The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World

by James Burnham

Human beings, as individuals and in groups, try to achieve various goals—food, power, comfort, peace, privilege, security, freedom, and so on. They take steps which, as they see them, will aid in reaching the goal in question. Experience teaches us not merely that the goals are often not reached but that the effect of the steps taken is frequently toward a very different result from the goal which was originally held in mind and which motivated the taking of the steps in the first place. As Machiavelli pointed out in his History of Florence, the poor, enduring oppressive conditions, were always ready to answer the call for a fight for freedom; but the net result of each revolt was merely to establish a new tyranny. Many of the early capitalists sincerely fought for the freedom of individual conscience in relation to God; what they got as a result of the fighting was often a harsh and barren fundamentalism in theology but at the same time political power and economic privilege for themselves. So, today: we want to know what various persons and groups are thinking and doing; what they are thinking and doing has its effects on historical processes; but there is no obvious correspondence between the thoughts and the effects; and our central problem is to discover what the effects, in terms of social structure, will be.