A Critique of James Burnham

Abstract

Among contemporary writers on politics, James Burnham occupies a fairly distinguished place. The appearance of his first book, The Managerial Revolution, created a stir in his own country, no less than elsewhere. Burnham's forceful and lucid style makes his appeal, moreover, wider than is usually the case with serious works on politics. A staunch advocate of the scientific approach to political phenomena, elaborated in what is, perhaps, his most important work, The Machiavellians - Defenders of Freedom, Burnham has of late applied his principles to a devastating crusade against communism. There are, then, several reasons which justify a critical examination of his work. No full-scale analysis of Burnham's theories is known to me; there are quite a few marginal comments to be found scattered through books, essays and review articles, and I have used these as far as they were available to me. I am aware of the fact that a good deal of literature may exist on Burnham (particularly in the United States), but the expense involved in having micro-film copies prepared of these sources made my original and ambitious plan to use most of that literature, published in English and in some other languages, appear illusory. I must confess that when I commenced to study political science, I shared in the fascination which Burnham's pungent arguments evoke in so many of his readers; it is a fascination which I have since observed among the younger students whom it has been my task to introduce to modern political thought over the last few years. Burnham, whether he sets out to modernize Marx, or whether he makes himself the Machiavellian defender of realism in politics, can hardly be ignored. Admitting all this, I should add that a vague uneasiness, a notion that somewhere in Burnham's works there was hidden an almost fatal error, soon began to impose itself upon me, and to diminish my original - even then far from willing - admiration tor this propounder of scientific politics. This Thesis is intended as a halting and far from exhaustive record of my endeavours to detect Burnham's error.