BOOKS
81
managers but skilled technicians carrying out policies determined by the
political leaders? Just as it has never been any problem for the managers
to get plenty of competent (and tractable) professional technicians to run
their plants, so neither the bourgeoisie nor the dictators have any trouble
getting competent and tractable managers to run their economy.
Logically fallacic;IUs, Burnham's thesis is also historically baseless.
Although he frequently claims that the revolution he describes has already
taken place to a large degree, he mentions only one specimen of a man·
ager in the whole book (poor old Bill Knudsen!) and not a singfe man·
agerial party, program, or even group. He has absolutely no data on the
actual position of managers in Germany and Russia. For the embarrassing
fact is that in those full-fledged "managerial" systems, the managers are
considerably
less
powerful than in an advanced capitalist country like the
United States. In this country, the well-known inability of the stockholders
to control the modern big corporation gives a certain autonomous power
to the management. But Stalin and Hitler are no absentee owners; they
are on the necks-often literally-of the harassed managers every minute
and they have perfected a minute and all-embracing political control of
the whole economy.*
Burnham's main arguments (and their rebuttals) may be summarized
as follows:
(1) "As a
group,
the managers probably already receive much
more income than the remaining capitalists [in Italy and
Germany] and of course much more relative to their num·
hers than any other section of the population including the
'political bureaucrats.' " Since he has not defined the term,
"political bureaucrats," which might mean the millions of
lesser state and party officials or might mean only the few
. thousand tops, this statement is meaningless. Even if he
defined his terms, no statistics exist to prove or disprove the
statement. And even if the point could be proved, it would
not even demonstrate that the managers are a class, let alone
a ruling class.
(2) "In both Germany and Russia the managers decide in prac·
tice who shall be denied access to a factory....'' Thus the
shop foremen over here are the ruling class since it is they
(and not the owners, nor even the executives) who decide
"in practice" who gets into the plant. (The real question
is: who decides it "in theory"?)
(3) With the objectivity of the true scientist, Burnham admits
that "the GPU or the Gestapo may oust a manager from his
•A current study, for example, gives as a major cause of the overexpansion, rela
tift
to the market, of the German industrial plant in the twenties: "the supremacy of
technicians over economists, with the result that technical rationalization was carried
tat
according to the wishes of the former without regard to economic considerations."
IRe1ulation of Economic Activities
in
Foreign Countries,
Monograph No. 40 of the
Temporary National Economic Committee, p. 55.) That is, the bourgeoisie of the
Weimar period were unable to control their managers within the limits of capitalist
-mica. Can one imagine Hitler allowing such independence to
his
managers?
