Making Sense of the Global Managerial Revolution ｜ 7⧸12⧸24
Episode Stats
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164.1462
Summary
Always and everywhere, power attempts to centralize. In his book On Power, the political theorist Bertrand De Jouvenel explained that power is always seeking to erode barriers to the process of centralization. In the 1940s, James Burnham introduced the idea of the managerial revolution, which had radically altered the modern state.
Transcript
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Always and everywhere, power attempts to centralize.
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In his book On Power, the political theorist Bertrand DeJuvenel explained that power is
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always seeking to erode barriers to the process of centralization.
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In its most organic construction, civilization is formed out of overlapping spheres of social
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Man is a political animal, after all, and none of us exist in complete isolation.
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But instead find ourselves bound into a web of social dependencies and obligation.
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The family, church, tribe, guild, and fraternity each make demands and provide for the needs
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This network of voluntary and involuntary associations grants us identity and meaning while also providing
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us with a community within which we can practice virtue.
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Our dependency on and duty to these spheres sustains and defines us, but they also serve
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Those with very specific familial, religious, and regional identities and obligations are far
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less likely to follow the dictates of centralized authority.
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Power must collapse these opposing spheres of authority if it's to achieve its goals.
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Regional authorities, organic identities, and natural hierarchies are all barriers to the
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In the 1940s, James Burnham introduced the idea of the managerial revolution, which had
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The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and liberal democracies like the United States may have significant
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differences, but ultimately each of these states rested on a managerial structure.
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After the Industrial Revolution, the paradigm of mass production and mass consumption required
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Large bureaucratic structures were required to meet the logistical, technical, and social
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challenges of mass society, and those organizations required a new class of expert to operate them.
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These mass bureaucratic structures promised a miraculous degree of material abundance.
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By operating at scale, logistical mastery could generate an enormous degree of wealth through
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To reliably extract this degree of efficiency, the new class of experts would need to apply
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Just as the uniformity of cogs in a machine is necessary for the operation of an assembly line,
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the mass managerial bureaucracy requires universalization to scale the massification of human organization.
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In his book, Leviathan and its Enemies, the paleo-conservative political theorist Samuel
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Francis continued Burnham's critical work by outlining the process by which the managerial
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revolution dissolved the competing structures of bourgeois capitalism.
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While capital had already revolutionized many competing social spheres, managerialism required
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Always and everywhere, power seeks to centralize, and managerialism gains strength through centralization
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Cultural and moral particularity from competing spheres of social sovereignty hinder the uniform
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The individual worker who has a large family with many children may be unwilling to devote his
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The devout Christian may oppose commerce on the Sabbath of the practice of usury.
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The devout Muslim may require the observance of certain dietary restrictions.
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An individual whose family has lived in a region for generations may be unwilling to sacrifice
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the well-being of that particular community in the name of economic efficiency.
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Particular peoples with particular identities and ways of being are the enemy of universalized
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Francis observed that the managerial elite attempt to break down barriers to universal application
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Hedonistic and cosmopolitan identities are highly malleable, so the managerial elite desire
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a deracinated population that can be easily manipulated.
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By replacing dependency on morally and culturally particular structures like the family or church
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with a dependency on mass managerial structures like public education or the welfare state,
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the managerial class can gain power over individuals and separate them from other social spheres.
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Progressive secular humanism, or wokeness if you prefer, allies with the managerial revolution
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by disincentivizing the creation of opposing spheres of sovereignty.
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It stigmatizes family formation and traditional religion, labeling them as low status.
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Organic identities are replaced with more general and commodifiable identities, which can be consumed
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In the name of liberation, individuals are stripped of every duty and dependency, making them entirely
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Without the protection of competing social spheres, deracinated individuals are left defenseless
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against the state and corporations that demand total allegiance.
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In addition to outlining the cultural assimilation required by managerialism, Sam Francis predicted
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that its internal logic would compel it to pursue globalization.
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Managerial structures produce their abundance through large-scale organization, necessitating
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the continuous expansion of logistical networks.
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National boundaries are arbitrary barriers to the mass bureaucratic mindset, and once the
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managerial elite complete their revolution within their own borders, they naturally turn
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New markets mean access to new customers, natural resources, and laborers.
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Managerial regimes find it easier to coordinate with other managerial regimes of the same order,
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which is why the United States and the wider West have been obsessed with the spread of liberal
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George W. Bush and other conservatives have often been mocked for the idea that at the
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heart of every nation lies a liberal democracy yearning to be free.
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You know, a bunch of Washingtons and Jeffersons and Hamiltons just sitting in a cave somewhere
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But this is simply an extension of the universalism that the managerial revolution demands.
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Massified national organizations naturally seek to expand their power by becoming international
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The World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Health Forum,
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NATO, and several other international entities are all constantly seeking to add new nodes
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to the managerial network, creating a loose, globalized managerial order without any formal
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These organizations always emphasize the problem on an international scale.
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Global warming, pandemic response, and world overpopulation are all issues that are
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too large for any one nation to address on its own.
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By focusing on large and abstract issues, the managerial elite can locate their decision-making
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This makes it almost impossible for the citizens of that nation to hold real power accountable,
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even as they continue to participate in the democratic process.
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For the ever-expanding network of managerial bureaucracy to spread profitably into new regions,
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It's not enough for a culture to become uniform inside a nation, it must become uniform across
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The conversion of nations into liberal democracies assists in this process.
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Democratic elites must introduce mass media, bureaucratic organization, and therapeutic amelioration
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if they're to achieve the kind of social engineering that's required to maintain power under a system
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New democratic leaders in foreign countries thus benefit greatly from connecting their subjects
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to the global network of managers already established in the West.
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Mass media begins its work, and McDonald's, Starbucks, and Apple stores soon follow.
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The traditions and history of the nation are slowly worn away as a tide of foreign culture
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International organizations become major employers as well as cultural staples that grow in importance
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until they're so integral to the operation of the country that no one can imagine how they
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Managers and personnel flow over borders as naturally as the goods that those organizations
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The very idea that the people differ in any significant way from those of any other country
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No group has claim to any given nation because all nations are now part of the mass managerial
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The managerial elite develop international class interests because their interdependent networks
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make the nation itself an interchangeable unit.
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Managing a government is seen as no different from running an international corporation or
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All of these entities feature similar bureaucratic structures, and the managers have an easy time
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Just as it sought to homogenize culture inside its original borders, the global managerial order
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must break down the particularities of the nations to which it seeks to expand.
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This is why wokeness has gone international with movements like Black Lives Matter, gaining traction
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in countries like England or Ireland, where no history of racialized conflict exists.
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Starbucks is running ads about transgenderism in India for a reason, and it has everything
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to do with coffee consumption if you understand it properly.
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The United States is using gay rights as part of its justification to send billions of dollars
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Progressive secular humanism is the universal asset meant to dissolve all cultural particularities
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and turn the people of each nation into blank slates onto which managerial techniques can
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The good news for those of us who see the nation as the best social organization for human flourishing
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is that the current managerial order cannot last.
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We're not meant to lose our heritage, traditions, religions, and languages for a bureaucratic
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Like Soviet communism, managerial liberalism has made faulty assumptions about human nature that
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Late stage managerialism will eventually fall apart.
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The only question is whether Western nations will have leaders ready to guide their people
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