The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World

by James Burnham

Indeed, the very raising of the question of who will rule, the bureaucrats or the managers, indicates the persistence of modes of thinking carried over from capitalist society and not strictly applicable to managerial society. The fact that in capitalist society the ruling class was a different group from the governing political administrators is largely the reflection of more basic structural features of capitalist society to which I have several times referred. Capitalist economy proper was the arena of private enterprise, and the capitalist state, we saw, was a limited state. The rulers of capitalist society, as in every society, were those who ruled the economy; and these were not the persons who held the offices of political administration. By the nature of the case, the latter, no matter how supreme they were in their own limited realm, were, in the entire social process, subordinate to the former. In managerial society, however, politics and economics are directly interfused; the state does not recognize its capitalist limits; the economic arena is also the arena of the state. Consequently, there is no sharp separation between political officials and “captains of industry.” The captain of industry is, by virtue of his function, at the same time a state official.