Books
THE BURNHAMIAN REVOLUTION
Dwight
M~cdonald
JAMES BURNHAM's BOoK•
ha. sold amund 10,000 oopios, whicl> ;,
extremely good for a work of that kind; it has been reviewed seriously
and sympathetically almost everywhere except in the Trotskyist press,
which damned it with a sectarian obtuseness calculated to convince the
outsider that it is a major work; a summary of its thesis has been printed
in this very magazine. Yet I must confess that the considerable objections
I had to the summary are tenfold magnified now that I have read the
whole boolc. While we were in the Trotskyist movement together, I greatly
udmired Burnham for his courage, honesty and political intelligence. It
is hard to say it, but these qualities seem largely absent from his book.
Even as an attempt to open up the field for discussion, the book
seems o( small value-and this despite my agreement with Burnham on
the emergence of a new non-capitalist and non-socialist form of society.
Burnham's methodology is so unscientific and the terms in which he argues
ltis thesis are so vague, unhistorical and often self-contradictory, that it
would take another book to correct errors of fact and to qualify, unravel
and properly define his terms. And I can more easily swallow the Trot–
skyist theory that Hitler is a tool of big business, or Stalin a Bonapartist
usurper in a "degenerated" workers' state, than accept Burnham's mana–
gers as the new ruling class.
The most striking feature about the book is the contrast between what
its author
says
he is doing and what he actually does. He talks much of
the scientific method, but, as will be seen shortly, makes no use of it. He
rejects at length the concepts of 'orthodox' Marxism, yet his thesis is
argued in the crudest sort of mechanical-Marxist terms, merely substitut·
ing the managers for the 16th century bourgeoisie as the new revolutionary
force. He makes great professions of refraining from qualitative judg·
ments, yet his book is the boldest attempt yet made to justify fascism
in
terms of materialistic progress. He disclaims the slightest programmatic
aim, yet the chief virtue of his book-and the one which I think has made
it a best-seller-is its persuasively (and, as will also be seen, quite decep·
lively) logical structure and its admirably clear expository style; it is the
style and the structure not of a serious analyst grappling with the com·
plexities of history but of a propagandist putting his message into the
simplest, most effective form. As a propaganda tract,
The Managerial
•The MClllaserial Rc'liolutwn
(Jol:m Day, 285
pp.,
$2.50)
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