Book review

Capitalism Is Dead: Long Live The Expertocracy. Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution at 80

James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in the World in 1941 to argue that capitalism was waning and being replaced everywhere by managerialism.

He was right.

The term managerialism, though Burnham had good reason to use it, does not sing to us, and is not now as accurate, as we’ll see. I propose instead Expertocracy, the rule of credentialed Experts. (This is far from an original suggestion.) Managers to Burnham were trained men adept at directing people and in understanding the mechanisms of production. To us, however, a manager works at McDonald’s. Experts far better captures the nature of our ruling class.

Burnham lays out the history of feudalism and its transition to capitalism and how technological innovation, in machines and money, overturned the old system like the Blob eating through a company picnic. Money lenders and traders insinuated themselves into feudal culture, gradually making themselves lords and masters of the world. Custom and law became capitalist in nature. The strange concepts of making a profit, loans, interest, free employment and so on became known to all, so much so that nobody now thinks how extraordinary and unusual these are.

Nations and nationalism were the direct result of capitalist encroachment into the ruling class. Parliaments (we call it Congress), representatives of capitalists and capitalism, and not lords and kings, became the dominant ruling bodies, designed to protect capitalist interests and resolve disputes among capitalists.

Because capitalism, like all forms of government, has its weaknesses, it is not universally loved. It did, however, provide enough funds to create a learned leisure class. This was the beginning of the Expert. These Experts went to work designing, in theory, an ideal society. Late in the Nineteenth Century, and into the Twentieth, the bien pensant knew the world would soon spontaneously transform from capitalism to socialism, a complete classless society, a utopia of equality and egalitarianism, a world without elites where the masses would rule themselves. Be careful, because here’s another word that has grown out of its skin. Socialism now roughly translates to Burnham’s managerial economy.

Socialism, in its original definition, was always an Expert fantasy. A classless society would be impossible by definition to enforce (who would do the enforcing?), and only works in theory on infinitely plastic people. Theory is, as we now know, a powerful driver of Expert behavior, a point Burnham had not yet had the opportunity of seeing; indeed, Burnham was unable to disguise his admiration of managers. In any case, because of the love of theory, the idea true socialism and Equality have not left us; they are still aspired to.

Burnham’s approach was, as he emphasizes often, scientific. Though he couldn’t at times resist falling into scientism (who could?), he did his best to predict what would happen, not what he wanted to happen or what he thought was best. He matured this theme in The Machiavellians two years later, by bringing in the ideas of Machiavelli, Mosca, Pareto and others. There, too, he didn’t recognize his, or their, occasional scientism, and tended to be too dismissive of the role religion and metaphysical beliefs play in the elite (they all knew ideology drove the masses). But let that pass.

He started with basic premises of human nature and historical observation—not of words, but of deeds. (The two rarely match.) This allowed him to define basic terms:

A ruling class…means a group of persons who, by virtue of special social-economic relations, exercises a special degree of control over access to the instruments of power and receives preferential treatment in the distribution of the product of these instruments.

There always has been, and therefore we predict there always will be, a ruling class. The masses, except in unusual brief riotous circumstances, are never in charge, and are always willing to be led, grumble as they might.

That, plus the observation that there is always a struggle among men for preeminence is all the “theory” that is needed. From these premises, and some on basic human nature, bolstered by a few simple observations, Burnham deduced the rise of managerialism. Which happened the following way.

In capitalism, the owners did as they wanted with their money, their factories, their land, their employees. Ancient feudal customs and language faded or were repurposed: robber barons, railroad barons. The masses had some liberty to pursue employment without being tied to a specific piece of land. Capitalists could hire and firm whom they pleased, produce what they liked, start and stop their businesses at will, largely free of all restraints except those arising from the machinations of other capitalists.

Gradually, technology and learning increased. Managing people, the science of logistics, and the creation of increasingly complex machines soon required expertise beyond knowing how to shift money around. Many capitalists were unwilling to learn these new skills, so they retired from public life to enjoy their wealth, leaving the running of things to managers.

These managers were expert (small e) and educated (small e), and their ascension to the ruling class was natural. The same people came out of the same universities, where attendance is now de rigueur, went in and out of the same corporations, and in and out of the same bureaucracy and formal government positions.

Loyalties in the ruling class shifted from companies and the nation to the managerial class itself, which became more and more international. Nations still exist, of course, and while there are here and there nationalist resurgences, the trend to large managerial groupings across nations can’t be shaken off. Consider the explosion of grief and fury in the Expertocracy over both Trump and Brexit.

Indicative is a Yale professor taking to the New York Times recently to argue the USA should be governed by international law. Since by definition there can be no such thing in or above sovereign nations, sovereignty must lie outside the nation. Where? What the Yale professor meant is that the Expertocracy—he—should rule. This kind of argument, applied to all areas, will become increasingly compelling.

Burnham thought the transition to managerialism would by now be complete, especially in the forms then evinced in Germany and Russia, which were already then nearly fully managed societies, regardless of the outcome of the war. In The Machiavellians (1943), in a rare blown forecast, he foresaw the USA winning the war, and becoming a military-based managerial society. Again, technology created by capitalists beat out these predictions. We’re still not wholly an Expertocracy. Even so, encroachments of the Expert ruling class into more areas of life continues inexorably.

It is anyway clear capitalism as a force is largely spent. Businesses can no longer hire and fire whom they please. They are subject to Expert-theory-derived quotas of all kinds; regulations without number detail how workers must be treated. And in what they must be given, as if they are mobile serfs. Money cannot be invested without Expert approval.

Businesses cannot be built, physically or monetarily, without meeting requirements from scores of agencies, all staffed with Experts. You also, dear reader, cannot build where you like. If your land develops a puddle, Experts classify it a “wetland”, and subject it to their rule.

Endless examples will come to mind. Indeed, that is the point. We no longer think like those living under capitalism thought. We swim in Expert waters, and like fish, we don’t even know we’re wet.

The parliamentary system which grew with capitalism must continue to fade, and has already faded to a considerable degree. Who declares war today, parliaments or executives? “One after the other,” says Burnham, “the executive bureaus took into their hands the attributes and functions of sovereignty; the bureaus became the de facto ‘law-makers’.” The Expertocracy has also grown outside these structures and inside what we now call Big Tech and Woke Capital. Who banned a sitting President from using the Internet, Congress or Experts? Who regulates speech? The flow of goods? Privacy?

[G]overnment takes over fully, with all attributes of ownership, section after section of the economy both by acquiring already established sections and by opening up either sections not previously existing. There’s little need to examples: postal service, transportation, water supply, utilities, bridges, shipbuilding sanitation, communication, housing, becomes fields of government enterprise.

The Center for Disease Control, an “unelected”, as people like to complain, bureaucracy decreed that landlords could not control their own property and charge rent. This dictate, the result of Expert modeling (a melange of math and alchemy), became de facto law. There is no voting in the Expertocracy in any sense as we used to know it.

The only thing slowing the complete disappearance of capitalism is revolutionary (the word is over-used, but here apt) technology. We can recall when the Internet was not under Expert control. It was like the Wild West: all was allowed. Development was almost solely in the hands of the capitalists (they would never have called themselves that). Innovation kept they baying forces of Expert regulation under control.

It soon arrived, however, as Experts, terrified of the liberty, reined it all in. What was strange was that the capitalists who created the Wild West transformed themselves into Experts, or had their firms invaded by Experts. Naturally, some capitalists learned to identify as Experts. Individual bosses who become Experts know they are not only in charge of this company, but they are themselves in the ruling class. They didn’t see themselves as capitalists, but Experts. This explains how the German Green party received its largest ever donation from a Dutch “tech entrepreneur”, while the second-largest donation in Germany was from a bitcoin investor.

Power is diffuse in an Expertocracy, and less visible. Just who is in charge? Everybody and nobody. We should be worried. Burnham says the combined forces of the old managers and old government will “provide the basis for domination and exploitation by a ruling class an extremity and absoluteness never known before.”

The masses will acquiesce in the removal of ancient liberties, as they do in all things. They hated hearing, at first, that they will own nothing and be happy. Yet soon they will own nothing and be “happy”, where that word will take on a technical, quantitative meaning defined by Experts.

Burnham:

If most people did indeed want peace, plenty, and freedom from all forms of exploitation and tyranny? and if (what is just as necessary, though less often remarked) they also knew the means whereby these were to be got? and if they were willing and courageous and strong and intelligent and self-sacrificing enough to bring about those means to those ends? then no doubt the world would achieve a society organized in such a way as to realize peace, plenty, and freedom. But there is not any evidence at all from past or present history that all three (and all three would be required) of these conditions will be met. On the contrary, the evidence of the analogies from the past and the circumstances of the present is that people will act and wish and hope and decide in ways that will aid in the managerial revolution, in the carrying through of the social transition which will end in the consolidation of managerial society.

As we now see.

One big thing Burnham missed was that journalism rose as a political force under capitalism. In capitalist cultures it was often used as propaganda to wage wars against rivals, and of course to display advertising. Experts have taken it over almost completely now, so that at the top it is almost all propaganda. Experts consolidated journalism to provide one unified voice. They always desire unity in all things within their regional spheres (funny that they call this unity “diversity”).

True capitalism is never coming back, just as true socialism is impossible. The Expertocracy cannot be stopped. It will, within spheres, become increasingly international (China in theirs. USA in its, etc.; though there will be substantial overlap). It will assimilate all things.

The masses will not roil and and recoil against their new masters. They will accept. There will be no voting away of the Expertocracy. The Expert ruling class will allow voting only over limited choices, and if the vote is “wrong”, it will be openly changed or fortified. The idea of voting might remain, but it will be used, like journalism, only to manipulate.

It doesn’t follow necessarily that do be an Expert one must embrace the theory of Equality, or indeed any current theory beloved by today’s Experts. China proves that. This is also obvious especially to the large number of dissidents sufficiently endowed to become Experts, but barred because of theory incompatibility. They seethe under our idiot-effeminate version of the Expertocracy.

They long to displace the Expertocracy, but haven’t yet figured out that to beat them one must join the system. This realization will grow. Dissidents cannot restore capitalism, or even feudalism, but they can conquer the Expertocracy under the Reality flag. Their slogan will be: We must replace their Experts with our Experts.

The road to this takeover is not straight, or even well demarcated. Power in the Expertocracy is diffuse, not concentrated in any one man, or woman, or even in any one small group. This is why replacing one senator with another, or one president with another, of the country or an institution, does so little. The Expertocracy is Hydra without a central head.

So whether dissident Experts get away with capturing enough terriroty, or whether the current Experts, once fully in control, sate themselves with power or grow increasingly tyrannical (say, feminized and effeminate dictatorial Safety Firstism), thus compelling a crisis, we shall see. My money is on the crisis.

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Update This appeared last night, too late to make it into the post proper. Moldbug/Yarvin says Burnham’s The Machiavellians is a better book than The Managerial Revolution, and this is so. But only because it’s broader and accounts for the thinking of others of like mind. In his suppositions of the rise of the Expertocracy, Burnham was right, as we see.

Yarvin also highlights, and obviously I agree, the diffuse nature of power of the “deep state”, which is best called our Expertocracy.

Video is worth your hour’s time.

Update John Ioannidis discovers the Expertocracy.

Who gave these orders? Who decided that his or her opinion, expertise, and conflicts should be in charge? It was not a single person, not a crazy general or a despicable politician or a dictator, even if political interference in science did happen—massively so. It was all of us, a conglomerate that has no name and no face: a mesh and mess of half-cooked evidence; frenzied and partisan media promoting parachute journalism and pack coverage; the proliferation of pseudonymous and eponymous social media personas which led even serious scientists to become unrestrained, wild-beast avatars of themselves, spitting massive quantities of inanity and nonsense; poorly regulated industry and technology companies flexing their brain and marketing power; and common people afflicted by the protracted crisis. All swim in a mixture of some good intentions, some excellent thinking, and some splendid scientific successes, but also of conflicts, political polarization, fear, panic, hatred, divisiveness, fake news, censorship, inequalities, racism, and chronic and acute societal dysfunction.

Categories: Book review, Culture

32 replies »

  1. I prefer the term ‘bureaucracy’ to’ expertocracy’ – in the sense that it is purely The System that defines who are the valid experts. In practice ‘expertise’ has almost nothing to do with objective credentials. People without credentials can be made instant/ infallible experts by The System; and people with ‘the best’ credentials (qualifications, experience, elite institutional status etc) can be excluded by diktat. So this has almost nothing to do with expertise or credentials considered objectively; and almost everything to do with the global and interlinked bureaucracy, and its capacity to impose system priorities.

  2. Bruce,

    I take your point, but (and this is a trivial disagreement, almost not worth having) I like Expertocracy better because bureaucracy puts people in mind of the traditional government, as members only of the official governing bodies, and not those spread across all institutions, inside and outside that arrangement.

    For instance, is “Jack” at Twitter a member of “the bureaucracy”? Most would have difficulty understanding he is.

  3. Two new utopian cities planned:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/akon-just-unveiled-his-6-billion-futuristic-city-in-senegal-the-reviews-are-mixed/2020/09/01/56f3b7a4-ebc7-11ea-bd08-1b10132b458f_story.html

    https://cobylefko.medium.com/building-utopia-449d86f5174b (I note that digging saguaro cactuses has become ethical. Typical greedy arrogant *** that builds these places, even if only in their heads. And ALWAYS with someone else’s money)

    All of this is actually based on “I got mine, the h*** with you” mentality of the extremely evil rich. That is the operating system today—USE PEOPLE THEN SQUASH THEM. Not that it wasn’t pretty much always the idea, but it’s more open now. The rich hate humanity and destroy it. It’s what they do. Experts do the same. All of history is the evil and wealthy destroying those who get in their way or simply annoy them. Since this is what humans are and it’s their makeup, so yes, the expertocracy will win, whatever name you give it.

  4. @Briggs – Fair point. Actually I generally use The System for preference (or The Matrix, Black Iron Prison and several other synonyms).

    “Who gave these orders? ” asks Ioannidis.

    Well, as Christians, I think we know the answer – ultimately. We know who is in charge of all this evil-motivated stuff, at the highest (lowest) level.

    So… “It was not a single person” is incorrect – as long a ‘person’ can be expanded to include spiritual personages.

  5. Here are the phrases that make my eyes glaze over. “According to science”, “according to the experts”, “the experts say”, “science says”. Those phrases are used for everything. “What color you should paint your bedroom according to science!” Seriously they’re headlines that say that. It’s unbelievable

  6. Bruce and Briggs

    It brings to mind “The Wizard of Oz”, where the “fraud” “honors” the Scarecrow with a “fake degree” which makes him an instant “expert”. No brains required.\

    The analogy then continues with the Lion with his fake medal representing our fraud Military “leadership”.

    And then there’s the LEFT “Tinman” with there false hearts.

    And we admire Orwell with his vision.

    Let’s give acknowledgments to L Frank Baum

    Oz never did give to the Tinman

  7. If gluttony, greed, child abuse, fascism, and a few other sins don’t much phase you, but effeminacy and expertise get your panties all roiled (and soiled), then perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate the priorities in what passes for your life (such as it is).

  8. Shecky,

    What’s the going rate for a shill comment, by the way. You surely can’t make a living doing just one blog. How many more do you have?

  9. Great to see Yarvin on a mainstream show like Carlson. When the godfather, so to speak, of the neo-reactionary online Right is invited on mainstream shows (albeit not Carlson’s flagship Fox evening primetime show), this is a good sign.

    Now if Tucker can get BAP, I’ll really be impressed!

  10. The Wizard was wise enough to give his Fake Crentials to those already possessed of same. It was an excellent grift.

    W left Oz in the rear view mirror three generations ago.

  11. umm.. no.

    First I see the socialist vs capitalist dicotomy as false: it’s really feudalism vs Christianity. Socialist leaders are generally not socialist believers, and the experts you see committing Expertocracy are generally not experts.

    People like “@jack” are not socialists, they’re the current version of feudal lords while the people who enforce their dictates are not experts, they’re mostly civil servants and/or media who have very little, if any, knowledge about the ideas or technologies underlying whatever they’re charged with enforcing.

    Christianity says I am responsible for me – feudalism says the ruler owns that responsibility and can do with it, and me, as he or she pleases. Thus the American revolution was a Christian revolution; the Russian one a reversion to feudalism – compare Stalin to Nicholas and you’ll see the latter as an Athenian democrat.

    Socialism is simply the sizzle used to sell feudal control by the leadership – check out any socialist state from North Korea to cuba and you’ll see a lords and serfs society where America, before Wilson, was very much a Christian republic. Now, of course, you’re sliding rapidly downhill, but Burnham was wrong: it ain’t over till it’s over – there are solutions that become obvious once you understand the problem.

  12. The comparison to feudalism is off because feudal lords, at least in theory, had obligations to their vassals. At the very least they were obligated to not stand by as their vassals’ lands were raped and pillaged by an invading force.

    The modern tech lords don’t even give lip service to defending the rest of us in any situation.

  13. And feudal Lords, including Kings and Emperors, also saw themselves as being answerable to God for their actions, having not only rights, but also duties toward those both above and below them in the Great Chain of Being. Few of today’s oligarchs or politicians – most either avowedly or functionally atheist (like Biden, who engages in Catholic-seeming theatre, but advocates policies beloved by the most secular/atheist leftists) – see themselves as obligated or answerable for their actions to anyone on earth or in Heaven.

  14. I wouldn’t mind rule by experts if so many didn’t prove to be ignorant, evil, bungholes.

    Yarvin needs a haircut. And if he could find it in himself to speak in simple, declarative statements that would be a bonus.

  15. ***—credentialed Experts.—***

    How does one become a *credentialed Expert*…?

    Why by being awarded that title by another *credentialed Expert*…

    Self perpetuating experts…

  16. “Capitalism” is the wrong word for your essay and premise. The word/phrase you want is “free enterprise”.

    Capitalism is a word promulgated by Karl Marx, who wrote the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). He used it (incorrectly) to mean private ownership of anything, which he condemned, preferring government ownership of everything (note the Great Reset motto: you’ll own nothing and be happy).

    In fact “capitalism” is the use of moveable assets (capital) to earn profit (interest, dividends, etc.) Banks practice it, as do stockholders, and even farmers. Buying a milk cow to sell the milk is classic capitalism, and indeed heads (caput) of cattle (chattel) are etymological roots of capital. Note that Communists practice capitalism, e.g. The Bank of China.

    What Communists don’t practice is free enterprise: the private ownership of the means of production relying upon market forces (willing buyers and sellers) to allocate goods and resources and to determine prices with a minimum of governmental interference in economic decisions.

    The Egg Spurt Authoritarian Plutocracy seeks to shackle and drain free enterprise through taxation, regulation, extortion, and general theft. That’s what’s happening, the existential threat, and every horrendous deed by Traitor Joe and the Ruling Expert Philosopher Kings is bent in that direction.

  17. Shecky:
    “If gluttony, greed, child abuse, fascism, and a few other sins don’t much phase you, but effeminacy and expertise get your panties all roiled”
    Gluttony, greed, child abuse, fascism etc all come from effeminacy and expertise. The fact that you do not understand that puts you on the side of the problem, not the solution. You should be cheered by the fact that all of the things you mention are increasing and you are succeeding in your mission.

  18. Thank-you sir for making me aware of and publishing Curtis Yarvin .
    He is a trip worth taking and so are you .

  19. Good post.

    So, absent replacing their Experts with ours, is it simply a matter of withdrawing/going underground until systemic collapse?

    Related: do you see any value in creating what Vaclav Havel called, “parallel societies?”

    Finally, is it possible to avoid the need for Experts, or is that inevitable given our evolution?

  20. “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. ” John 14: 27.

    So, look, see, know, and understand, what is happening, do as the Holy Spirit leads and guides you, and place all trust in Jesus Christ Who is the Author and Finisher of our Faith.

    God bless, C-Marie

  21. Magnus and Briggs, re: replacing “E”xperts
    .
    There is a reason for emigration (apart from wanting the secondos to be better off than their immigrant parents), and that is that the bureaucracy is immobile (cannot emigrate). Conversely, the (local acting, well-building) humanitarian organizations are always stillborn because their [remote] bureaucrats cannot support the local principles that promote and enrich community.

  22. One fundamental historical change is not mentioned in this article. Democracy and the rise and empowerment of the masses. The experts and bureaucrats emerge in great quantities from the masses. Experts and bureaucrats are typically highly uncultured people, they are the specialized men which José Ortega y Gasset describes in Revolt of the Masses. They compose of a Hydra because they emerge (move upwards into positions of power) from the masses (from an inexhaustible resource). They compose of a great and seemingly unconquerable tyranny. Dictators are conquerable, oppressive elites are conquerable, and by all means, they compose of the few, not of the many. The experts and bureaucrats drawn from the masses though are of the many, they are ubiquitously present (forming a hierarchy with a thousand tentacles into the lowest layers) , they have no culture too, except the culture of regulating and managing. They compose of the tyranny of petty men, and otherwise little specialized men.

    Now, the lower and middle ranks of the experts and bureaucrats, They will suck the soul and lifeblood out of society, as we are already witnessing.. Of them this could be said:

    “And without divine help, said Adeimantus, they will go on for ever making and mending their laws and their lives in the hope of attaining perfection.” – -Plato – The Republic

    Note also that Plato refers to a class of merchants typically taking power in a democracy (the first stage).

    But in the higher ranks, in those you find the sociopaths, the egomaniacs, they are drawn to power, they lust for power, they are insatiably.

    Hence, we have a tyranny of an oligarchy combined with a tyranny of democratic over-regulation by an uncultured mediocrity, and the tyranny of democratic mob rule, the latter guided by demagogy.
    A classical situation, except that they are empowered by technology, and the scale of tyranny knows no historical precedent.

  23. To add to the above. Democracy typically works at the wholesale destruction of culture (higher striving, wisdom). Everything becomes supplanted by the ideas and views of the mediocrity and the mobs (and later on, the views of a newly emerged plutocracy). Hence, cultured men are gradually sidetracked and replaced by experts and armies of bureaucrats.

    On a side note: upon posting the formatting seems to be removed from my comments, the whole text is compressed without line breaks and empty lines..

  24. I would propose to distinguish roughly between experts, bureaucrats and technicians. The first are today’s oracles, the second engage in (hyper-)regulation, the third create the matrix of technology.
    They are all described by José Ortega y Gasset in Revolt of the Masses as ‘specialists’, usually uncultured and ignorant men and women, even at times of savage nature.
    The technicians should not be underestimated, they can grow from entrepeneur-technician into positions of great ‘cultural’ and political affluence, think of the micro-technology sector (Zuckerberg among many others), and think of the vast armies of computer programmers and the accompanying tech-cult. They are products of liberal education, usually uncultured, or pseudo cultured. The three cannot be separated.

    Politicians these days also follow the cult of the micro-technology techies (technician crowds and their social-economic upwards mobile oracles), incompetent, clueless, uncultured and visionless as the democratic politicians are, they have no choice but to follow. By following this cult they position themselves popularly as people with vision.

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