James Burnham - Ideas - Later Writings

Later Writings

In a later book, The Machiavellians, he argued and developed his theory that the emerging new élite would better serve its own interests if it retained some democratic trappings—political opposition, a free press, and a controlled "circulation of the élites."

His 1964 book Suicide of the West became a classic text for the post-war conservative movement in U.S. politics, which best expressed Burnham's new interest in traditional moral values, classical liberal economics and anti-communism. In Suicide, he defined liberalism as a "syndrome" rendering liberals ridden with guilt and internal contradictions. The works of James Burnham greatly influenced paleoconservative author Samuel T. Francis, who wrote two books about Burnham, and based his political theories upon the "managerial revolution" and the resulting managerial state.