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PARTISAN REVIEW
is its life-blood. Or more vulgarly-for Mr. Drucker is just as shrewd
a judge of the market as Don Coriolano-its stock in trade. His book,
which is subtitled "A Conservative Approach," is well timed to capitalize
on the mood of doubt and demoralization that is growing among American
intellectuals.
If
James Burnham, whose
Managerial Revolution
in thesis and
method has much in common with
The Future of Industrial Man,
is "a
Marx for the managers," Peter Drucker might be called a Rousseau for
the National Association of Manufacturers. Politically, he admires the
Constitution, thinks Hitler is the fruit of 1789, wants the economic sphere
freed from political interference, and fears the extension of governmental
and trade union power. Intellectually, he rejects the whole scientific
and rationalist movement that began with the French Enlightenment, and
blames the present sad state of the world on the pernicious doctrines
of Rousseau, Darwin, Marx and Freud. "The only basis of freedom,"
he writes, "is the Christian concept of man's nature.... An assumption
of human perfection or of a known or knowable process of human
perfectibility leads inescapably to tyranny and totalitarianism."
In a period like this, one must welcome any attempt at broad re–
formulations of political concepts, from whatever quarter, but it's too
bad the forces of darkness can't find more
serious
champions. Burnham's
book was balanced on the thin edge of charlatanry; Drucker's goes right
over. It would not be worth reviewing, except that a lot of people seem
to take it seriously. It is, furthermore, an especially appropriate book
to review in the number opening discussion of "the new failure of nerve,"
not only because Drucker is an obscurantist but also because of the
response by the leading journals of American liberalism to this violent
attack on their most basic values. The editors of
The Nation, The New
Republic,
and
Common Sense
assigned Drucker's book to Reinhold
Niebuhr, Jacques 'Barzun, and Freda Utley respectively. As one might
have expected, these particular reviewers treat the book in the most respect·
ful and sympathetic way; their views are appreciations rather than criti–
cisms (though Niebuhr, to be fair, does seem to have some suspicions). It
would be hard to find a neater illustration of The New Failure of Nerve,
and of the intellectual level of liberal journalism these days.
The Future of Industrial Man
is a difficult book to criticise because
(1) its concepts are used so impressionistically that several interpreta·
tions are possible of most key passages; (2) these concepts are either
not related at all to the under
1
ying reality (if any) , or else the scanty
data given are horribly wrenched about to fit the author's conceptual
scheme, so that an enormous labor of modification, rectification and
rebuttal on purely factual grounds is necessary before one can even
