James Burnham author photo

James Burnham

출생: November 22, 1905 – Chicago, Illinois, United States

소셜 링크:

James Burnham was an American political theorist and public intellectual whose work examined elite power, bureaucracy, and modern statecraft. Best known for The Managerial Revolution and The Machiavellians, he moved from Trotskyism to conservatism and became a major influence on postwar U.S. conservative thought through books and National Review.

전기 및 작가의 여정

James Burnham, the twentieth-century American political theorist and essayist, was born in Chicago in 1905 and educated at Princeton, where he graduated first in his class, before continuing at Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the philosophy faculty at New York University in 1929 and came of age intellectually during the turbulence of the Depression. In the 1930s he moved deep into Marxist and Trotskyist circles, writing for small magazines and ideological journals and helping build a reputation as a rigorous, combative thinker. The decisive turning point came in 1940, when he broke with Marxism, concluding that its theory was false and that its politics tended toward totalitarian rule. From that point, his development as a writer unfolded not through any digital platform but through books, journals, and major opinion magazines in the print culture of his time. ((https://kirkcenter.org/essays/james-burnham-marxist-1933-1940/))

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명언

quote
The Fourth International is projected into the historical arena as a political magnet
-Progressives Merge with Fourth International
quote
I have never been able to judge the truth of beliefs by the moral character of those who hold them
-Letter of Resignation from the Workers Party
quote
The truths that science tells are as true for Stalin as for Trotsky, for Morgan as for Cannon, for Roosevelt as for Browder
-Science and Style
quote
Clinging to the theory becomes under these circumstances an act of desperation
-The Politics of Desperation
quote
It will not happen until the workers decide to take their own future into their own hands
-The Future of Roosevelt
quote
It is a device for preserving capitalism, not a means for its overthrow
-For a Revolutionary Socialist Party
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There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty
-The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom
quote
To say that the ruling class is the managers is almost the same thing as to say that it is the state bureaucracy
-The Managerial Revolution

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커뮤니티 의견

"James Burnham was a skilled and fearless champion of human liberty"

Ronald Reagan

"James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution was widely read and discussed"

John Kenneth Galbraith

"James Burnham became a lightning rod for American conservatism"

United Press International

"James Burnham was absolutely vital to the development of American conservative thought"

William F. Buckley Jr

"Social science is indebted to James Burnham for pointing to the power potential inherent in managerial control"

Karl Wittfogel

"The sum total of James Burnham's philosophy puzzles me"

Norman Thomas

"James Burnham's theory is extremely plausible, to put it at the lowest"

George Orwell

"The most important and enduring name is that of the man who defined the concept for them all, James Burnham"

The Washington Post

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"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum
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108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

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17

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