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Books by James Burnham
The Struggle for the World /
The War We Are In /
The Managerial Revolution /
The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom
Containment or Liberation /
Congress and the American Tradition /
Bear and Dragon
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Editorial Note: Though written over 66
years ago this article by James Burnham seems highly relevant in
light of today's international scene in which United States
power seems unrivalled and with much talk of America's imperial
sway and its Coalition of military forces and the imposition of
American democracy in the Middle East, especially the conquered
territories of Saddam's Iraq.
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World Empire and the Balance of
Power
A Post-WWII Commentary by James Burnham A World Federation initiated and led by the
United States would be, we have recognized, a World Empire. In
this imperial federation, the United States, with a monopoly of
atomic weapons, would hold a preponderance of decisive material
power over all the rest of the world. In world politics, that is
to say, there would not be a "balance of power."
To those commentators who feel that they are
displaying a badge of political virtue when they denounce the
"balance of power," the prospect of its elimination
ought to seem a prime asset of the policy here under discussion.
Those who are not impressed with the rhetorical surface of
politics will be less pleased.
At whatever level of social life, from a
small community to the world at large, a balance of power is the
only sure protection of individual or group liberties. Since we
cannot get rid of power, the real political choice is between a
balance of power and a monopoly of power. Either one power
outweighs all the rest, or separately located powers check and
countercheck each other.
If one power outweighs all the rest, there is
no effective guarantee against the abuse of that power by the
group which wields it. It will seem desirable and necessary to
buttress still further the power dominance, to take measures
against any future threat to the power relations, to cut off at
the source any trickle of potential opposition.
It will seem right that those with the
overweening power should also receive material privilege
commensurate with their power ranking. Only power can be counted
on to check power and to hinder its abuse. Liberty, always
precarious, arises out of the unstable equilibrium that results
from the conflict of competing powers.
As a solution for the present crisis, might
it not therefore seem that there is little objective reason to
prefer a world federation under United States leadership to a
communist World Empire? Of course, we might, not altogether
cynically, reflect that even if our choice is only between
jailers to preside over our common prison, that is still not an
occasion for indifference. But is anything more at stake? Would
not the United States also, if it became world leader, turn out
in the end to be world tyrant?
We must begin by replying, as we have so
often: it might be so. There can be no certainty against it. We
must say even more than this. There is in America life a strain
of callow brutality. This betrays itself no less in the lynching
and gangsterism at home than in the arrogance and hooliganism of
soldiers our tourists abroad. The provincialism of the American
mind expresses itself in a lack of sensitivity toward other
peoples and other cultures.
There is in many Americans an ignorant
contempt for ideas and tradition and history, a complacency with
the trifles of merely material triumph. Who, listening a few
hours to the American radio, could repress a shudder if he
thought that the price of survival would be the Americanization
of the world?
2
We have already observed that the idea of "empire"
carries with it a confused set of associations that is
only remotely related to historical experience. There have been
many empires, of many kinds, differing in almost every
imaginable way in their social and political content. the only
constant, the factor that leads us to call the given political
aggregate an "empire," is the problematic--perhaps
only to a very small degree--of a part over the whole.
It is by no means true that all empires are tyrannies. the
Athenian Empire of the 5th century B.C. was for the most of its
history little more than a strengthened federation. Within the
imperial state, Athens itself, there flourished the most
vigorous political democracy of the ancient world, and in some
respects of all time. Though Athens controlled the foreign
policy of the federated cities and islands, in many instances
she used her influence to promote democratic changes of their
internal regimes.
The hand of England has been heavy on India, Malaysia,
Ceylon, but she can hardly be accused of destroying there a
liberty which never existed. And in what independent states has
there been found more liberty than in her loosely
dependent Dominions?
The imperial rule of Rome, especially of compared to the
pre-existing regimes of the areas to which it was gradually
extended, was far from an unmixed despotism. For hundreds of
years it was centered in an imperial state which was itself a
Republic. many of the cities and states which were added by
force or maneuver were, upon affiliation, cemented by the grant
not of slavery but of Roman citizenship. It would be hard to
prove that Roman power meant less liberty for the inhabitants of
Egypt or Thrace or Parthia.
Even the Ottoman Empire, which, entering from
outside, took over the rule of the enfeebled Byzantine states in
Asia minor, the Balkans, and parts of Africa, is hardly
responsible for the end of liberties which had never grown on
Byzantine soil. Under the Ottoman Turks, the Christians,
permitted the free practice of their religion, and eligible
through the peculiar devices of the slave household of the
capital to the highest military and administrative positions,
were more free than had been heathens or heterodox Christian
sects under the Byzantine powers.
I am not, certainly, trying to suggest that
building an empire is the best way to protect freedom. the
empires of the Mongols, of the Egyptians, the Incaic and Aztec
and Babylonian and Hittite empires will scarcely be included
among the friends of liberty. It does, however, seem to be the
case that there is no very close causal relation between empire
and liberty.
The lack of liberty among the Andean or
Mexican Indians, the Egyptians or Mongolians or Hittites, cannot
be blamed on the imperial structures into which their societies
were, at various periods, politically articulated. Within their
cultures, social and political liberties, as we understand them,
did not exist at any time, whether or not they were organized as
empires. the degree of liberty which exists within an empire
seems to be relatively independent of the mere fact of the
imperial political superstructure.
The extension of an empire does, by its very
nature, mean at least some reduction in the independence, or
sovereignty, of whatever nations or peoples become part of the
empire. This is sometimes felt as a grievous loss by these
nations or peoples, almost always so felt by the governing class
which has previously been their unrestricted rulers--perhaps
their tyrants.
But this partial loss of independence need
not at all mean a loss of concrete liberties for the population,
may even mean their considerable development, and may bring also
a great gain to civilization and world political order.
Untrammeled national independence is a dubious blessing,
consistent with complete despotism inside the given nation, and
premise of an international anarchy that derives precisely from
separatist independence.
I did not attempt to deduce the totalitarian
tyranny of a communist World Empire from the mere fact that it
would be an empire. This conclusion was based upon the analysis
of the nature of communism, as revealed in ideology,
organization, and historical practice. Though it must be granted
that an imperial world federation led by the United States might
also develop into a tyranny, the fact of empire does not, in
this case either, make the conclusion necessary.
3
The development of an industrial economy
world-wide in scope, the breakdown of the international
political order, and the existence of atomic weapons are, we
observed at the beginning of our discussion, the elements of the
world crisis as well as the occasion for the attempt to
construct a world imperial federation. This world federation is
made possible by the material and social conditions, is demanded
by the catastrophic acuteness of the crisis. The nature of the
federation cannot be deduced from definition, but must be
understood in relation to the historical circumstances out of
which it may arise.
From the point of view of the United States,
and of the non-communist world generally, the world federation
is required in order to perform two inter-related tasks, which
cannot be performed without the federation: to control atomic
weapons, and to prevent mass, total, world war. With United
States leadership, and only with its leadership, a federation
able to perform these tasks could be built, and built in time.
With the performance of these tasks, the
federation would be accomplishing what might be called its
"historical purpose"; it would be fulfilling the
requirements which prompted its creation. the minimum content of
the "American world empire" would thus be no more than
of a protective association of nations and peoples in which, for
a restricted special purpose, a special power--the power of
atomic weapons--would be guarded in the beginning by one member
of the association.
At first there would be, perhaps, little more
to the federation than this minimum content--which, after all,
would not be such an unmitigated blow tot he liberties of
mankind. It is not, however, to be expected that the federation
would remain long at this bare level. It would develop; the
content would deepen. How it would develop is a question not
decided in advance. If the direction might be toward a tyrannous
despotism on the part of the initially favored nation, there is
no reason to rule out a development in a quite opposite
direction, toward the fuller freedoms and humanity of a genuine
world state and world society.
The danger to liberties would be the power
predominance of the United States in the beginning of the
federation. Fortunately for liberty, there are objective factors
of very great weight that would operate against any attempts by
the United States to institute a totalitarian world tyranny.
Not unimportant among these factors is the
historical tradition which is the past of the United States
social present. I have mentioned the brutality, provincialism,
and cultural insensitivity which are not infrequent in United
States behavior. These are, however, characteristics to be
expressed in a young and "semi-barbarian superstate of the
cultural periphery" (I use, again, Toynbee's phrase). There
is nothing totalitarian about them. Their rather anarchic,
somewhat lawless, disruptive manifestations are on the whole
anti-totalitarian in effect.
Americans do, most of them, have a contempt
for ideas; but that very contempt gives them a certain immunity
to mental capture by an integral ideology of the totalitarian
kind. It is less easy for a nation to escape from its past than
many optimists, and pessimists, imagine. The past can be a
millstone around the neck, but it can also be an anchor bringing
safety. The United States may become totalitarian. It seems to
me unlikely, however, that this will come about through a
natural internal evolution. Totalitarianism would have to be
brought from without, as it would have been by a
world-victorious Nazi Germany, as it will be by the communists,
if they are allowed to continue.
A second factor on the side of liberty is the
inadequate power of the United States. The United States has
today very great power, greater than its own spokesmen realize,
great enough to build a world federation, to defeat communism,
and to ensure control of atomic weapons. It does not have enough
power to impose a totalitarian rule on the rest of the world.
Even if the United States could concentrate enough in the form
of purely military power, it lacks sufficient manpower and
sufficient political experience.
What this means is that the United
States can lead only by accepting others as partners, only by
combining the methods of conciliation and concession with the
methods of power, only by guarding the rights of others as
jealously as its own privileges. If the United States refuses
this mode of leadership, if it should try instead to be world
despot, it might still, for a short while, subdue the world
beneath an atomic terror. But the end would be swift and
certain. mankind would be avenged, and the United States
destroyed. The only question would be whether all civilization
would be brought down in the process.
Looked at somewhat differently, this
indicates that in the projected world federation the principle
of the balance of power would not in reality be suspended. At
the one, narrowly military level, a balance would be replaced by
United States preponderance. But military force, especially in
the technical sense which is alone at stake in the control of
atomic weapons, is by no means the only form of social power. In
terms of population, material resources, cultural skills and
experience, the United States would not at all outweigh the
other members of the federation. Within the framework of the
federation, divided powers would continue to interact. through
their mutual checks and balancings, they would operate to
prevent any totalitarian crystallization of all power. A
third, ironic protection of liberty is the unwillingness of the
United States to rule the world. No people, pushed by forces
they cannot control, ever entered on the paths of world power
with less taste for the journey, with more nostalgic backward
glances. This distaste, indeed, is so profound that it is
primarily significant not so much as a protection against the
abuse of United States power, but rather as a tragic handicap to
the sufficient utilization of that power. There
is a fourth major factor which will challenge any despotic
presumption on the part of the United States. In the world today
there are many millions of men and women who know the meaning of
totalitarian tyranny, often through the frightful lessons of
direct experience, and who are resolved, if any chance is given
them, to fight against it. They are within the United States
itself, as within every other nation, not the least firm among
them silent for the moment under the stranglehold of the
communist power. the loss of liberty teaches best, perhaps, its
meaning. Though they are now, after so many betrayals and vain
hopes, close to despair, they are still ready to act again. They
are ready, since there is no other way, to accept and follow the
leadership of the United states, but only if they are given
reason to believe that United States leadership will bring both
power and justice: power so that there will be a chance to win,
and justice so that the victory will be worth winning. They will
follow not as subjects of the United States, but, in their own
minds, as citizens of the world. For them, all governments and
all power are suspect. They will be--they
are--stern judges of the United States; they are acquainted with
the symptoms of tyranny; they will observe and resist every
invasion of liberty. If experience should prove to them that
their hope in the United States is also empty, then they will
abandon the United States. The United States
cannot compete in tyranny with the communists. the communists
have cornered that political market. The peoples of the world
will reason that if it is to be totalitarianism anyway, then it
had might as well be the tried and tested brand. The United
States will not win the peoples to her side--and the struggle in
the end is for them, is not merely military--unless her
leadership is anti-totalitarian, unless she can make herself the
instrument of the hope, not the fear, of mankind.
Source: James Burnham. The
Struggle for the World. New York: The John Day Company, Inc., 1947
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Samuel Francis.
James Burham. Thinkers of our Times (1999)
Samuel Francis is the
premier theoretician of the paleoconservative movement and has
for years studied and applied the thought of James Burnham to
today's politics.
Burnham was unique among conservative thinkers. Unlike
conservatives who based their theories on religion, tradition,
or natural law, Burnham was rigorously empirical in his approach
to political problems. Nonetheless, this led him to conservative
conclusions. Heavily influence by the so-called "realist school"
of politics (Machiavelli, Michels and Pareto), Burnham sought to
discover universal laws of politics and apply them to foreign
policy and cultural change.
This is an enjoyable introduction to Burnham's thought and a
model of organization. Francis discusses Burnham's overall
philosophy and analyzes his thought chronologically, book by
book. Francis also refutes a couple claims widely made about
Burnham. First, he shows that (contrary to Rothbard) Burnham did
devote considerable time to objecting to the growth of state
power. Although Burnham was hardly a libertarian or even a
minimal government conservative, he was generally supportive of
free enterprise and limited government. Second, contrary to
contemporary neoconservatives (and libertarian foreign policy
writer Justin Raimondo), Burnham was not a proto-neocon. Burnham
supported an "interventionist" foreign policy to fight the
Soviet Union and communism, but his writings in this area can
hardly be seen as a blueprint for a neocon New World Order.
This book should be supplemented by Kelly's recently published
biography of Burnham, JAMES BURNHAM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE
WORLD, which presents the neocon "take" on Burnham.—Steve
Jackson
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Daniel Kelly.
James Burnham and The Struggle for the World (2002)
Best remembered for his
first book
The Managerial Revolution (1941) and as senior editor of
the National Review, James Burnham spent his life
struggling to rid the world of totalitarianism and liberalism in
all their forms. In his comprehensive biography, James
Burnham and the Struggle for the World, Daniel Kelly, who
taught modern European history at NYU until 1996, narrates in
minute detail Burnham's development as a political thinker from
his college days at Princeton and Balliol College, Oxford, to
his work as a Trotskyist in the 1930s, to his eventual
disenchantment with socialism and swing to the right. He
supported imperialism and defended U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Kelly's turgid prose and exhausting detail make for tiresome
reading, but a small circle of readers will find this chapter of
political history engrossing. —Publishers
Weekly
James Burnham (1905-1987)
may be the "forgotten man" of the Conservative movement.
Although he has been the subject of a few monographs and
chapters in various books on the conservative movement, his name
is not well known in the conservative world. Many who have heard
of Russell Kirk, Whittaker Chambers and William Buckley probably
know him only as a writer of apocalyptic anti-Communist books in
the 50s and 60s.
Burnham's life was fascinating, and this book is a well-written,
enjoyable biography. Born to a wealthy railroad executive,
Burnham attended Princeton where he studied philosophy and
literature. There he first became associated with Philip
Wheelwright (he was also at Princeton at the same time as
Cornelius van Til - another Wheelwright student -- but Kelly
makes no mention of whether they were acquainted). He attended
Oxford where he met Tolkien and Brand Blanshard. In the 1930s,
Burnham became a Communist (of sorts) and an advisor to Leon
Trotsky. In the late 1930s, Burnham rejected Communism and
ultimately became a conservative. He even worked for the CIA for
a few years.
Burnham began writing for National Review from its inception in
1954 where most of his writing concerned foreign policy and
winning the Cold War. Burnham continued with National Review
until he suffered a stroke in 1977, which impaired his
short-term memory.
Burnham is not easy to pigeonhole. He was neither a member of
the Old Right nor the Neocon Right, but shared characteristics
of both. While sympathetic to free enterprise, he wasn't a
doctrinaire believer in laissez faire. He rejected isolationism,
but his internationalism was largely limited to anti-Communism.
For example, he opposed US involvement in the Middle East.
Burnham's views on Congressional supremacy, his partial support
for Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his views on racial matters would
place him, broadly speaking, on the paleoconservative spectrum.
Burnham rejected neoconservatism when it first appeared as a
distinct ideology in the 70s and his last public appearance, in
1983, was to accept an award from The Ingersoll Foundation,
which is associated with a paleoconservative think-tank. In
light of all this, it is a stretch for Mr. Kelly to suggest that
Burnham was a proto-neoconservative.
—Steve Jackson * * * *
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updated 17 October 2007 |
