Page 58 of Fifty Orwell Essays

happiness any nearer. More recently, writers like Peter Drucker and F.A.

  Voigt have argued that Fascism and Communism are substantially the same

  thing. And indeed, it has always been obvious that a planned and

  centralised society is liable to develop into an oligarchy or a

  dictatorship. Orthodox Conservatives were unable to see this, because it

  comforted them to assume that Socialism "wouldn't work", and that the

  disappearance of capitalism would mean chaos and anarchy. Orthodox

  Socialists could not see it, because they wished to think that they

  themselves would soon be in power, and therefore assumed that when

  capitalism disappears, Socialism takes its place. As a result they were

  unable to foresee the rise of Fascism, or to make correct predictions

  about it after it had appeared. Later, the need to justify the Russian

  dictatorship and to explain away the obvious resemblances between

  Communism and Nazism clouded the issue still more. But the notion that

  industrialism must end in monopoly, and that monopoly must imply tyranny,

  is not a startling one.

  Where Burnham differs from most other thinkers is in trying to plot the

  course of the "managerial revolution" accurately on a world scale, and in

  assuming that the drift towards totalitarianism is irresistible and must

  not be fought against, though it may be guided. According to Burnham,

  writing in 1940, "managerialism" has reached its fullest development in

  the USSR, but is almost equally well developed in Germany, and has made

  its appearance in the United States. He describes the New Deal as

  "primitive managerialism". But the trend is the same everywhere, or

  almost everywhere. Always LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism gives way to planning

  and state interference, the mere owner loses power as against the

  technician and the bureaucrat, but Socialism--that is to say, what used to

  be called Socialism--shows no sign of emerging:

  Some apologists try to excuse Marxism by saying that it has "never had a

  chance". This is far from the truth. Marxism and the Marxist parties have

  had dozens of chances. In Russia, a Marxist party took power. Within a

  short time it abandoned Socialism; if not in words, at any rate in the

  effect of its actions. In most European nations there were during the

  last months of the first world war and the years immediately thereafter,

  social crises which left a wide-open door for the Marxist parties:

  without exception they proved unable to take and hold power. In a large

  number of countries--Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, England,

  Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France--the reformist Marxist parties have

  administered the governments, and have uniformly failed to introduce

  Socialism or make any genuine step towards Socialism.... These parties

  have, in practice, at every historical test--and there have been

  many--either failed Socialism or abandoned it. This is the fact which

  neither the bitterest foe nor the most ardent friend of Socialism can

  erase. This fact does not, as some think, prove anything about the moral

  quality of the Socialist ideal. But it does constitute unblinkable

  evidence that, whatever its moral quality, Socialism is not going to come.

  Burnham does not, of course, deny that the new "managerial" r?gimes,

  like the r?gimes of Russia and Nazi Germany, may be CALLED Socialist. He

  means merely that they will not be Socialist in any sense of the word

  which would have been accepted by Marx, or Lenin, or Keir Hardie, or

  William Morris, or indeed, by any representative Socialist prior to about

  1930. Socialism, until recently, was supposed to connote political

  democracy, social equality and internationalism. There is not the

  smallest sign that any of these things is in a way to being established

  anywhere, and the one great country in which something described as a

  proletarian revolution once happened, i.e. the USSR, has moved steadily

  away from the old concept of a free and equal society aiming at universal

  human brotherhood. In an almost unbroken progress since the early days of

  the Revolution, liberty has been chipped away and representative

  institutions smothered, while inequalities have increased and nationalism

  and militarism have grown stronger. But at the same time, Burnham

  insists, there has been no tendency to return to capitalism. What is

  happening is simply the growth of "managerialism", which, according to

  Burnham, is in progress everywhere, though the manner in which it comes

  about may vary from country to country.

  Now, as an interpretation of what is HAPPENING, Burnham's theory is

  extremely plausible, to put it at the lowest. The events of, at any rate,

  the last fifteen years in the USSR can be far more easily explained by

  this theory than by any other. Evidently the USSR is not Socialist, and

  can only be called Socialist if one gives the word a meaning different

  from what it would have in any other context. On the other hand,

  prophecies that the Russian r?gime would revert to capitalism have

  always been falsified, and now seem further than ever from being

  fulfilled. In claiming that the process had gone almost equally far in

  Nazi Germany, Burnham probably exaggerates, but it seems certain that the

  drift was away from old-style capitalism and towards a planned economy

  with an adoptive oligarchy in control. In Russia the capitalists were

  destroyed first and the workers were crushed later. In Germany the

  workers were crushed first, but the elimination of the capitalists had at

  any rate begun, and calculations based on the assumption that Nazism was

  "simply capitalism" were always contradicted by events. Where Burnham

  seems to go most astray is in believing "managerialism" to be on the

  up-grade in the United States, the one great country where free

  capitalism is still vigorous. But if one considers the world movement as

  a whole, his conclusions are difficult to resist; and even in the United

  States the all-prevailing faith in LAISSEZ-FAIRE may not survive the next

  great economic crisis. It has been urged against Burnham that he assigns

  far too much importance to the "managers", in the narrow sense of the

  word-that is, factory bosses, planners and technicians--and seems to

  assume that even in Soviet Russia it is these people, and not the

  Communist Party chiefs, who are the real holders of power. However, this

  is a secondary error, and it is partially corrected in THE

  MACHIAVELLIANS. The real question is not whether the people who wipe

  their boots on us during the next fifty years are to be called managers,

  bureaucrats, or politicians: the question is whether capitalism, now

  obviously doomed, is to give way to oligarchy or to true democracy.

  But curiously enough, when one examines the predictions which Burnham has

  based on his general theory, one finds that in so far as they are

  verifiable, they have been falsified. Numbers of people have pointed this

  out already. However, it is worth following up Burnham's predictions in

  detail, because they form a sort of pattern which is related to

  contemporary events, and which reveals, I believe, a very important

&nbsp
; weakness in present-day political thought.

  To begin with, writing in 1940, Burnham takes a German victory more or

  less for granted. Britain is described as "dissolving", and as displaying

  "all the characteristics which have distinguished decadent cultures in

  past historical transitions", while the conquest and integration of

  Europe which Germany achieved in 1940 is described as "irreversible".

  "England," writes Burnham, "no matter with what non-European allies,

  cannot conceivably hope to conquer the European continent." Even if

  Germany should somehow manage to lose the war, she could not be

  dismembered or reduced to the status of the Weimar Republic, but is bound

  to remain as the nucleus of a unified Europe. The future map of the

  world, with its three great super-states is, in any case, already settled

  in its main outlines: and "the nuclei of these three super-states are,

  whatever may be their future names, the previously existing nations,

  Japan, Germany, and the United States."

  Burnham also commits himself to the opinion that Germany will not attack

  the USSR until after Britain has been defeated. In a condensation of his

  book published in the PARTISAN REVIEW of May-June 1941, and presumably

  written later than the book itself, he says:

  As in the case of Russia, so with Germany, the third part of the

  managerial problem--the contest for dominance with other sections of

  managerial society--remains for the future. First had to come the

  death-blow that assured the toppling of the capitalist world order, which

  meant above all the destruction of the foundations of the British Empire

  (the keystone of the capitalist world order) both directly and through

  the smashing of the European political structure, which was a necessary

  prop of the Empire. This is the basic explanation of the Nazi-Soviet

  Pact, which is not intelligible on other grounds. The future conflict

  between Germany and Russia will be a managerial conflict proper; prior to

  the great world-managerial battles, the end of the capitalist order must

  be assured. The belief that Nazism is "decadent capitalism"...makes

  it impossible to explain reasonably the Nazi-Soviet Pact. From this

  belief followed the always expected war between Germany and Russia, not

  the actual war to the death between Germany and the British Empire. The

  war between Germany and Russia is one of the managerial wars of the

  future, not of the anti-capitalist wars of yesterday and today.

  However, the attack on Russia will come later, and Russia is certain, or

  almost certain, to be defeated. "There is every reason to believe...

  that Russia will split apart, with the western half gravitating towards

  the European base and the eastern towards the Asiatic." This quotation

  comes from THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION. In the above quoted article, written

  probably about six months later, it is put more forcibly: "the Russian

  weaknesses indicate that Russia will not be able to endure, that it will

  crack apart, and fall towards east and west." And in a supplementary note

  which was added to the English (Pelican) edition, and which appears to

  have been written at the end of 1941, Burnham speaks as though the

  "cracking apart" process were already happening. The war, he says, "is

  part of the means whereby the western half of Russia is being integrated

  into the European super-state".

  Sorting these various statements out, we have the following prophecies:

  1. Germany is bound to win the war.

  2. Germany and Japan are bound to survive as great states, and to remain

  the nuclei of power in their respective areas.

  3. Germany will not attack the USSR until after the defeat of Britain.

  4. The USSR is bound to be defeated.

  However, Burnham has made other predictions besides these. In a short

  article in the PARTISAN REVIEW, in the summer of 1944, he gives his

  opinion that the USSR will gang up with Japan in order to prevent the

  total defeat of the latter, while the American Communists will be set to

  work to sabotage the eastern end of the war. And finally, in an article

  in the same magazine in the winter of 1944-5, he claims that Russia,

  destined so short a while ago to "crack apart", is within sight of

  conquering the whole of Eurasia. This article, which was the cause of

  violent controversies among the American intelligentsia, has not been

  reprinted in England. I must give some account of it here, because its

  manner of approach and its emotional tone are of a peculiar kind, and by

  studying them one can get nearer to the real roots of Burnham's theory.

  The article is entitled "Lenin's Heir", and it sets out to show that

  Stalin is the true and legitimate guardian of the Russian Revolution,

  which he has not in any sense "betrayed" but has merely carried forward

  on lines that were implicit in it from the start. In itself, this is an

  easier opinion to swallow than the usual Trotskyist claim that Stalin is

  a mere crook who has perverted the Revolution to his own ends, and that

  things would somehow have been different if Lenin had lived or Trotsky

  had remained in power. Actually there is no strong reason for thinking

  that the main lines of development would have been very different. Well

  before 1923 the seeds of a totalitarian society were quite plainly there.

  Lenin, indeed, is one of those politicians who win an undeserved

  reputation by dying prematurely. [See Note at end of paragraph] Had he

  lived, it is probable that he would either have been thrown out, like

  Trotsky, or would have kept himself in power by methods as barbarous,

  or nearly as barbarous, as those of Stalin. The TITLE of Burnham's essay,

  therefore, sets forth a reasonable thesis, and one would expect him to

  support it by an appeal to the facts.

  [Note: It is difficult to think of any politician who has lived to be

  eighty and still been regarded as a success. What we call a "great"

  statesman normally means one who dies before his policy has had time to

  take effect. If Cromwell had lived a few years longer he would probably

  have fallen from power, in which case we should now regard him as a

  failure. If P?tain had died in 1930, France would have venerated him as a

  hero and patriot. Napoleon remarked once that if only a cannon-ball had

  happened to hit him when he was riding into Moscow, he would have gone

  down to history as the greatest man who ever lived. [Author's footnote.]]

  However, the essay barely touches upon its ostensible subject matter. It

  is obvious that anyone genuinely concerned to show that there has been

  continuity of policy as between Lenin and Stalin would start by outlining

  Lenin's policy and then explain in what way Stalin's has resembled it.

  Burnham does not do this. Except for one or two cursory sentences he says

  nothing about Lenin's policy, and Lenin's name only occurs five times in

  an essay of twelve pages: in the first seven pages, apart from the title,

  it does not occur at all. The real aim of the essay is to present Stalin

  as a towering, super-human figure, indeed a species of demigod, and

  Bolshevism as an irresistible force which is flowing over the earth and
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  cannot be halted until it reaches the outermost borders of Eurasia. In so

  far as he makes any attempt to prove his case, Burnham does so by

  repeating over and over again that Stalin is "a great man"--which is

  probably true, but is almost completely irrelevant. Moreover, though he

  does advance some solid arguments for believing in Stalin's genius, it is

  clear that in his mind the idea of "greatness" is inextricably mixed up

  with the idea of cruelty and dishonesty. There are curious passages in

  which it seems to be suggested that Stalin is to be admired BECAUSE OF

  the limitless suffering that he has caused:

  Stalin proves himself a "great man", in the grand style. The accounts of

  the banquets, staged in Moscow for the visiting dignitaries, set the

  symbolic tone. With their enormous menus of sturgeon, and roasts, and

  fowl, and sweets; their streams of liquor; the scores of toasts with

  which they end; the silent, unmoving secret police behind each guest; all

  against the winter background of the starving multitudes of besieged

  Leningrad; the dying millions at the front; the jammed concentration

  camps; the city crowds kept by their minute rations just at the edge of

  life; there is little trace of dull mediocrity or the hand of Babbitt. We

  recognise, rather, the tradition of the most spectacular of the Tsars, of

  the Great Kings of the Medes and Persians, of the Khanate of the Golden

  Horde, of the banquet we assign to the gods of the Heroic Ages in tribute

  to the insight that insolence, and indifference, and brutality on such a

  scale remove beings from the human level...Stalin's political

  techniques shows a freedom from conventional restrictions that is

  incompatible with mediocrity: the mediocre man is custom-bound. Often it

  is the scale of their operations that sets them apart. It is usual, for

  example, for men active in practical life to engineer an occasional

  frame-up. But to carry out a frame-up against tens of thousands of

  persons, important percentages of whole strata of society, including most

  of one's own comrades, is so far out of the ordinary that the long-run

  mass conclusion is either that the frame-up must be true--at least "have

  some truth in it"--or that power so immense must be submitted to is a

  "historical necessity", as intellectuals put it...There is nothing

  unexpected in letting a few individuals starve for reasons of state; but

  to starve by deliberate decision, several millions, is a type of action

  attributed ordinarily only to gods.

  In these and other similar passages there may be a tinge of irony, but it

  is difficult not to feel that there is also a sort of fascinated

  admiration. Towards the end of the essay Burnham compares Stalin with

  those semi-mythical heroes, like Moses or Asoka, who embody in themselves

  a whole epoch, and can justly be credited with feats that they did not

  actually perform. In writing of Soviet foreign policy and its supposed

  objectives, he touches an even more mystical note:

  Starting from the magnetic core of the Eurasian heartland, the Soviet

  power, like the reality of the One of Neo-Platonism overflowing in the

  descending series of the emanative progression, flows outward, west into

  Europe, south into the Near East, east into China, already lapping the

  shores of the Atlantic, the Yellow and China Seas, the Mediterranean, and

  the Persian Gulf. As the undifferentiated One, in its progression,

  descends through the stages of Mind, Soul, and Matter, and then through

  its fatal Return back to itself; so does the Soviet power, emanating from

  the integrally totalitarian centre, proceed outwards by Absorption (the

  Baltics, Bessarabia, Bukovina, East Poland), Domination (Finland, the

  Balkans, Mongolia, North China and, tomorrow, Germany), Orienting

  Influence (Italy, France, Turkey, Iran, Central and south China...),

  until it is dissipated in MH ON, the outer material sphere, beyond the