The contention that control over the instruments of production is everywhere undergoing a shift, away from the capitalists proper and toward the mana… - James Burnham

" "

The contention that control over the instruments of production is everywhere undergoing a shift, away from the capitalists proper and toward the managers, will seem to many fantastic and naive, especially if we are thinking in the first instance of the United States. Consider, it will be argued, the growth of monopoly in our times, Think of the Sixty Families, with their billions upon billions of wealth, their millions of shares of stock in the greatest corporations, and their lives which exceed in luxury and display anything even dreamed of by the rulers of past ages. The managers, even the chief of them, are only the servants, the bailiffs of the Sixty Families. How absurd to call the servant, master!

English
Collect this quote

About James Burnham

James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy and became a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years Burnham rejected Marxism and became an even more influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement. His 1941 book The Managerial Revolution speculated on the future of capitalism. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide.

Go Premium

Support Quotewise while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.

View Plans

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by James Burnham

The managers will exercise their control over the instruments of production and gain preference in the distribution of the products, not directly, through property rights vested in them as individuals, but indirectly, through their control of the state which in turn will own and control the instruments of production. The state – that is, the institutions which comprise the state – will if we wish to put it that way, be the “property” of the managers’.

The New Deal is a phase of the transition process from capitalism to managerial society. The New Deal is not Stalinism and not Nazism. But no candid observer, friend or enemy of the New Deal, can deny that in terms of economic, social, political, ideological changes from traditional capitalism, the New Deal moves in the same direction as Stalinism and Nazism.

Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

The faction fight in the Socialist Workers Party, its conclusion, and the recent formation of the Workers Party have been in my own case, the unavoidable occasion for the review of my own theoretical and political beliefs. This review has shown me that by no stretching of terminology can I regard myself, or permit others to regard me, as a Marxist.

Loading...