About the author
American political theorist (1905–1987), a former Marxist who became an influential conservative. The Managerial Revolution (1941) argued that both capitalism and socialism were giving way to a new order ruled by managers and administrators — the controllers of large organisations — rather than owners or workers. The book influenced George Orwell's geopolitics in Nineteen Eighty-Four and anticipated debates about technocracy and the administrative state.
Synopsis
An argument that capitalism and socialism may both be giving way to managerial rule.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workBurnham argues that managers and administrators become a new ruling class.
This complicates both capitalism and socialism by focusing on bureaucratic and managerial power.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Marxist class theory or liberal market theory.
Reading note
Provocative, useful for elite theory, but not a settled diagnosis.
Best paired with
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto.