The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World

by James Burnham

The “freedom” of proletarians under capitalism is, of course, a curious kind of freedom. It means, in the first place, freedom from ownership rights in the instruments of production. There will be no change in this freedom: effective control of the instruments of production will be held not by workers but by the managers through their state. But proletarian freedom under capitalism also means, to a limited extent, freedom for the workers to sell their labor or not to sell it (though the alternative of not selling it, being starvation, is not too realistic), to sell it to one competing employer as against others, and to bargain over its price. These latter possibilities will not exist in anything like the same form under managerial economy. There being only one major employer (the state), there will be no bargaining among competing employers; and the assignment and transfer of jobs, as well as the fixing of rates of pay, will not be left to the accidents of market bargaining.