Background
Burnham (1905–1987) was an American popular political theorist, who published The Managerial Revolution, in 1941. In the work, he offered theories about the new form of society which was emerging to replace capitalism, based upon his observations of capitalism's development in the interwar period. He saw much in common between the economic formations of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and America under Franklin D. Roosevelt and his "New Deal". He perceived that a new society had emerged in which a ruling class of "managers" had assumed all power and privilege. In a later book, The Machiavellians, he developed his theory, arguing that the emerging new élite will have to retain some democratic trappings — political opposition, a free press, and a controlled "circulation of the élites".
Orwell's article appeared as "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" in Polemic No 3 in May 1946 and in various essay collections, as "James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution" in a pamphlet printed by the Socialist Book Centre in Summer 1946 and as "James Burnham" in the summer 1947 issue of University Observer of Chicago.
Orwell discussed Burnham's work again in a further essay "Burnham's View of the Contemporary World Struggle" published in 1947.
Read more about this topic: Second Thoughts On James Burnham
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