James Burnham

James Burnham
Born	November 22, 1905 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	July 28, 1987 (1987-07-29) (aged 81) Kent, Connecticut, U.S.
Spouse	Marcia Lightner ​ (m. 1934)​
Relatives	David Burnham (brother)
Academic background
Education	Princeton University Balliol College, Oxford
Influences	Machiavelli Sorel Pareto Mosca Michels Marx Trotsky
Academic work
Discipline	Philosophy
Sub-discipline	Political philosophy
School or tradition	Trotskyism (early) American conservatism (late)
Institutions	New York University
Notable students	Maurice Natanson
Notable works	The Managerial Revolution (1941) The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1943)
Notable ideas	Managerial class Managerial state
Influenced	Orwell Francis Macdonald Rahv Gottfried Moldbug

James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy.

His first book was An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (1931). Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. His most famous book, The Managerial Revolution (1941), speculated on the future of an increasingly proceduralist hence sclerotic society. A year before he wrote the book, he rejected Marxism and became an influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement.^[1] Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide.^[2][3]