James Burnham: An Intellectual Biography

In this intellectual biography of one of the most important political thinkers of the twentieth century, David T. Byrne reveals the fascinating life of James Burnham.

Beginning his intellectual career as a disciple of Leon Trotsky, Burnham preached socialist revolution to the American working classes during the Great Depression. In 1940 he split with Trotsky over the nature of the USSR. Attempting to explain the world that was emerging in the early days of World War II, Burnham penned one of the most successful political works of the early 1940s, titled The Managerial Revolution. This dystopian treatise predicted collectivization and rule by bland managers and bureaucrats. Burnham's next book, The Machiavellians, argued that political elites seek only to obtain and maintain power, and democracy is best achieved by resisting them.

After World War II, Burnham became one of the foremost anticommunists in the United States. His The Struggle for the World and The Coming Defeat of Communism remain two of the most important books of the early Cold War era. Rejecting George F. Kennan's policy of containment, Burnham demanded an aggressive foreign policy against the Soviet Union. Along with William F. Buckley, Burnham helped found National Review magazine in 1955, where he expressed his political views for more than two decades.

As Byrne shows in James Burnham, the political theorist's influence has stretched from George Orwell to Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump's base. Burnham's ideas about the elite and power remain part of US political discourse and, perhaps, have more relevance than ever before.

© 2025 Northern Illinois University Press (Ebook): 9781501780059

Release date

Ebook: 15 March 2025