James Burnham

James Burnham
Born	November 22, 1905 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	July 28, 1987 (1987-07-29) (aged 81) Kent, Connecticut, U.S.
Spouse	Marcia Lightner ​ (m. 1934)​
Relatives	David Burnham (brother)
Academic background
Education	Princeton University Balliol College, Oxford
Influences	Machiavelli Sorel Pareto Mosca Michels Marx Trotsky
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy
Sub-discipline	Political philosophy
School or tradition	Trotskyism (early) American conservatism (late)
Institutions	New York University
Notable students	Maurice Natanson
Notable works	The Managerial Revolution (1941) The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1943)
Notable ideas	Managerial class Managerial state
Influenced	Orwell Francis Macdonald Rahv Gottfried Moldbug

James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (1931). Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. His most famous book, The Managerial Revolution (1941), speculated on the future of an increasingly proceduralist hence sclerotic society. A year before he wrote the book, he rejected Marxism and became an influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement.^[1] Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide.^[2][3]