of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again
by new masters.
Political activity, therefore, is a special kind of behaviour,
characterised by its complete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among
small groups of the population, especially among dissatisfied groups
whose talents do not get free play under the existing form of society.
The great mass of the people--and this is where (2) ties up with (1)--will
always be unpolitical. In effect, therefore, humanity is divided into two
classes: the self-seeking, hypocritical minority, and the brainless mob
whose destiny is always to be led or driven, as one gets a pig back to
the sty by kicking it on the bottom or by rattling a stick inside a
swill-bucket, according to the needs of the moment. And this beautiful
pattern is to continue for ever. Individuals may pass from one category
to another, whole classes may destroy other classes and rise to the
dominant position, but the division of humanity into rulers and ruled is
unalterable. In their capabilities, as in their desires and needs, men
are not equal. There is an "iron law of oligarchy", which would operate
even if democracy were not impossible for mechanical reasons.
It is curious that in all his talk about the struggle for power, Burnham
never stops to ask why people want power. He seems to assume that power
hunger, although only dominant in comparatively few people, is a natural
instinct that does not have to be explained, like the desire for food. He
also assumes that the division of society into classes serves the same
purpose in all ages. This is practically to ignore the history of
hundreds of years. When Burnham's master, Machiavelli, was writing, class
divisions were not only unavoidable, but desirable. So long as methods of
production were primitive, the great mass of the people were necessarily
tied down to dreary, exhausting manual labour: and a few people had to be
set free from such labour, otherwise civilisation could not maintain
itself, let alone make any progress. But since the arrival of the machine
the whole pattern has altered. The justification for class distinctions,
if there is a justification, is no longer the same, because there is no
mechanical reason why the average human being should continue to be a
drudge. True, drudgery persists; class distinctions are probably
re-establishing themselves in a new form, and individual liberty is on
the down-grade: but as these developments are now technically avoidable,
they must have some psychological cause which Burnham makes no attempt to
discover. The question that he ought to ask, and never does ask, is: Why
does the lust for naked power become a major human motive exactly NOW,
when the dominion of man over man is ceasing to be necessary? As for the
claim that "human nature", or "inexorable laws" of this and that, make
Socialism impossible, it is simply a projection of the past into the
future. In effect, Burnham argues that because a society of free and
equal human beings has never existed, it never can exist. By the same
argument one could have demonstrated the impossibility of aeroplanes in
1900, or of motor cars in 1850.
The notion that the machine has altered human relationships, and that in
consequence Machiavelli is out of date, is a very obvious one. If Burnham
fails to deal with it, it can, I think, only be because his own power
instinct leads him to brush aside any suggestion that the Machiavellian
world of force, fraud, and tyranny may somehow come to an end. It is
important to bear in mind what I said above: that Burnham's theory is
only a variant--an American variant, and interesting because of its
comprehensiveness--of the power worship now so prevalent among
intellectuals. A more normal variant, at any rate in England, is
Communism. If one examines the people who, having some idea of what the
Russian r�gime is like, are strongly russophile, one finds that, on the
whole, they belong to the "managerial" class of which Burnham writes.
That is, they are not managers in the narrow sense, but scientists,
technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats,
professional politicians: in general, middling people who feel themselves
cramped by a system that is still partly aristocratic, and are hungry for
more power and more prestige. These people look towards the USSR and see
in it, or think they see, a system which eliminates the upper class,
keeps the working class in its place, and hands unlimited power to people
very similar to themselves. It was only AFTER the Soviet r�gime became
unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers,
began to show an interest in it. Burnham, although the English russophile
intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish:
the wish to destroy the old, equalitarian version of Socialism and usher
in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his
hands on the whip. Burnham at least has the honesty to say that Socialism
isn't coming; the others merely say that Socialism is coming, and then
give the word "Socialism" a new meaning which makes nonsense of the old
one. But his theory, for all its appearance of objectivity, is the
rationalisation of a wish. There is no strong reason for thinking that it
tells us anything about the future, except perhaps the immediate future.
It merely tells us what kind of world the "managerial" class themselves,
or at least the more conscious and ambitious members of the class, would
like to live in.
Fortunately the "managers" are not so invincible as Burnham believes. It
is curious how persistently, in THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION, he ignores the
advantages, military as well as social, enjoyed by a democratic country.
At every point the evidence is squeezed in order to show the strength,
vitality, and durability of Hitler's crazy r�gime. Germany is expanding
rapidly, and "rapid territorial expansion has always been a sign, not of
decadence...but of renewal". Germany makes war successfully, and "the
ability to make war well is never a sign of decadence but of its
opposite". Germany also "inspires in millions of persons a fanatical
loyalty. This, too, never accompanies decadence". Even the cruelty and
dishonesty of the Nazi r�gime are cited in its favour, since "the young,
new, rising social order is, as against the old, more likely to resort on
a large scale to lies, terror, persecution". Yet, within only five years
this young, new, rising social order had smashed itself to pieces and
become, in Burnham's usage of the word, decadent. And this had happened
quite largely because of the "managerial" (i.e. undemocratic) structure
which Burnham admires. The immediate cause of the German defeat was the
unheard-of folly of attacking the USSR while Britain was still undefeated
and America was manifestly getting ready to fight. Mistakes of this
magnitude can only be made, or at any rate they are most likely to be
made, in countries where public opinion has no power. So long as the
common man can get a hearing, such elementary
rules as not fighting all
your enemies simultaneously are less likely to be violated.
But, in any case, one should have been able to see from the start that
such a movement as Nazism could not produce any good or stable result.
Actually, so long as they were winning, Burnham seems to have seen
nothing wrong with the methods of the Nazis. Such methods, he says, only
appear wicked because they are new:
There is no historical law that polite manners and "Justice" shall
conquer. In history there is always the question of WHOSE manners and
WHOSE justice. A rising social class and a new order of society have got
to break through the old moral codes just as they must break through the
old economic and political institutions. Naturally, from the point of
view of the old, they are monsters. If they win, they take care in due
time of manners and morals.
This implies that literally anything can become right or wrong if the
dominant class of the moment so wills it. It ignores the fact that
certain rules of conduct have to be observed if human society is to hold
together at all. Burnham, therefore, was unable to see that the crimes
and follies of the Nazi r�gime MUST lead by one route or another to
disaster. So also with his new-found admiration for Stalinism. It is too
early to say in just what way the Russian r�gime will destroy itself. If
I had to make a prophecy, I should say that a continuation of the Russian
policies of the last fifteen years--and internal and external policy, of
course, are merely two facets of the same thing--can only lead to a war
conducted with atomic bombs, which will make Hitler's invasion look like
a tea-party. But at any rate, the Russian r�gime will either democratise
itself, or it will perish. The huge, invincible, everlasting slave empire
of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established, or, if
established, will not endure, because slavery is no longer a stable basis
for human society.
One cannot always make positive prophecies, but there are times when one
ought to be able to make negative ones. No one could have been expected
to foresee the exact results of the Treaty of Versailles, but millions of
thinking people could and did foresee that those results would be bad.
Plenty of people, though not so many in this case, can foresee that the
results of the settlement now being forced on Europe will also be bad.
And to refrain from admiring Hitler or Stalin--that, too, should not
require an enormous intellectual effort.
But it is partly a moral effort. That a man of Burnham's gifts should
have been able for a while to think of Nazism as something rather
admirable, something that could and probably would build up a workable
and durable social order, shows what damage is done to the sense of
reality by the cultivation of what is now called "realism".
[Note: With title "Second Thoughts on James Burnham", 1946; with title
"James Burnham", 1947; printed as a pamphlet with title "James Burnham
and the Managerial Revolution", Summer 1946]
PLEASURE SPOTS
Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by
a female journalist and describing the pleasure resort of the future. She
had recently been spending some time at Honolulu, where the rigours of
war do not seem to have been very noticeable. However, "a transport
pilot...told me that with all the inventiveness packed into this war, it
was a pity someone hadn't found out how a tired and life-hungry man could
relax, rest, play poker, drink, and make love, all at once, and round the
clock, and come out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job
again." This reminded her of an entrepreneur she had met recently who was
planning a "pleasure spot which he thinks will catch on tomorrow as dog
racing and dance halls did yesterday." The entrepreneur's dream is
described in some detail:
His blue-prints pictured a space covering several acres, under a series
of sliding roofs-for the British weather is unreliable and with a central
space spread over with an immense dance floor made of translucent plastic
which can be illuminated from beneath. Around it are grouped other
functional spaces, at different levels. Balcony bars and restaurants
commanding high views of the city roofs, and ground-level replicas. A
battery of skittle alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated
by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool,
for playtime bathers. Sunlight lamps over the pools to simulate high
summer on days when the roofs don't slide back to disclose a hot sun in a
cloudless sky. Rows of bunks on which people wearing sun-glasses and
slips can lie and start a tan or deepen an existing one under a sunray
lamp.
Music seeping through hundreds of grills connected with a central
distributing stage, where dance or symphonic orchestras play or the radio
programme can be caught, amplified, and disseminated. Outside, two
1,000-car parks. One, free. The other, an open-air cinema drive-in, cars
queueing to move through turnstiles, and the film thrown on a giant
screen facing a row of assembled cars. Uniformed male attendants check
the cars, provide free aid and water, sell petrol and oil. Girls in white
satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes and drinks, and bring them on
trays.
Whenever one hears such phrases as "pleasure spot", "pleasure resort",
"pleasure city", it is difficult not to remember the often quoted opening
of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan".
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But it will be seen that Coleridge has got it all wrong. He strikes a
false note straight off with that talk about "sacred" rivers and
"measureless" caverns. In the hands of the above-mentioned entrepreneur,
Kubla Khan's project would have become something quite different. The
caverns, air-conditioned, discreetly lighted and with their original
rocky interior buried under layers of tastefully-coloured plastics, would
be turned into a series of tea-grottoes in the Moorish, Caucasian or
Hawaiian styles. Alph, the sacred river, would be dammed up to make an
artificially-warmed bathing pool, while the sunless sea would be
illuminated from below with pink electric lights, and one would cruise
over it in real Venetian gondolas each equipped with its own radio set.
The forests and "spots of greenery" referred to by Coleridge would be
cleaned up to make way for glass-covered tennis courts, a bandstand, a
roller-skating rink and perhaps a nine-hole golf course. In short, there
would be everything that a "life-hungry" man could desire.
I have no doub
t that, all over the world, hundreds of pleasure resorts
similar to the one described above are now being planned, and perhaps are
even being built. It is unlikely that they will be finished-world events
will see to that-but they represent faithfully enough the modern
civilised man's idea of pleasure. Something of the kind is already
partially attained in the more magnificent dance halls, movie palaces,
hotels, restaurants and luxury liners. On a pleasure cruise or in a Lyons
Corner House one already gets something more than a glimpse of this
future paradise. Analysed, its main characteristics are these:
1. One is never alone.
2. One never does anything for oneself.
3. One is never within sight of wild vegetation or natural objects
of any kind.
4. Light and temperature are always artificially regulated.
5. One is never out of the sound of music.
The music-and if possible it should be the same music for everybody-is
the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and
conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of
birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The
radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people.
In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off,
though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only
light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio
playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just
loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done
with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from
becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one
from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of
that dreaded thing, thought. For:
The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good.
It is difficult not to feel that the unconscious aim in the most typical
modern pleasure resorts is a return to the womb. For there, too, one was
never alone, one never saw daylight, the temperature was always
regulated, one did not have to worry about work or food, and one's
thoughts, if any, were drowned by a continuous rhythmic throbbing.
When one looks at Coleridge's very different conception of a "pleasure
dome", one sees that it revolves partly round gardens and partly round
caverns, rivers, forests and mountains with "deep romantic chasms"-in
short, round what is called Nature. But the whole notion of admiring
Nature, and feeling a sort of religious awe in the presence of glaciers,
deserts or waterfalls, is bound up with the sense of man's littleness and
weakness against the power of the universe. The moon is beautiful partly
because we cannot reach it, the sea is impressive because one can never
be sure of crossing it safely. Even the pleasure one takes in a
flower-and this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be
known about the flower is dependent partly on the sense of mystery. But
meanwhile man's power over Nature is steadily increasing. With the aid of
the atomic bomb we could literally move mountains: we could even, so it
is said, alter the climate of the earth by melting the polar ice-caps and
irrigating the Sahara. Isn't there, therefore, something sentimental and
obscurantist in preferring bird-song to swing music and in wanting to
leave a few patches of wildness here and there instead of covering the
whole surface of the earth with a network of Autobahnen flooded by
artificial sunlight?
The question only arises because in exploring the physical universe man
has made no attempt to explore himself. Much of what goes by the name of
pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by
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