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James Burnham

James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years, as his thinking developed, he left Marxism and produced his seminal work The Managerial Revolution. He later turned to conservatism and served as a public intellectual of the conservative movement. He also wrote regularly for the conservative publication National Review on a variety of topics.


“There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power. Oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial, in relation to entrenched power, as the old court jesters.”
James Burnham
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“He remembered the forceful hand that cast him to the earth. He'd fallen like a shooting star, his flesh burning until his wings fell away. Pain was something he had never known before. But even worse than the physical affliction was the knowledge that he would forevermore be denied Heaven.”
James Burnham
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