James Burnham

born in 1905 AD; died in 1987 AD (age ~82)

American political theorist


Quotes (Authored)

Only by renouncing all ideology can we begin to see the world and man.

Men are wanting beings; they are freed from want only by death.

All human activities have goals, usually several of them, open or hidden, whether or not admitted by the actor. The activity of scientific investigation is no different.

There are no dreams or ghosts in Machiavelli. He lives and writes in the daylight world.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • Under feudalism there was no developed central state power. The sovereignty of medieval kings, therefore, was largely fictional except as it held over their immediate feudal domain, or as it might suit the interests of their feudal peers to collaborate with them.

    Machiavelli divorced politics from ethics only in the same sense that science must divorce itself from ethics.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • The liberty of a Republic is secure only when its officials are elected for short, definite terms, which are never prolonged; ...the twilight of the Roman Republic, as of so many other republican states, was first plainly indicated by the practice of extending the terms of officials.

    Government is nothing but keeping subjects in such a posture as that they may have no will, or no power to offend you.

    No Empire is so firm, as where subjects exult in their obedience.

    The proper study of politics is quite plainly distinct from the study of psychology, and the laws of politics can in no way be deduced from the laws of psychology.

    The tendency, in political judgements, is toward black and white: the leader, or the proletariat, or the people, or the party, or the great captain is always right; the bosses or the crowd or the government, always wrong. From such reasoning flow not a few shocks and dismays at turns of events that might readily have been anticipated.

    Political life, according to Machiavelli, is never static, but in continual change. There is no way of avoiding this change. Any idea of a perfect state, or even of a reasonably good state, much short of perfection, that could last indefinitely, is an illusion.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • The very virtues of the good state contain the seeds of its own destruction. The strong and flourishing state is feared by all neighbors, and is therefore left in peace. War and the ways of force are neglected. The peace and prosperity breed idleness, luxury, and license; these, political corruption, tyranny, and weakness. The state is overcome by the force of uncorrupted neighbors, or itself enters a new cycle, where hard days and arms purge the corruption, and bring a new strength, a new virtue and prosperity. But once again, the degeneration sets in.

    Independence, the first condition of liberty, can be secured in the last analysis only by the armed strength of the citizenry itself, never by mercenaries or allies or money; consequently arms are the first foundation of liberty. There is no lasting safeguard for liberty in anything but one's own strength.

    Internally, also, liberty rests on force—on the public force of the state, however, never on the force exercised by private individuals or groups, which is invariably a direct threat to liberty. Guaranteed by force, then, internal liberty means government by law, with strict adherence to due legal process.

    The law is founded upon force, but the force in turn will destroy the law unless it is also bridled; but force can be bridled only by opposing force... the foundation of liberty is a balancing of forces... how hypocritical are the calls for a "unity" that is a mask for the suppression of all opposition, how fatally lying or wrong are all beliefs that liberty is the peculiar attribute of any single individual or group... Only out of the continuing clash of opposing groups can liberty flow.

    The mere fact that the knowledge made explicit by Machiavelli has been put to bad uses, which is a potential fate of all knowledge, cannot explain why he is singled out for infamy.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • The harsh opinion of Machiavelli has been more widespread in England and the United States than in the nations of Continental Europe. This is no doubt natural, because the distinguishing quality of Anglo-Saxon politics has always been hypocrisy, and hypocrisy must always be at pains to shy away from the truth.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • Whatever may be the desires of most men, it is most certainly against the interests of the powerful that the truth should be known about political behavior... If men generally understood as much of the mechanism of rule and privilege as Machiavelli understood, they would no longer be deceived into accepting that rule and privilege, and they would know what steps to take to overcome them.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • Small wonder that the powerful—in public—denounce Machiavelli. The powerful have long practice and much skill in sizing up their opponents. They can recognize an enemy who will never compromise, even when that enemy is so abstract as a body of ideas.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • In a revolutionary transition, the struggle for power, which, during years of social stability, is often hidden or expressed through indirect and undramatic forms, becomes open and imperious.

    Machiavellianism is concerned with politics, that is, with the struggle for power.

  • about Niccoló Machiavelli

    • The existence of a minority ruling class is, it must be stressed, a universal feature of all organized societies of which we have any record.

    The great mass of mankind leaves no record of itself except insofar as it is expressed or led by outstanding and noteworthy persons.

    He finds that the possession of certain qualities is useful in all societies for gaining admittance to the ruling class, or for staying within it. Deep wisdom, altruism, readiness at self-sacrifice, are not among these qualities, but, on the contrary, are usually hindrances.

  • about Gaetano Mosca

    • The relation of a ruling class to the society which it rules need not be at all arbitrary; in fact, in the long run it cannot be. A given ruling class rules over a given society precisely because it is able to control the major social forces that are active within that society.

    To be the best, a government must first of all be possible.

    Political doctrines which promise utopias and absolute justice are very likely to lead to much worse social effects than doctrines less entrancing in appearance; ...utopian programs may be even the most convenient of cloaks for those whose real aims are most rightly suspect.

    The absolute triumph of any side and any doctrine whatsoever can only mean tyranny.

    It is the habit of utopians, ...not of scientists, to confuse their desires with what is going to happen.

    A myth that serves to weld together a social group—nation, people, or class—must be capable of arousing their most profound sentiments and must at the same time direct energies toward the solution of real problems which the group faces in its actual environment.

    In politics those magical attitudes which medicine has left behind still prevail. It is still firmly believed that by denying the social role of violence, violence is thus somehow overcome.

    A goal must be possible before there is any point in considering it desirable. It is not possible merely because it sounds pleasant or because men want it badly.

    The reasoning of the Marxists was correct so far as it went. They failed, however, to demonstrate that it is possible to eliminate economic inequality and to organize a classless society.

    Oligarchy or a tendency toward oligarchy is inherent in organization itself, and is thus a necessary condition of social life.

    Equalitarian revolutionists—communards or anarchists or syndicalists or jacobins—can eliminate titles, but they cannot eliminate leaders.

    The one thing that the sovereign cannot possibly delegate is its own sovereignty; that would be self-contradictory, and would simply mean that sovereignty has shifted hands.

    The Bonapartist leader claims, with more than a show of justification, to be the most perfect embodiment of the will of the group, the people. Everything, therefore, is permitted to him, since he is merely the symbol of the group as a whole.

    Once granted the principle of representation, Bonapartism can be regarded as the logical culmination of democracy... Bonapartism is likewise the normal—though not perhaps the invariable—historical culmination of democracy.

    Everyone can argue all night about how to save society; but only a rare few have told us any truths about society.

    Human beings simply do things, without any purpose at all; it is natural for them to be active, whether or not there is any consciously understood point in the activity.

    What happens to society, whether it progresses or decays, is free or despotic, happy or miserable, poor or prosperous, is only to the slightest degree influenced by the deliberate, rational purposes held by human beings.

    "Freedom," by itself, is a term with no content whatsoever. There is no freedom "in general"—only freedom from certain things or for certain things, which always involves restrictions in other specific respects.

    Take "liberty, equality, and fraternity," the great goals, it was believed, of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and of the French Revolution. Anything, or nothing, can be meant by these terms. No two men are or can be equal in all things; all are equal in some. Michels reminds us that, after the Revolution, the three words appeared over the entrance of every French prison.

  • about Robert Michels

    • Men who profess a certain goal are just about as likely to take actions contrary to it as in accordance with it.

    Words are perhaps the most distinctive trait of human beings. If man is only in small degree a rational animal, he is pre-eminently a verbal animal.

    Most human beings constantly feel the need to "do something," whether or not the something done can accomplish any desired purpose.

    Most persons always feel that something must be done to improve political and economic conditions, even though they have not the slightest idea whether what they do—making speeches or campaigning for votes or advocating this or that reform—will in fact affect conditions favorably; and most people are very impatient with anyone who remains passive "while civilization is being destroyed."

    The intent of sincere humanitarians is to do good to society, just as the intent of the child who kills a bird by too much fondling is to do good to the bird.

    Is the truth, or rather a knowledge of the truth, always advantageous to society? Is falsehood, or nonsense, always harmful? To both of these questions, the facts compel us to answer, "no."

    Society is not so simple as a problem in mathematics, which is fully solved once ignorance is overcome.

    Many scientists who are supremely great in the natural sciences, where they use logico-experimental principles exclusively or almost so, forget them entirely when they venture into the social sciences.

    A relatively free circulation of the élites—both up and down the social scale—is a requisite for a healthy and strong society.

    If a nation cannot survive, it is rather pointless to argue in the abstract whether or not it is a "good society."

    The social or class struggle always continues, and its record is history.

    The elimination of the class struggle would, like the elimination of blood-circulation in the individual organism, while no doubt getting rid of many ailments, at the same time mean death.

    "Democracy" is usually defined in some such terms as "self-government" or "government by the people."

    Our expectations of the future can be based only upon the evidence from the past.

    The theory of democracy as self-government must... be understood as a myth, formula, or derivation. It does not correspond to any actual or possible social reality.

    Some people have the naïve opinion that in other countries despotism was established in the name of despotism, that dictators who were in the process of destroying freedom made clear to the people that they were doing just that. Naturally, it never happens that way. The modern despotisms have all marched to the tune of "the workers" or "the people."

    In practice, in the real world rather than the mythical world of ideologies, a "democracy" means a political system in which there exists "liberty": that is, what Mosca calls "juridicial defense," a measure of security for the individual which protects him from the arbitrary and irresponsible exercise of personally held power. Liberty or juridicial defense, moreover, is summed up and focused in the right of opposition, the right of opponents of the currently governing élite to express publicly their opposition views and to organize to implement those views.

    Within any field of human interest, liberty is a necessary condition of scientific advance. This follows because science can proceed only where there is complete freedom to advance hypotheses contrary to prevailing opinion.

    Liberty or freedom [I am using the term "freedom" as an equivalent in meaning to "liberty"] means above all... the existence of a public opposition to the governing élite. The crucial difference that freedom makes to a society is found in the fact that the existence of a public opposition (or oppositions) is the only effective check on the power of the governing élite.

    Only power restrains power.

    The restraining influence of an opposition much exceeds its apparent strength. As anyone with experience in any organization knows, even a small opposition, provided it really exists and is active, can block to a remarkable degree the excesses of the leadership.

    A despotism, any kind of despotism, can be benevolent only by accident.

    The right of public opposition to the rulers, the heart of freedom, will not be kept alive merely by wishing... It demands that no single social force—the army or liquid wealth or the Church or industrial management or agriculture or labor or the state machine, whatever it might be—shall be strong enough to swallow up the rest and thereby be in a position to dominate all phases of social life.

    There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power.

    Science is... merely the systematic method for solving relevant problems.

    We should not make the mistake of supposing that everyone really wants the things that moralists say they ought to want.

    There is often a certain correlation between the interests of the ruler and the ruled in spite of the fact that the primary goal of the rulers is to serve their own interest.

    Catastrophic revolutions occur when the conditions that require a drastic change in the social structure are present but the changes themselves are blocked; then, sooner or later, they burst out in full eruption.

    Those who have privileges almost always develop false or distorted ideas about themselves. They are under a compulsion to deceive themselves as well as others through some kind of irrational theory which will seek to justify their monopoly of those privileges, rather than to explain the annoying truths about how the privileges are in fact acquired and held.

    A dilemma confronts any section of the élite that tries to act scientifically. The political life of the masses and the cohesion of society demand the acceptance of myths. A scientific attitude toward society does not permit belief in the truth of the myths. But the leaders must profess, indeed foster, belief in the myths, or the fabric of society will crack and they be overthrown. In short, the leaders, if they themselves are scientific, must lie.

    Each participant in every big war is careful to explain that it fights, not for any vulgar purpose of mere conquest, but for liberty, justice, God, and the future of mankind.

    There remains, on the part of trained and intelligent as well as casual observers, the conviction that this war [WWII] is not an ordinary war.

    The difference has been stated by some in calling the war a "revolution"; more particularly, a "social revolution."

    If a major social revolution is now [1941] in fact occurring, the war [WWII] is subordinate to the revolution, not the other way around... we must understand the war as a phase in the development of the revolution.

    The outworn fallacies of the belief in the military isolation of the United States from the rest of the world are not one tenth so grave as the fallacies of the belief in our social isolation.

    The chief constituents [of a "social revolution"] seem to be three:

    1. There takes place a drastic change in the most important social (economic and political) institutions. The system of property relations, the forms under which economic production is carried on, the legal structure, the type of political organization and regime, are all so sharply altered that we feel compelled to call them different in kind, not merely modified in degree. [...]

    2. Along with the changes in social institutions there go more or less parallel changes in cultural institutions and in the dominant beliefs which men hold about man's place in the world and the universe. [...]

    3. Finally, we observe a change in the group of men which holds the top positions, which controls the greater part of power and privilege in society.

    It is impossible to draw an exact temporal line dividing one type of society from another. What is important is not so much the fact of change, which is always present in history, as the rate of change. In some periods the rate of social change is far more rapid than in others.

    To say that a social revolution is occurring at the present time is, then, equivalent to saying that the present is a period characterized by a very rapid rate of social change, that it is a period of transition from one type of society... to a new and different type of society.

    I am going to assume the general conception of a social revolution which I have just briefly stated. I am going to assume further (though not without evidence to back up this assumption) that the present is in fact a period of social revolution. With the help of these assumptions, I shall present a theory—which I call "the theory of the managerial revolution"—which is able to explain this transition and to predict the type of society in which the transition will eventuate. To present this theory is the problem, and the only problem, of this book.

    In [history, society, and politics] we are, perhaps understandably, more anxious for salvation than for knowledge; but experience ought to teach us that genuine salvation is possible only on the foundation of knowledge.

    We cannot really understand where we are going unless we have at least some notion of where we start from.

    the type of society usually referred to as "capitalist" or "bourgeois"... was dominant from the end of the Middle Ages until... 1914, the beginning of the First World War

    Production in capitalist economy is commodity production. Thousands of diverse goods are turned out by the processes of production, diverse in their nature and suited to the fulfillment of thousands of different human needs... all of these diverse goods can be directly compared with each other in terms of... their monetary price.

    All societies, except the most primitive, have produced some of their goods as commodities. But in every society except the capitalist... commodities have made up a very small segment of total production.

    The all-important, all-pervasive role of money is an equally obvious feature of capitalist economy, is indeed a necessary consequence of commodity production. Money is not an invention of capitalism; it has been present in most other societies, but in none has it played a part in any way comparable to what capitalism assigns it... the great majority of people in the Middle Ages never saw any money at all during their entire lives.

    In capitalist society, money has not one but two entirely different major functions... On the one hand, money is used as a medium of exchange... On the other hand, money is used as capital... Under capitalism, money can be transformed into raw materials, machines, and labor; products turned out and retranslated into money; and the resultant amount of money can exceed the initial amount—a profit, that is to say, can be made. This process can be carried out, moreover, without cheating anyone, without violating any accepted legal or moral law.

    During the Middle Ages, money was loaned on a considerable scale for two primary purposes: for making war; and for what Veblen called "conspicuous waste" in such projects as building great castles, memorials, and churches. When it was repaid with interest (as it often was not, hence the extremely high nominal rates of interest, often well over 100%), the funds for repayment had been obtained by levying tribute of one sort or another, or by outright pillage of conquered peoples, not, as in the case of money used as capital, from what is regarded as normal productive economic processes. [...]

    The medieval situation is clearly reflected in the writings of the philosophers and theologians on economic subjects. No conception of money functioning as capital can be found in them. Even exacting interest on money loaned (permitting money, even in that sense, to make money)—since they realized what uses loans were ordinarily put to—was unequivocally condemned as the grave sin of usury.

    Under capitalism, production is carried on for profit... in the sense that a capitalist enterprise must operate, over a period, at a profit or else close down. [...]

    This was not the case in the medieval economy. In agriculture, by far the chief industry, production was carried on not for a profit but to feed the growers and to allow for exactions (in kind, for the most part) of feudal suzerains and the Church.

    Capitalist economy is strikingly characterized by a special kind of periodic economic crisis, not met with or occurring only very rarely and on limited scales in other types of society. These capitalist crises of production have no relation either to "natural catastrophes" (drought, famine, plague, etc) or to people's biological and psychological needs for the goods that might be turned out.

    In capitalist economy, production as a whole is regulated, so far as it is regulated, primarily by "the market," both the internal and international market. There is no person or group of persons who consciously and deliberately regulates production as a whole. The market decides, independently of the wills of human beings.

    The institutional relations peculiar to the capitalist economy serve, finally, to stratify large sections of the population roughly into two special classes. [...]

    One of these classes is comprised of those who as individuals own, or have an ownership interest in, the instruments of production (factories, mines, land, railroads, machines, whatever they may be); and who hire the labor of others to operate these instruments, retaining the ownership rights in the products of that labor. This class is usually called the bourgeoisie or the capitalists.

    The second class, usually called the proletariat or the workers, consists of those who are, in a technical sense, "free" laborers. They are the ones who work for the owners. They are "free" in the sense that they are "freed from," that is, have no ownership interest in, the instruments of production; and in the further sense that they are free to sell their labor to those who do hold such ownership, renouncing, however, ownership rights in the product of their labor. They are, in short, wage-workers.

    ...these two classes did not exist, or existed only to a trivial extent, in other types of society.