“If most people did indeed want peace, plenty, and freedom from all forms of exploitation and tyranny; and if (what is just as necessary, though less often remarked) they also knew the means whereby these were to be got; and if they were willing and courageous and strong and intelligent and self sacrificing enough to bring about those means to those ends; then no doubt the world would achieve a society organized in such a way as to realize peace, plenty, and freedom. But there is not any evidence at all from past or present history that all three (and all three would be required) of these conditions will be met. On the contrary, the evidence of the analogies from the past and the circumstances of the present is that people will act and wish and hope and decide in ways that will aid in the managerial revolution, in the carrying through of the social transition which will end in the consolidation of managerial society.”
— James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution (1941)