Statement on the Death
of James Burnham
Nancy
and I have learned with deep sadness of the passing of James Burnham. Mr.
Burnham, the author of seminal works, like ``The Managerial Revolution'' and
``The Suicide of the West,'' and a senior editor of the National Review, was
one of those principally responsible for the great intellectual odyssey of our
century: the journey away from totalitarian statism
and towards the uplifting doctrines of freedom.
A
Trotskyist and Communist at an early age, Mr. Burnham
wrote of his rejection of communism in 1940: ``The basic reason for the break
was my conclusion Marxism was false and Marxist politics in practice lead not
to their alleged goal of democratic socialism, but to one or another form of
totalitarian despotism.'' Mr. Burnham later dismissed socialism as impossible
``of achievement or even of approximation,'' and spent the remaining decades of
his life as a skilled and fearless champion of human liberty.
For
all the fierceness of his convictions, Mr. Burnham was a man both kind and
gentle. He loved greatly his family, his friends, his
country -- life itself. We extend our sympathy to the Burnham family and join
them in mourning the death of a great American.