The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World

by James Burnham

The determining characteristics of what they mean by socialist society are that it is classless, fully democratic, and international. By “classless” is meant that in socialist society no person or group of persons has, directly or indirectly, any property rights in the instruments of production different from those possessed by every other person and group; it amounts to the same thing to say that in socialist society there are no property rights in the instruments of production, since a property right has meaning only if it differentiates the status of those who have it from that of those who do not. The democracy of the hypothetical socialist society is to extend, and completely, to all social spheres—political, economic, and social. And socialist society is to be organized on an international scale; if this cannot be done completely in the first stages, at least this is to be the tendency of socialism. If not at once international, it is to be always internationalist—as indeed it would have to be if it is ever to become actually international.