The year is 1940. The USSR is under Stalin and a Third Reich seems to be absorbing Europe. China, rocked by inner conflict, looks like it may become just another enslaved region of the Empire of Japan. The New Deal in the USA is showing just how anti-business a government can be. Everywhere Burnham looks, even within the USA, Capitalism seems to be failing. But Socialism is NOT gaining any ground. It is not replacing Capitalism. Who is replacing the Capitalists? Bureaucrats and managers seem to be organizing, controlling, combining the factories, businesses, and nations into... what?
And that is what the book is about. Burnham was socialist who lost trust in his fellow Marxists but not in Marxism. He believed that Capitalism was on the way out but it seemed to him it was NOT going to be replaced by Socialism. As he watched and studied the very events happening in Europe, Asia, and within the USA, he came to the answer. Managers would become the next class. Neither owners nor producers, they would nevertheless, take reins in hand to control the nations, forming super-states and gaining power over the other classes.
He does a great job of tracing his logic, using history and current events (well, events that was current at the time), building up his predictions. In fact, some of the pages could be used, word for word, to describe events and movements happening now. For example, when talking about the youth of England, who no longer believe in the system they are living in and are showing a lack of willingness to support it, I could not help but think about the Occupy movement! On the other hand, he seems to have totally dismissed banks and other factors that we know would shape our future, for better or for worse.
Much of the events he talked about did not happen and may never happen, but his book did influence such authors as Orwell, who used Burnham's idea of three super-states always in conflict for the setting of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I plan to get
The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom
and read it to help understand more of his thoughts of political theory.
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