BOOKS
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the natural question arises how Russia can be at once "managerial" and
"Mancist," if Marxism is the historically outworn doctrine Burnham says
it is. Burnham extricates himself with a completely bewildering distinction
between socialist Marxism and non-socialist Marxism. He can then call
Stalin a non-socialist Marxist (why not a managerial Marxist?). He takes
care to make this distinction, whatever it means, only
after
he has run
through his entire case against "Marxism" (including Stalin's non-socialist
variety) . Such are the refinements of the scientific method.
A few more examples of Burnham's methodology may be examined:
p. 35: The Nazi victory in the Saar plebescite is cited as a
triumph of Nazi over bourgeois ideology. The same point is
made later on. In neither place is it mentioned that the Saar·
landers were
Germans
and that simple nationalism thus :t-'layed
an important role in the Nazi victory.
p. 189: The fact that the United States could not raise a
mass army last year by voluntary enlistment and that conscrip·
tion had to be used is cited to demonstrate the lack of popular
appeal of bourgeois ideology today. (1) Bourgeois ideology cer–
tainly had plenty of appeal in the French revolutionary period,
yet the armies that defended the Republic as well as Napoleon's
armies were mostly raised by mass conscription (first introduced
by the 1789 revolutionists, in fact). (2) The 1917 American
army was also conscripted, although popular belief in demo–
cratic capitalism was much stronger then than it is today. (3)
If
conscription is a symptom of a dying ideology, how does Burn–
ham explain its use by the managerial Hitler and Stalin?
p. 239: Burnham thinks it significant that managers are
"seldom" ·found among the refugees from Germany. Does he
possess figures for (a) the number of managers among the refu–
gees, and (b) the numerical proportion of the managers to other
groups inside Germany?
If
so, he doesn't give them.
p. 248: Burnham makes much of the ability to predict accu–
rately as a touchstone of the validity of theories. As Victor Serge
noted in the last issue, the Nazi attack on Russia exposes the
oversimplification of his views on the Nazi-Soviet pact, and also
makes hash of his prophecy that
first
the two managerial states
would gang up on capitalist England, and
then,
with England
smashed, would fight it out between them. Here he states: "By
the end of 1940 it was clear that the focus of the war was shift·
ing, that the result of the European struggle was in fundamentals
decided, and that a new, third, phase was beginning...." This
phase was to be a world-struggle between Germany, Japan and
th.e United States, with England practically knocked out. Instead
we now have England stronger than ever and Getmany at death
grips with managerial Russia.
p. 268: Burnham cites as evidence of the managerial nature
of the New Deal the fact that Baruch, the Wall Street speculator,
ran the war economy of 1917, while Knudsen, the manager, runs
(or ran) this one. Again Burnham has already been refuted:
Knudsen has lost most of his powers precisely because he fol-
