Engaging today's political economy
with truth and reason

sponsored by

Weekly Sage #26: James Burnham

03 May 2019

The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

James Burnham

James Burnham (1905 – 1987) was an American public intellectual, political theorist, and social philosopher. While his writings demonstrate the strongest of convictions and methods, his life brought several significant moments of conversion in his thought and habits. The strong winds of 20th century events shattered many minds and systems, but Burnham weathered them. He altered his views on matters from religion to politics, but maintained a prominence and influence consistently. Approaching Burnham provides a valuable lens into the 20th century, critical for understanding our own time.

Like many of the American sages profiled, Burnham was the son of immigrants, in his case English. Born in Chicago to a railroad executive, young James found himself thrust into the upper echelons of industrial society from his earliest days. As a result, he went to Princeton, but forged his own path by finishing at the top of his class. He continued his studies by attending Balliol College at Oxford.

Burnham returned to the United States having benefitted from some of the most excellent education in the world. As a result, he took up a professorship of philosophy at New York University in 1929, only 24 years old. In the 1930’s Burnham pursued radical activism, writing works such as War and the Workers, and The People’s Front: The New Betrayal. He helped organize the American Workers Party and continued activity led him to participate in the founding of the US Workers Party as well.

Of course, in the 1930’s, the fate of radical politics in the world was not decided by American activists. Leon Trotsky had been exiled from the Soviet Union in the 1920’s, but his supporters were only gradually removed from socialist and communist movements around the world. Burnham was a friend and supporter of Trotsky’s. As a result of internal debates and struggles within American radical organizations, Burnham rejected the philosophical tenets of Marxian allegiance, and ended his practical action on their behalf.

However, this did not end Burnham’s inspiration or relevance. Rather, as social change and war swept across first Europe and the world, Burnham wrote his masterwork, The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World. In it, he predicted in advance important events such as America’s entry into World War II. More centrally, he argued that the world was transitioning away from capitalist society and into a new period characterized not by free enterprise or political sovereignty, but by massive social and economic expansion by the state, forcing it to govern through a managerial class.

Burnham’s shift was reinforced by time spent in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, during which he forged a view of foreign policy focused on achieving US hegemony and unipolarity. After the war, Burnham continued to write prolifically, first philosophically, in The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, then more politically. He wrote works such as The case against Adlai Stevenson, a Democratic presidential candidate, and The Coming Defeat of Communism. Such works led him to join the burgeoning American conservative movement of the 1950’s, helping William F. Buckley, 20 years his junior, found National Review.

Burnham continued to influence conservative thought and the American intellectual milieu through his consistent contributions to the magazine and later writings. In 1964, Burnham published Suicide of the West, a critique of liberalism with lasting significance and influence. This book continued his generally pessimistic outlook consistently demonstrated in Burnham’s earlier works.

Burnham throughout his life pursued a scientific approach to the political process, leading him to an iconoclastic position. Defending Machiavelli, attacking capitalism along with socialism, and arguing for the complete renunciation of political power compose some of his more interesting positions. However, while raised as a Roman Catholic, his early renunciation of faith and adoption of atheism was reversed in his later years, leading him to return to the church. Reading his earlier works, it appears that values are merely a distraction to the struggle for power that is politics. Nevertheless, Burnham the hard-bitten realist in youth was somehow transformed by the brutal cruelties of the 20th century and World War II into a man of faith.


[1] James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World, (London: Putnam and Company, Ltd., 1944), 53-54.

[2] Ibid, 89.

[3] Ibid, 263.

[4] James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, (London: Putnam and Company, Ltd., 1943), 18-19.