The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...

48 M. Luoma-aho
of Marx is palpable in The Managerial Revolution. In late capitalism, Burnham
theorised, the functions of management became more distinctive, more complex
and more crucial to the whole process of production; those who performed these
functions now constituted as a class of their own – a powerful class that actually
controlled the capital owned (in name) by the bourgeoisie. The managers would
combat the ‘anarchy’ of capitalism by restraining its private property economy,
parliamentary form of government, and individualist values. Indeed, Burnham
saw managerialism manifested in the totalitarian states of Stalinist Russia and
Fascist Germany, where sovereignty had shifted its locus from democratically
elected political bodies to the administrative bureaux of the managerial elite:
‘[i]n structure, mode of functioning and personnel, the administrative agency,
board, or commission appears as the typical institution for the localisation of
sovereignty in managerial society, as parliament did in capitalist society’ (1941:
129).
Burnham was not convinced that in managerialism the managers would unite in
an ‘international’, a managerial world state, as Marxism had predicted would occur
with the proletariat. Instead, Burnham expected the grip of the national state on
sovereignty to gradually loosen and three conglomerate ‘super-states’ to emerge in
international society and clash for world dominance. In The Managerial
Revolution, Burnham forecast that Japan, Germany and the United States were
likely to form the nuclei of these super-states. At this point in time, Burnham did
not see the Soviet Union as one of the super-states of tomorrow, but forecast that it
was likely to split apart, with the western half gravitating towards Europe and the
eastern half towards Asia. In The Struggle for the World (1947), however, Burnham
fixed his eyes on ‘Russia’ as the main rival of the United States in world hegemony.
Burnham’s vision of the emergence of continental powers had global
implications. The ‘lesser’ peoples of the world, increasingly impotent to stand
up to the might of the metropolitan areas, had no choice but to line up behind
one or other of the super-states of tomorrow. According to Burnham, a multiplicity
of nations and peoples would continue to exist in the foreseeable future,
but only formally: ‘polite fictions of independence may be preserved for propaganda
purposes; but it is the reality of and not the name of sovereignty we are
talking’ (Burnham 1941: 154). The permanent seats on the UN Security Council
had codified the fact that smaller nations were no longer serious independent
factors in world politics.
Having turned his back on Marxism, Burnham now keenly attacked its doctrines.
Among its key faults Burnham identified political universalism, its desire
to unite the world and its peoples. This Burnham dismissed:
The world is potentially one in the light of a possible ideal of brotherhood,
of common humanity. The world is actually one, at least at a certain level,
through the direct or indirect influence of a particular technology and
method of economic production. Politically, and most deeply of all, culturally,
the world is many.
(Burnham 1947: 31)