takes a German victory more or
less for granted. Britain is described as "dissolving", and as displaying
"all the characteristics which have distinguished decadent cultures in
past historical transitions", while the conquest and integration of
Europe which Germany achieved in 1940 is described as "irreversible".
"England," writes Burnham, "no matter with what non-European allies,
cannot conceivably hope to conquer the European continent." Even if
Germany should somehow manage to lose the war, she could not be
dismembered or reduced to the status of the Weimar Republic, but is bound
to remain as the nucleus of a unified Europe. The future map of the
world, with its three great super-states is, in any case, already settled
in its main outlines: and "the nuclei of these three super-states are,
whatever may be their future names, the previously existing nations,
Japan, Germany, and the United States."
Burnham also commits himself to the opinion that Germany will not attack
the USSR until after Britain has been defeated. In a condensation of his
book published in the PARTISAN REVIEW of May-June 1941, and presumably
written later than the book itself, he says:
As in the case of Russia, so with Germany, the third part of the
managerial problem--the contest for dominance with other sections of
managerial society--remains for the future. First had to come the
death-blow that assured the toppling of the capitalist world order, which
meant above all the destruction of the foundations of the British Empire
(the keystone of the capitalist world order) both directly and through
the smashing of the European political structure, which was a necessary
prop of the Empire. This is the basic explanation of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact, which is not intelligible on other grounds. The future conflict
between Germany and Russia will be a managerial conflict proper; prior to
the great world-managerial battles, the end of the capitalist order must
it impossible to explain reasonably the Nazi-Soviet Pact. From this
belief followed the always expected war between Germany and Russia, not
the actual war to the death between Germany and the British Empire. The
war between Germany and Russia is one of the managerial wars of the
future, not of the anti-capitalist wars of yesterday and today.
However, the attack on Russia will come later, and Russia is certain, or
almost certain, to be defeated. "There is every reason to believe...
that Russia will split apart, with the western half gravitating towards
the European base and the eastern towards the Asiatic." This quotation
comes from THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION. In the above quoted article, written
probably about six months later, it is put more forcibly: "the Russian
weaknesses indicate that Russia will not be able to endure, that it will
crack apart, and fall towards east and west." And in a supplementary note
which was added to the English (Pelican) edition, and which appears to
have been written at the end of 1941, Burnham speaks as though the
"cracking apart" process were already happening. The war, he says, "is
part of the means whereby the western half of Russia is being integrated
into the European super-state".
Sorting these various statements out, we have the following prophecies:
1. Germany is bound to win the war.
2. Germany and Japan are bound to survive as great states, and to remain
the nuclei of power in their respective areas.
3. Germany will not attack the USSR until after the defeat of Britain.
4. The USSR is bound to be defeated.
However, Burnham has made other predictions besides these. In a short
article in the PARTISAN REVIEW, in the summer of 1944, he gives his
opinion that the USSR will gang up with Japan in order to prevent the
total defeat of the latter, while the American Communists will be set to
work to sabotage the eastern end of the war. And finally, in an article
in the same magazine in the winter of 1944-5, he claims that Russia,
destined so short a while ago to "crack apart", is within sight of
conquering the whole of Eurasia. This article, which was the cause of
violent controversies among the American intelligentsia, has not been
reprinted in England. I must give some account of it here, because its
manner of approach and its emotional tone are of a peculiar kind, and by
studying them one can get nearer to the real roots of Burnham's theory.
The article is entitled "Lenin's Heir", and it sets out to show that
Stalin is the true and legitimate guardian of the Russian Revolution,
which he has not in any sense "betrayed" but has merely carried forward
on lines that were implicit in it from the start. In itself, this is an
easier opinion to swallow than the usual Trotskyist claim that Stalin is
a mere crook who has perverted the Revolution to his own ends, and that
things would somehow have been different if Lenin had lived or Trotsky
had remained in power. Actually there is no strong reason for thinking
that the main lines of development would have been very different. Well
before 1923 the seeds of a totalitarian society were quite plainly there.
Lenin, indeed, is one of those politicians who win an undeserved
reputation by dying prematurely. [See Note at end of paragraph] Had he
lived, it is probable that he would either have been thrown out, like
Trotsky, or would have kept himself in power by methods as barbarous,
or nearly as barbarous, as those of Stalin. The TITLE of Burnham's essay,
therefore, sets forth a reasonable thesis, and one would expect him to
support it by an appeal to the facts.
[Note: It is difficult to think of any politician who has lived to be
eighty and still been regarded as a success. What we call a "great"
statesman normally means one who dies before his policy has had time to
take effect. If Cromwell had lived a few years longer he would probably
have fallen from power, in which case we should now regard him as a
failure. If P�tain had died in 1930, France would have venerated him as a
hero and patriot. Napoleon remarked once that if only a cannon-ball had
happened to hit him when he was riding into Moscow, he would have gone
down to history as the greatest man who ever lived. [Author's footnote.]]
However, the essay barely touches upon its ostensible subject matter. It
is obvious that anyone genuinely concerned to show that there has been
continuity of policy as between Lenin and Stalin would start by outlining
Burnham does not do this. Except for one or two cursory sentences he says
nothing about Lenin's policy, and Lenin's name only occurs five times in
an essay of twelve pages: in the first seven pages, apart from the title,
it does not occur at all. The real aim of the essay is to present Stalin
as a towering, super-human figure, indeed a species of demigod, and
Bolshevism as an irresistible force which is flowing over the earth and
cannot be halted until it reaches the outermost borders of Eurasia. In so
far as he makes any attempt to prove his case, Burnham does so by
repeating over and over again that Stalin is "a great man"--which is
probably true, but is almost completely irrelevant. Moreover, though he
does advance some solid arguments for believing in Stalin's genius, it is
clear that in his mind the idea of "greatness" is inextricably mixed up
with the idea of cruelty and dishonesty. There are curious passages in
which it seems to be suggested that Stalin is to be admired BECAUSE OF
the limitless suffering that he has caused:
Stalin proves himself a "great man", in the grand style. The accounts of
the banquets, staged in Moscow for the visiting dignitaries, set the
symbolic tone. With their enormous menus of sturgeon, and roasts, and
fowl, and sweets; their streams of liquor; the scores of toasts with
which they end; the silent, unmoving secret police behind each guest; all
against the winter background of the starving multitudes of besieged
Leningrad; the dying millions at the front; the jammed concentration
camps; the city crowds kept by their minute rations just at the edge of
life; there is little trace of dull mediocrity or the hand of Babbitt. We
recognise, rather, the tradition of the most spectacular of the Tsars, of
the Great Kings of the Medes and Persians, of the Khanate of the Golden
Horde, of the banquet we assign to the gods of the Heroic Ages in tribute
to the insight that insolence, and indifference, and brutality on such a
scale remove beings from the human level...Stalin's political
techniques shows a freedom from conventional restrictions that is
incompatible with mediocrity: the mediocre man is custom-bound. Often it
is the scale of their operations that sets them apart. It is usual, for
example, for men active in practical life to engineer an occasional
frame-up. But to carry out a frame-up against tens of thousands of
persons, important percentages of whole strata of society, including most
of one's own comrades, is so far out of the ordinary that the long-run
mass conclusion is either that the frame-up must be true--at least "have
some truth in it"--or that power so immense must be submitted to is a
"historical necessity", as intellectuals put it...There is nothing
unexpected in letting a few individuals starve for reasons of state; but
to starve by deliberate decision, several millions, is a type of action
attributed ordinarily only to gods.
In these and other similar passages there may be a tinge of irony, but it
is difficult not to feel that there is also a sort of fascinated
admiration. Towards the end of the essay Burnham compares Stalin with
those semi-mythical heroes, like Moses or Asoka, who embody in themselves
a whole epoch, and can justly be credited with feats that they did not
actually perform. In writing of Soviet foreign policy and its supposed
objectives, he touches an even more mystical note:
Starting from the magnetic core of the Eurasian heartland, the Soviet
power, like the reality of the One of Neo-Platonism overflowing in the
descending series of the emanative progression, flows outward, west into
Europe, south into the Near East, east into China, already lapping the
shores of the Atlantic, the Yellow and China Seas, the Mediterranean, and
the Persian Gulf. As the undifferentiated One, in its progression,
descends through the stages of Mind, Soul, and Matter, and then through
its fatal Return back to itself; so does the Soviet power, emanating from
the integrally totalitarian centre, proceed outwards by Absorption (the
Baltics, Bessarabia, Bukovina, East Poland), Domination (Finland, the
Balkans, Mongolia, North China and, tomorrow, Germany), Orienting
Influence (Italy, France, Turkey, Iran, Central and south China...),
until it is dissipated in MH ON, the outer material sphere, beyond the