James Burnham

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

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.