The Crisis of the Managerial State
8th November 2024
In his 1941 classic of political science, The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham claimed that the need for managerial skill and technological competence had made the inherited forms of capitalism and democracy utterly unsuited to the challenges of his time. Ruling would belong not to capitalist entrepreneurs or elected politicians but to skilled managers. For only the managers had the sufficient training—that is, the training necessary to produce, mobilize, and deploy human and nonhuman resources to achieve victory in war and prosperity in peace.
Events and ideas since Burnham have made much of his book appear dated. The owner-entrepreneur has returned: just as Henry Ford took the automobile to mass production, Elon Musk has done the same for space rockets, while at the same time revolutionizing the electric car and social media. Moreover, thanks to the work of Friedrich Hayek and our experience of Communism, nobody today has the faith that managers have the ability to plan the nation’s or the world’s economy, or even conduct a business efficiently, without being subject to prices that float more or less freely according to supply and demand.
Nonetheless, the managers are still with us, and returning to Burnham can help us understand their aspirations and limitations. Returning to Burnham will also help us understand the present form of political conflict that is occurring in almost every democracy, between one faction that represents the credentialed professional-managerial class and the other that seeks to constrain, chasten, or, even in its more delusional moments, dissolve that class.