THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION
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transition to socialism, has had its social position progressively
undermined. This has resulted from a falling off of its relative
numbers, the presence of large-scale unemployment, and techno–
logical changes which reduce the relative importance of the work–
ing class in production. In addition, the development of new
techniques of production, of propaganda and political rule, of
military technique and strategy, all decrease the elements of
potential power available to the working class.
During the past decade, a large part of the Marxist and other
socialism-inspired movements has been wiped out. The only impor–
tant section remaining is the Stalinist, which experience has proved
to be an influence in no way moving toward socialism.
At the same time, the socialist ideologies have lost their power
to move the masses, as it proved by their inability to make headway
against rival ideologies-Stalinist and especially fascist.
There does not, in general, .seem to be any positive evidence
worth mentioning in the events of the past generation that sub–
stantiates the hypothesis that socialism is coming.
Both the theory that capitalism will continue and the theory
that socialism will come, are, on the basis of the available evidence,
in extremely poor shape. However convincing they may once have
been as speculation, historical developments since 1914 simply do
not bear either of them out; on the contrary, actual historical
developments have run counter to both of them. This, by itself,
would not be enough to prove both of them false.
If
there were no
alternative theory, more probable on the evidence than either of
them, then we should still have to accept the more probable of the
two. But there is a third alternative (or rather a third group of
alternative theories), which needs little more than to be formu–
lated to be recognized as far more probable than either, much
more plausible in the interpretation it permits of the data of the
past, and more convincing in its predictions of the future.
4.
This third alternative I call "the theory of the managerial
revolution," though naturally the name is of no importance. My
own formulation must be understood as only one among several
possible variants of a more general type of hypothesis that might
be
more exactly presented in somewhat different terms. This theory,
