James Burnham began his intellectual odyssey as a disciple of Leon Trotsky, but he became disillusioned with Marxism in the late 1930s. The Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 especially drew Burnham’s ire. Trotsky rationalized the invasion using Marxist ideology: Soviet socialism was spreading; therefore, it must be good. Burnham disagreed, arguing that the invasion was simply Soviet imperialism — a confiscation of land by Stalin. After seven years as one of its leading American thinkers, Burnham left the Marxist movement.
Burnham’s experiences with Marxism scarred him. He began to recognize that “only by renouncing all ideology can we begin to see the world and man.” Burnham now believed that ideologies attempt to explain reality in accordance with their principles, but reality is messier and more complex than ideology suggests. Ideologies lead people to distort reality — to misinterpret the facts — to ensure that everything conforms to ideology. Burnham insisted that we must see things the way they really are. Only then can we improve society.
Burnham presents his first critique of ideology in the The Managerial Revolution (1941), a classic in economics that predicts the rise of a new powerful caste composed of bureaucrats, corporate managers, and technocrats. In the book, he calls ideologies “the expression of hopes, wishes, and fears” of societies. He gives the examples of Marxism, the doctrines of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and Nazi racial doctrines. He compares them to religious values, arguing that may they serve some social purpose, but they can never successfully guide human conduct.
Burnham continued some of these themes in The Machiavellians (1943), a book about how the ruling classes achieve, maintain, and exercise power. It promotes a pragmatic approach to politics by contending that values and ideals by themselves cannot always be followed. Burnham wrote that all men are equal in some respects, but men in general cannot be completely equal. And justice sounds nice, but Burnham demanded that the meaning of the concept be clarified. Otherwise, it is useless.
After WWII, Burnham became America’s foremost anticommunist. Rejecting the policy of containment, he demanded a hardline, aggressive foreign policy that aimed at liberating the people of Eastern Europe from the Soviet yoke. In 1955, Burnham helped co-found National Review magazine and was later described by William F. Buckley as the magazine’s dominant intellectual influence. Nonetheless, consistent with his outlook, Burnham resisted doctrinaire conservativism. Unlike most conservatives during the ’60s and ’70s, this National Review senior editor generally accepted the New Deal and Great Society.
In 1964, Burnham penned Suicide of the West, a popular book today because it ponders the future of Western civilization and comes to an indefatigable conclusion: If liberalism prevails, the West is doomed. Burnham argued that liberals cannot defend Western civilization because liberal ideology is “not well designed for the stark issue of survival.” Many liberals deride Western civilization, believing that it is bereft of redeeming features. And for liberals, the West is certainly not superior, suggesting that it is not worth defending. Burnham contends in Suicide of the West that liberalism prefers the contraction of the West over colonial expansion.
Suicide of the West continues Burnham’s attacks on liberalism by arguing that the ideology attempts to study events by using a pre-existing set of ideas, but this precludes the adherent from seeing the bigger, more practical picture. Burnham maintains that no argument or evidence will ever change the mind of the liberal because any holes in the ideology can easily be patched up to satisfy the believer. Those working within ideological frameworks must sometimes bend reality so it conforms to ideology.
In his effort to undermine liberal ideology, Burnham provides the example of two black men he frequently encountered outside work in New York City. They earned minimum wage by picking up boxes from stores, a menial task that at least allowed them to feed themselves and their family. The simple operation was organized by “some dim exploiter” who made small deals with other businesses. The mayor of New York wanted to raise minimum wage in accordance with ideology. Burnham predicted that the consequence would probably be that the whole business folded, and these men would lose their jobs, prompting them to become “bums and delinquents.” For Burnham, society becomes a worse place for everyone involved as the liberal ideology is satisfied.
Liberal attempts to solve the problem of “skid row” also vexed Burnham. He notes in Suicide of the West that every large city in history has had some sort of end of the line for the poor and destitute. For liberals, it is a macabre situation that requires fixing. For the professed realist, skid row is just part of the “long and wonderfully intricate natural evolution of the city.” Self-contained, skid row shields the rest of society from its potential destructiveness. Burnham contends that recent liberal ideological attempts to correct the situation in New York City had only made things worse because now, instead of being part of a self-sufficient society, the displaced downtrodden were “lurching” around the city, bumping into “respectable citizens,” and generally making a scene wherever they plodded.
Burnham argued that these ideologically driven reformers merely tried to assuage their guilt about the fallen world around them. He maintains that Christianity solves the problem of guilt by recognizing humanity’s fallen state, but liberalism has no such pretenses. Consequently, beset by guilt, the liberal becomes consumed with change, what Burnham calls “method rather than results.” He compares liberalism to a religion; he contends that the liberal can faithfully go about his day, believing certain myths that give him self-assurance.
Today, Burnham would criticize affirmative action policies that discriminate against certain groups in the name of equality. He would scoff at attempts to allow men to participate in women’s sports under the guise of equity. And he would recognize that DIE is a feeble attempt to advance Marxist ideology using nice-sounding words. Burnham knew that ideology cannot always guide human conduct, and too much ideology can exacerbate social ills.
David Byrne earned his Ph.D. in intellectual history from Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography. @David_Byrne1
Image: Praveenp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).
