The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World

by James Burnham

Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralized society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham under the name of ‘managers’. These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organize society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial’ societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America.

What Burnham is mainly concerned to show is that a democratic society has never existed and so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud. Burnham does not deny that ‘good’ motives may operate in private life, but he maintains that politics consists of the struggle for power, and nothing else. All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, all revolutionary movements, all visions of Utopia, or ‘the classless society’, or ‘the Kingdom of Heaven on earth’, are humbug (not necessarily conscious humbug) covering the ambitions of some new class which is elbowing its way into power.

Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not co-operate if they knew that they were simply serving the purposes of a minority. In each great revolutionary struggle the masses are led on by vague dreams of human brotherhood, and then, when the new ruling class is well established in power, they are thrust back into servitude. This is practically the whole of political history, as Burnham sees it.

The Machiavellians is sub-titled Defenders of Freedom. Machiavelli and his followers taught that in politics decency simply does not exist, and, by doing so, Burnham claims, made it possible to conduct political affairs more intelligently and less oppressively. A ruling class which recognized that its real aim was to stay in power would also recognize that it would be more likely to succeed if it served the common good, and might avoid stiffening into a hereditary aristocracy.

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 U.S.S.R., 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.

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 U.S.S.R., 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.

The events of, at any rate, the last fifteen years in the U.S.S.R. can be far more easily explained by this theory than by any other. Evidently the U.S.S.R. 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 régime 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.

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.

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 be assured. The belief that Nazism is ‘decadent capitalism’ . . . makes 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.

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.[1] 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 germ of truth in all this is that the smaller European states, demoralized by the chaos and stagnation of the pre-war years, collapsed rather more quickly than they need have done, and might conceivably have accepted the New Order if the Germans had kept same of their promises. But the actual experience of German rule aroused almost at once such a fury of hatred and vindictiveness as the world has seldom seen. After about the beginning of 1941 there was hardly any need of a positive war aim, since getting rid of the Germans was a sufficient objective. The question of morale, and its relation to national solidarity, is a nebulous one, and the evidence can be so manipulated as to prove almost anything. But if one goes by the proportion of prisoners to other casualties, and the amount of quislingism, the totalitarian states come out of the comparison worse than the democracies.

The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end. Burnham’s writings are full of apocalyptic visions. Nations, governments, classes and social systems are constantly described as expanding, contracting, decaying, dissolving, toppling, crashing, crumbling, crystallizing, and, in general, behaving in an unstable and melodramatic way. The slowness of historical change, the fact that any epoch always contains a great deal of the last epoch, is never sufficiently allowed for. Such a manner of thinking is bound to lead to mistaken prophecies, because, even when it gauges the direction of events rightly, it will miscalculate their tempo.

Every political theory has a certain regional tinge about it, and every nation, every culture, has its own characteristic prejudices and patches of ignorance. There are certain problems that must almost inevitably be seen in a different perspective according to the geographical situation from which one is looking at them. Now, the attitude that Burnham adopts, of classifying Communism and Fascism as much the same thing, and at the same time accepting both of them – or, at any rate, not assuming that either must be violently struggled against – is essentially an American attitude, and would be almost impossible for an Englishman or any other western European. English writers who consider Communism and Fascism to be the same thing invariably hold that both are monstrous evils which must be fought to the death: on the other hand, any Englishman who believes Communism and Fascism to be opposites will feel that he ought to side with one or the other.[3]

In practice. Britain and the United States have twice been forced into alliance against Germany, and will probably, before long, be forced into alliance against Russia: but, subjectively, a majority of Americans would prefer either Russia or Germany to Britain, and, as between Russia and Germany, would prefer whichever seemed stronger at the moment.[4] It is, therefore, not surprising that Burnham’s world-view should often be noticeably close to that of the American imperialists on the one side, or to that of the isolationists on the other. It is a ‘tough’ or ‘realistic’ world-view which fits in with the American form of wish-thinking. The almost open admiration for Nazi methods which Burnham shows in the earlier of his two books, and which would seem shocking to almost any English reader, depends ultimately on the fact that the Atlantic is wider than the Channel.

In everyday life, as Burnham sees and admits, one cannot explain every human action by applying the principle of cui bono? Obviously, human beings have impulses which are not selfish. Man, therefore, is an animal that can act morally when be acts as an individual, but becomes unmoral when he acts collectively. But even this generalization only holds good for the higher groups. The masses, it seems, have vague aspirations towards liberty and human brotherhood, which are easily played upon by power-hungry individuals or minorities. So that history consists of a series of swindles, in which the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters. Political activity, therefore, is a special kind of behaviour, characterized by its complete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among small groups of the population, especially among dissatisfied groups whose talents do not get free play under the existing form of society.

And this beautiful pattern is to continue for ever. Individuals may pass from one category to another, whole classes may destroy other classes and rise to the dominant position, but the division of humanity into rulers and ruled is unalterable. In their capabilities, as in their desires and needs, men are not equal. There is an ‘iron law of oligarchy’, which would operate even if democracy were not impossible for mechanical reasons.

It is important to bear in mind what I said above: that Burnham’s theory is only a variant – an American variant, and interesting because of its comprehensiveness – of the power worship now so prevalent among intellectuals. A more normal variant, at any rate in England, is Communism. If one examines the people who, having some idea of what the Russian régime is like, are strongly russophile, one finds that, on the whole, they belong to the ‘managerial’ class of which Burnham writes. That is, they are not managers in the narrow sense, but scientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats, professional politicians: in general, middling people who feel themselves cramped by a system that is still partly aristocratic, and are hungry for more power and more prestige.

It was only after the Soviet régime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show an interest in it.

Burnham at least has the honesty to say that Socialism isn’t coming; the others merely say that Socialism is coming, and then give the word ‘Socialism’ a new meaning which makes nonsense of the old one. But his theory, for all its appearance of objectivity, is the rationalization of a wish. There is no strong reason for thinking that it tells us anything about the future, except perhaps the immediate future. It merely tells us what kind of world the ‘managerial’ class themselves, or at least the more conscious and ambitious members of the class, would like to live in.

Actually, so long as they were winning, Burnham seems to have seen nothing wrong with the methods of the Nazis. Such methods, he says, only appear wicked because they are new: There is no historical law that polite manners and ‘justice’ shall conquer. In history there is always the question of whose manners and whose justice. A rising social class and a new order of society have got to break through the old moral codes just as they must break through the old economic and political institutions. Naturally, from the point of view of the old, they are monsters. If they win, they take care in due time of manners and morals. This implies that literally anything can become right or wrong if the dominant class of the moment so wills it. It ignores the fact that certain rules of conduct have to be observed if human society is to hold together at all. Burnham, therefore, was unable to see that the crimes and follies of the Nazi régime must lead by one route or other to disaster.

ORWELL’S NOTES [1] 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 Pétain 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.

Joe Biden.. wake up.

Whatever facts we select may seem arbitrarily selected. Nevertheless, we have already a guide to the particular kind of arbitrariness that is relevant to our purpose. Our problem is concerned with social revolution; and social revolution, according to the conception which has been outlined, is a matter of the most important economic and political institutions, widespread cultural institutions and beliefs, and ruling groups or classes. When these change drastically, the type of society has changed, and a revolution has occurred. It is modern or capitalist society in terms of these, then, that must be described. We do not have to include an account of the thousands of other features of modern society which might be relevant to some different purpose.

You cannot eat or wear exchange value or money; not the price of goods but the qualities that enable them to satisfy specific needs are all that enters into subsistence production. But even where goods entered into exchange in other societies, again notably in feudal society, they ordinarily did not do so as commodities. Exchange for the most part in the Middle Ages was not for money or through the intermediary of money but in kind; and there, too, what interested the buying or selling peasant was not the price he could get or would have to pay but whether he had a surplus of one kind of goods capable of satisfying one kind of need that he could trade for something else satisfying some other need.

Money is not an invention of capitalism; it has been present in most other societies, but in none has it played a part in any way comparable to what capitalism assigns it. The difference is readily enough shown by the fact that almost all of the complex banking, credit, currency, and accounting devices whereby money in its various forms is handled have their origin in modern times; and even more strikingly shown by the fact that the great majority of people in the Middle Ages never saw any money at all during their entire lives. No one, on the other hand, will have to be persuaded how important money has been in the modern world, whether he thinks of it in terms of personal life or government debts.

This medieval situation is clearly reflected in the writings of the philosophers and theologians on economic subjects. No conception of money functioning as capital can be found in them. Even exacting interest on money loaned (permitting money, even in that sense, to make money)—since they realized what uses loans were ordinarily put to—was unequivocally condemned as the grave sin of usury. In designating it a sin, the philosophers were astute: they rightly grasped that the practice was subversive and that if it spread it would work to the destruction of the fabric of their society. Interestingly enough, a moral exception was sometimes made to money loaned at interest for merchant-shipping, which, as it was the one important productive use for such funds, was found to be less sinful or even virtuous.

In capitalist economy, production as a whole is regulated, so far as it is regulated, primarily by “the market,” both the internal and the international market. There is no person or group of persons who consciously and deliberately regulates production as a whole. The market decides, independently of the wills of human beings. In the earliest (mercantile) and again in the late stages of capitalist development, monopoly devices and state intervention try to gain some control over production. But they operate only in restricted fields, not in the total productive process, and even in narrow fields they never succeed in emancipating production altogether from the market. This is not surprising, for deliberate regulation of production as a whole (a “plan,” as it is called nowadays) would be incompatible with the nature of capitalism. It would destroy the commodity basis of the economy, the profit motivation, and the rights of individual ownership.

The growing institutional supremacy of the lower house of parliament, therefore, over the feudal lords and later over the king (who co-operated with the capitalists in the early stages of the modern era) was the parallel in the political field to the supplanting of feudal relations by capitalist relations in the economic field—and it may be added, of feudal ideologies by capitalist ideologies in the cultural field.

There have been many politically democratic states in societies which were not capitalist; and there have been many nondemocratic states in capitalist society. Political orators, war-propagandists, and others who use words emotively rather than scientifically confuse these facts of history. They speak of “democracy” when they mean “capitalism” or of “capitalism” when they mean “democracy,” or they lump the two together in such phrases as “our way of life.” If the fate of democracy is in truth bound up with the fate of capitalism, that is something to be independently proved, not to be taken for granted by using language loosely.

Ideologies capable of influencing and winning the acceptance of great masses of people are an indispensable verbal cement holding the fabric of any given type of society together. Analysis of ideologies in terms of their practical effects shows us that they ordinarily work to serve and advance the interests of some particular social group or class, and we may therefore speak of a given ideology as being that of the group or class in question. However, it is even more important to observe that no major ideology is content to profess openly that it speaks only for the group whose interests it in fact expresses. Each group insists that its ideologies are universal in validity and express the interests of humanity as a whole; and each group tries to win universal acceptance for its ideologies.

The first assumption is put by Marxists (and others) in this way: that socialism is the “only alternative” to capitalism. They then assert, in effect, the following syllogism: since capitalism is not going to last (which we have granted) and since socialism is the only alternative to capitalism, therefore socialism is going to come. The syllogism is perfectly valid, but its conclusion is not necessarily true unless the second premise is true: and that is just the problem in dispute.

With the collapse of this argument and these assumptions, the case for the belief that socialism is coming is very slight. Of course, many people would like it to come, and regard socialism as the noblest and best form of society that could be sought as an ideal. But we must not permit our wishes to interfere with a reasoned estimate of the facts. The prediction that socialism is coming could correctly rest only upon a demonstration drawn from contemporary events themselves, upon showing that there are present today in society powerful tendencies, more powerful than any other, toward socialism, that socialism is the most probable outcome of what is happening. And contemporary events show nothing of the kind; they seem to some to do so only because they accept these unjustified assumptions or because they confuse their wishes with reality.

Every shred of freedom and democracy has by now been purged from Russian life. No opposition of any kind (the lifeblood of any freedom) is permitted, no independent rights are possessed by any organization or institution, and the outward marks of class differences and despotism have one by one returned. All the evidence indicates that the tyranny of the Russian regime is the most extreme that has ever existed in human history, not excepting the regime of Hitler.

But to anticipate briefly: Though Russia did not move toward socialism, at the same time it did not move back to capitalism. This is a point which is of key significance for the problem of this book. All of those who predicted what would happen in Russia, friends and enemies, shared the assumption which I have already discussed in this chapter: that socialism is the “only alternative” to capitalism; from which it followed that Russia—since presumably it could not stay still—would either move toward socialism or back to the restoration of capitalism. Neither of these anticipated developments has taken place. All of the attempts to explain the present Russian setup as capitalist—of which there have recently been a number—or about to become capitalist have broken down miserably (no capitalist has any illusions on that score). Trotsky, otherwise the most brilliant of all analysts of Russia, to his death clung desperately to this “either … or” assumption, and in late years consequently became less and less able to explain sensibly or predict what happened. The only way out of the theoretical jam is to recognize that the assumption must be dropped, that socialism and capitalism are not the sole alternatives, that Russia’s motion has been toward neither capitalism nor socialism, but toward managerial society, the type of society now in the process of replacing capitalist society on a world scale.

One point of great importance has been proved conclusively by the Russian events: namely, that the second assumption we have discussed—the assumption that the abolition of capitalist private property rights in the instruments of production is a sufficient condition, a sufficient guarantee, of the establishment of socialism—is false. These rights were abolished in Russia, in 1918. Socialism has not come about, nor even been approached. In fact, the abolition of these rights not merely did not guarantee socialism, but did not even keep power in the hands of the workers—who, today, have no power at all.

According to Marx himself, the inherent development of capitalist society as it tended toward centralization and monopoly was such that there would take place the “proletarianization” of the overwhelming bulk of the population; that is, almost everyone would become workers. This made socialism easy, because the workers would have almost no one except a handful of finance-capitalists to oppose their course. As is well known, this development did not take place as predicted by Marx. Sectors of the economy even of advanced nations, in particular agriculture, resisted the process of reduction to full capitalist social relations; most persons engaging in agriculture are neither capitalists nor workers (in the technical sense) but small independent producers. Small independent proprietors remain in many lines of endeavor; and the last seventy-five years have seen the growth of the so-called “new middle class,” the salaried executives and engineers and managers and accountants and bureaucrats and the rest, who do not fit without distortion into either the “capitalist” or “worker” category.

In Marx’s time one could think without too much strain of the workers’ taking over the factories and mines and railroads and shipyards, and running them for themselves; at least, on the side of the actual running of the productive machine, there was no reason to suppose that the workers could not handle it. Such a possibility is today excluded on purely technical grounds if on no others. The workers, the proletarians, could not, by themselves, run the productive machine of contemporary society.

It would be wrong, of course, to deny all scientific value to Marx’s own writings; on the contrary, we must continue to regard him as one of the most important figures in the historical development of the historical sciences—which sciences, even today however, are only in their infancy. But to suppose, as Marxists do, that Marx succeeded in stating the general laws of the world, of man and his history and ways, is today just ludicrous.

The power of an ideology has several dimensions: it is shown both by the number of men that it sways and also by the extent to which it sways them—that is, whether they are moved only to verbal protestations of loyalty, or to a will to sacrifice and die under its slogans. This power is tested particularly when an ideology, in reasonably equal combat, comes up against a rival. From all of these points of view the power of Marxist ideology, or rather of the strictly socialist aspects of Marxist ideology, has gravely declined. This is especially noticeable among that so-decisive section of the population, the youth, who are no longer willing to die for the words of socialist ideology any more than for those of capitalist ideologies. The only branch of the Marxist ideology which still retains considerable attractive power is the Stalinist variant of Leninism, but Stalinism is no longer genuinely socialist. Just as in the case of the Stalinist party, the Marxist ideology has kept power only by ceasing to be socialist.

Where there is such a controlling group in society, a group which, as against the rest of society, has a greater measure of control over the access to the instruments of production and a preferential treatment in the distribution of the products of those instruments, we may speak of this group as the socially dominant or ruling class in that society. It is hard, indeed, to see what else could be meant by “dominant” or “ruling” class. Such a group has the power and privilege and wealth in the society, as against the remainder of society. It will be noted that this definition of a ruling class does not presuppose any particular kind of government or any particular legal form of property right; it rests upon the facts of control of access and preferential treatment, and can be investigated empirically.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth and even the seventeenth centuries, the early capitalists, we know from the records of those times, worked closely with the princes or kings. The king in feudal society had been relatively unimportant, one feudal lord among others, often with less actual power than his chief vassals. When the kings began to strengthen their central authority and to try to build nations in the modern sense, their most obvious enemies were the feudal lords, including feudal lords who were supposed to be their own vassals. The kings sought support from the capitalists. The capitalists gave support to the kings because they, too, wanted stronger nations with national armies and navies to protect trade routes, and uniform laws, currencies, and taxes, so that trade could be carried on without constant interruption from a hundred feudal barons who considered themselves independent lords; because they made huge sums of money from dealings with the princes; and because they exacted protection and privileges in return for the aid they gave.

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.

A century ago it took many years and considerable native aptitude to make a skilled general mechanic of the kind who then made engines or buildings or carriages or tools or machines. Today it takes a couple of weeks to make a worker ready to take his full place on a production or assembly line. Even so-called skilled work today usually needs no more than a few months’ training. But, conversely, at the same time today a small percentage of tasks requires very great training and skill. Or let me put it in this way: within the process of production, the gap, estimated both in amount of skill and training and in difference of type of function, between the average worker and those who are in charge, on the technical side, of the process of production is far greater today than in the past.

Certain individuals (among whom in the United States at present would be many of the directors of the company and more particularly the bankers and big financiers who actually appoint the directors) have problems different from either of the first types. Their direct concern is not, or need not be, either the technical process of production or even the profit of the particular company. Through holding companies, interlocking directorates, banks, and other devices, they are interested in the financial aspects not merely of this automobile company but of many other companies and many market operations. They may wish to unite this company with others, in order perhaps to sell a stock or bond issue to the public, independently of the effect of the merger on the technical process of production or on the profits of our original company. They may want, for tax or speculative or other reasons, to lower the profit of this company, and could do so by, for example, raising prices charged by supply companies which they also were interested in. They may want to put some competitors out of business or influence politics or inflate prices; and any of such aims might be altogether independent of the requirements of production or profit in the particular automobile company. Any number of variants is possible. I shall call this third group the “finance-capitalists.”

In conditions which are now normal, an increase in income for the managers or even the executives of Group 2 means so much the less for Group 3 (the financiers) and Group 4 (the stockholders.) Even more apparently, the relations of control over the operations of the instruments of production raise conflicts, since the sort of operation most favorable to one group (expanding or contracting production, for example) very often is not that most favorable to another. And, in general, there is a source of permanent conflict: the managers proper receive far less reward (money) than the executives and especially the finance-capitalists, who get by far the greatest benefits. From the point of view of the manager group, especially as economic conditions progressively decay, the reward allotted to the finance-capitalists seems inordinate and unjustified, all the more so because, as the managers see it more and more clearly, the finance-capitalists are not performing any function necessary to the process of production.

The position, role, and function of the managers are in no way dependent upon the maintenance of capitalist property and economic relations (even if many of the managers themselves think so); they depend upon the technical nature of the process of modern production. Consequently the preservation of the capitalist relations is not an absolutely decisive question for the managers. The position, role, and function of the most privileged of all the groups, the finance-capitalists, are, however, entirely bound up with capitalist property and economic relations, and their preservation is decisive for even the continued existence of this group.

A third source of conflict is found in what we might call “occupational bias,” a point to which we shall return later. The different things which these different groups do promote in their respective members different attitudes, habits of thought, ideals, ways and methods of solving problems. To put it crudely: the managers tend to think of solving social and political problems as they co-ordinate and organize the actual process of production; the nonmanagerial executives think of society as a price-governed profit-making animal; the finance-capitalists think of problems in terms of what happens in banks and stock exchanges and security flotations; the little stockholders think of the economy as a mysterious god who, if placated properly, will hand out free gifts to the deserving.

Income and power have become unbalanced. Those who receive the most preferential treatment in distribution (get the biggest relative share of the national income) have, in differing degrees in different nations and different sections of the economy, been losing control over access. Others, who do not receive such a measure in preferential treatment in distribution, have been gaining in the measure of control over access which they exercise. Historical experience tells us that such a lack of correlation between the two kinds of control (the two basic rights of property) cannot long endure. Control over access is decisive, and, when consolidated, will carry control over preferential treatment in distribution with it: that is, will shift ownership unambiguously to the new controlling, a new dominant, class.

Yet, only a century thereafter (and change is more rapid now) the social heirs of those merchants and traders and moneylenders were, with their ducats, deciding the succession to thrones, the elections of emperors and popes, the winning of wars, the signing of peace. Within a century their social domination, though not yet consolidated, was assured. Yes, even the broad lands of the barons were passing into their hands as mortgages were foreclosed or as desperate lords strove hopelessly for the money they did not have and without which in the new age they could not even feed their children. We must not anticipate. A process which is in midcourse is not finished. The big bourgeoisie, the finance-capitalists, are still the ruling class in the United States; the final control is still in their hands. But we must not view the world too narrowly nor limit our eyes to the surface. For it is a world process with which we are dealing, since capitalism is a world system: the United States is linked economically, socially, culturally, and, most dramatically of all (how well we know this today!), strategically with all the world. And the process goes all the way to the roots of society; it does not remain merely on the outer layers.

The big capitalists, legally the chief owners of the instruments of production, have in actual life been getting further and further away from those instruments, which are the final source and base of social dominance. This began some time ago, when most of the big capitalists withdrew from industrial production to finance. At first this shift to finance (which was well under way by the turn of this century) did not mean any lessening of control over the instruments of production: rather the contrary, for through finance-capitalist methods a wider area than ever of the economy was brought, and was brought more stringently, under the control of the big capitalists. Nevertheless, the control necessarily became more indirect, exercised at second or third or fourth hand through financial devices.

If the old and wealthiest capitalists are slipping, then, it would seem, the newer managers will utilize their growing power to become the new members of the big bourgeoisie. However, in spite of the fact that many of the managers doubtless have such an aim as their personal motivation, it will not happen. In the first place, with the rarest exceptions, it is no longer possible for the managers to realize such an aim, even if they have it. The chance to build up vast aggregates of wealth of the kind held by the big bourgeois families no longer exists under the conditions of contemporary capitalism. Lundberg shows that since the end of the first world war there has been only a single change in the listing of the first Sixty Families in this country; only a single newcomer has penetrated that stratum (and this closing of the doors to the top rank occurred much later in the United States than in the other great capitalist nations). The inability of a ruling class to assimilate fresh and vigorous new blood into its ranks is correctly recognized by many sociologists as an important symptom of the decadence of that class and its approaching downfall.