Posted on 08/26/2025 4:57:06 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
James Burnham began his intellectual odyssey as a disciple of Leon Trotsky, but he became disillusioned with Marxism in the late 1930s. The Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 especially drew Burnham’s ire. Trotsky rationalized the invasion using Marxist ideology: Soviet socialism was spreading; therefore, it must be good. Burnham disagreed, arguing that the invasion was simply Soviet imperialism — a confiscation of land by Stalin. After seven years as one of its leading American thinkers, Burnham left the Marxist movement.
Burnham’s experiences with Marxism scarred him. He began to recognize that “only by renouncing all ideology can we begin to see the world and man.” Burnham now believed that ideologies attempt to explain reality in accordance with their principles, but reality is messier and more complex than ideology suggests. Ideologies lead people to distort reality — to misinterpret the facts — to ensure that everything conforms to ideology. Burnham insisted that we must see things the way they really are. Only then can we improve society.
Burnham presents his first critique of ideology in the The Managerial Revolution (1941), a classic in economics that predicts the rise of a new powerful caste composed of bureaucrats, corporate managers, and technocrats. In the book, he calls ideologies “the expression of hopes, wishes, and fears” of societies. He gives the examples of Marxism, the doctrines of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and Nazi racial doctrines. He compares them to religious values, arguing that may they serve some social purpose, but they can never successfully guide human conduct.
Burnham continued some of these themes in The Machiavellians (1943), a book about how the ruling classes achieve, maintain, and exercise power. It promotes a pragmatic approach to politics by contending that values and ideals by themselves cannot always be followed. Burnham wrote...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Socialism proves PT Barnum was correct.
People here are doing the same thing, using an ideology to frame the world and if the facts don’t fit, they deny them.
Bookmark
Yes, ideology can cause one to be blind to reality and try to force every problem into an ideological framework.
But should we approach every problem or decision as a tabula rasa? If we look at the history of socialism, we would say it does not work. But isn’t applying that conclusion to a new situation also a form of ideology? Should we not apply our deeply held values to a situation because those values could be a form of ideology?
Bkmk
PT Barnum was a standup guy, not a con artist or unscrupulous type, is my understanding.
The 1930s saw a lot of people turn to Communism as the way forward, people who should have known better probably. But to their credit they saw the horrors of Socialism, Collectivism, whatever you call it. Always ends up in a pile of skulls.
One disillusioned physicist at WWII Los Alamos (that had their share of left wingers) noted that the most rabid proponents always seemed to be run by wealthy incompetents. See that a lot.
Folks,
Conservatism (note the ism) is an ideology for many. It is not always them, the other guys.
That is why I post the following. Proper conservatism is a way of thinking, not a particular position on an issue.
https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/
Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.
Thanks for pointing this thread.
May I add.
/
both the Russian and Chinese Communist parties
never would have come to power in those 2 countries
with out
the Marxists in the United States help.
They were here then
and their commie spawn are still in our government.
They are on the cusp of handing our country and the world to the CCP.
This is the history our public schools made sure we never heard.
Push this out to everyone.
terrorists and multinational criminal organizations,,
EPISODE 360: THE TRUE HISTORY OF ANTIFA - PT. 1 Run Time 24m 2s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rfN3M7sE75U
EPISODE 361: THE TRUE HISTORY OF ANTIFA - PT. 2 Run Time 24m 10 s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rezL74LIVp4
+
EPISODE 351: THE CHINA FILES - PT 1 WARLORDS OF THE REVOLUTION
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YMzuKdDTs
Runtime 24m 23s
/
EPISODE 352: THE CHINA FILES P2
CHAOS UNDER HEAVEN
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3zNdoVhpUwk
Runtime 24m 44s
/
EPISODE 353: THE CHINA FILES PT. 3
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4BL7mUv52mc
Runtime 24m 18s
/
EPISODE 354: THE CHINA FILES PT. 4
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uCrICuLPY3g
Runtime 24m 33s
/
THE CHINA FILES PT. 5
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VPcN4fIvwUE
Runtime 48m 6 s
EPISODE 444: THE CHINA FILES PT. 6
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sN2eFPdTxKw
Runtime 23m 5 s
/
EPISODE 468: CHINA FILES
- CCP POLICE ON US SOIL
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WzmRA9VM0K4
Runtime 22m 58s
/\ \\ further data of infiltration https://archive.org/details/americasretreatfromvictory_2402_librivox \/ Americas Retreat from Victory by Joseph McCarthy https://archive.org/details/americasretreatfromvictory_2402_librivox God bless the Lǎo Bǎi Xìng,
for later
Agree and many die because of it.
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