James Burnham Quotes

James Burnham was an American philosopher and political theorist. Burnham was a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s, as well as a well-known isolationist. In later years Burnham left Marxism and became a public intellectual of the American conservative movement. His book The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, speculated on the fate of capitalism. Burnham was also an editor and a regular contributor to the American conservative publication National Review on a variety of topics. Wikipedia  

✵ 22. November 1905 – 28. July 1987
James Burnham: 16   quotes 0   likes

Famous James Burnham Quotes

“Ideologies capable of influencing and winning the acceptance of great masses of people are an indispensable verbal cement holding the fabric of any given type of society together.”

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 25; as cited in: Thomas Diefenbach (2009) Management and the Dominance of Managers. p. 138

James Burnham Quotes

“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.”

As cited in: Marcel van der Linden (2007) Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: A Survey of Critical Theories and Debates Since 1917 http://libcom.org/files/van_der_linden_western_marxism_and_soviet_union.pdf. p. 80
Burnham's Letter of Resignation, 1940

“Liberals, unless they are professional politicians seeking votes in the hinterland, are not subject to strong feelings of national patriotism and are likely to feel uneasy at patriotic ceremonies. These, like the organizations in whose conduct they are still manifest, are dismissed by liberals rather scornfully as ‘flag-waving’ and ‘100 percent Americanism.’ The national anthem is not customarily sung or the flag shown, unless prescribed by law, at meetings of liberal associations. When a liberal journalist uses the phrase ‘patriotic organization,’ the adjective is equivalent in meaning to ‘stupid, reactionary and rather ludicrous.’ The rise of liberalism to predominance in the controlling sectors of American opinion is in almost exact correlation with the decline in the ceremonial celebration of the Fourth of July, traditionally regarded as the nation’s major holiday. To the liberal mind, the patriotic oratory is not only banal but subversive of rational ideals; and judged by liberalism’s humanitarian morality, the enthusiasm and pleasures that simple souls might have got from the fireworks could not compensate the occasional damage to the eye or finger of an unwary youngster. The purer liberals of the Norman Cousins strain, in the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt, are more likely to celebrate UN day than the Fourth of July.”

James Burnham (1961) Suicide of the West; as cited in: Suicide of the West http://nlt.ashbrook.org/2006/03/suicide-of-the-west.php Posted by Steven Hayward on ashbrook.org 2006/03; And in 2012 on powerlineblog.com http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/01/suicide-of-the-west.php

“To say that the ruling class is themanagers is almost the same thing as to say that it is the state bureaucracy', he writes.”

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 57; Cited in Fred Riggs (1970) "Introduction: Shifting Meanings of the Term 'Bureaucracy'"

Similar authors

Ayn Rand photo
Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher
Martin Heidegger photo
Martin Heidegger 69
German philosopher
Paulo Freire photo
Paulo Freire 115
educator and philosopher
Emil M. Cioran photo
Emil M. Cioran 531
Romanian philosopher and essayist
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein 228
Austrian-British philosopher
Paul Valéry photo
Paul Valéry 89
French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Henri Bergson photo
Henri Bergson 18
French philosopher
George Santayana photo
George Santayana 109
20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with P…
Steven Weinberg photo
Steven Weinberg 46
American theoretical physicist
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
José Ortega Y Gasset 85
Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist