The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World

by James Burnham

Today the managers are carrying on a similar triple battle (let us recall here, as always when we use the language of the class struggle, the partly metaphorical character of that language): against the capitalists, whose interests are bound up with the decaying social order; against the masses, who, obscurely, are a social force tending against oppression and class rule of any kind; and against each other for first prizes in the new world. The hold of the capitalists on the instruments of production must be smashed. The masses must be curbed, and as many as possible of them diverted so that their weight is thrown into the scale on the side of the managers and of the new social structure. The various sections of the managers contend with each other, on a world scale, for mastery. This is a complex process with its elements so intertwined that it is often hard to see through to the major forces. But comparable processes in history indicate that it is worked out by wars and revolutions and persecutions and terror, and by the clash also of rival propaganda and ideologies, all under a bewildering variety of slogans and ostensible motivations.