Elite rule within liberal democracies has been noted for many decades, with few analyses more insightful on this score than James Burnham's 1941 study, The Managerial Revolution (which influenced, among others, George Orwell as he was writing 1984). Burnham described this revolution as a different kind of realization of a Marxist vision: the propertied (aristocratic) class was in the process of being replaced by a new class who perceived that power lay no longer in static property but in the manipulation of ideas and production processes. The new "managerial elite" would maintain the appearance of what Burnham called "Parliamentary control," but power would be pooled in public and semipublic agencies and bureaus. The new ruling elite would govern a state-managed economy in which a nation's (and, eventually, the world's) wealth would necessarily flow through these agencies, enriching the managerial class. The simultaneous cry against the corruption of Washington, D.C. - surrounded by so many of the nation's wealthiest counties - and the lack of any national dedication among ostensibly American corporations was a reflection of a revolution from below against the "managerial elites" Burnham described. What is conventionally called a populist revolution is better described as a global antimanagerial revolution.
- Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed
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