Search Results: james burnham and the managerial revolution by orwell george

Berkeley, California: Berkeley Young Socialist League, 1955. Wraps. Very good. Likely the first separate American printing of this essay, which was first published in the May 1946 issue of Polemic. In this critical discussion, Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-50) acknowledges that the general drift has "almost certainly been towards oligarchy" and "an increasing concentration of industrial and financial power" but criticizes the tendency of Burnham's "power-worship" and comments upon the failures in analysis that arise from it. As biographer Michael Shelden observed, "Orwell was always at his best when he was on the attack, and his Polemic essay on Burnham is a brilliant criticism of the whole concept of power worship." Preceded by publisher's remarks by James Robertson of the Berkeley Young Socialist League, the influential leftist campus group. The recto of the rear wrapper includes the YSL Statement of Principles, along with a mailing form with the organization's Berkeley and New York… Read More

London: Socialist Book Centre,, 1946. First separate edition, first impression, of this critique of the concept of power worship. Orwell's short essay reflects on Burnham's thesis that technocracy would supplant capitalism - forcefully or otherwise. George Kateb has argued that Orwell's interpretation of Burnham's politics would serve as the "intellectual basis of 1984" (p. 572). Notably, however, Orwell rejects Burnham's contention that the ruling class can effectively redefine reality at will. Orwell's article was originally published the same year as "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" in Polemic 3, a philosophical magazine. Octavo. Original red and white spotted wrappers, lettered in black. Light bumping and sunning, minor rusting to staples, slight toning to contents: a very good copy indeed. Fenwick D.2a. George Kateb, "The Road to 1984", Political Science Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 4, Dec. 1966.