Power always seeks to be centralized.
In his book On Power, political theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel explains that power is always trying to break down the barriers of centralization. Civilization, in its most organic structure, is formed by overlapping spheres of social sovereignty. Humans are political animals, and no one exists in complete isolation, but rather we are bound by a web of social dependencies and obligations. Families, churches, tribes, guilds, and fraternities each make demands on and satisfy the needs of their members.
Particular peoples with particular identities and ways of life are the enemies of universalized bureaucratic control.
This network of voluntary and involuntary ties gives us identity and meaning, while also providing the community within which we can practice virtue. Dependencies and obligations to these spheres support and define us, but they also act as barriers to the centralization of power. People with very specific familial, religious, and regional identities and obligations are much less likely to follow the commands of centralized authority. Power needs to collapse these competing power spheres to achieve its goals. Local authorities, organic identities, and natural hierarchies are all barriers to the centralization of power.
Tackling big challenges
In the 1940s, James Burnham wrote,Management Revolution” fundamentally changed the modern state. There may be significant differences between Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and liberal democracies like the United States, but ultimately, all of these states were based on administrative structures.
After the Industrial Revolution, the paradigm of mass production and mass consumption necessitated a shift in social organization: large-scale bureaucracies were needed to meet the logistical, technological, and social challenges of mass society, and new classes of professionals were needed to run those organizations.
These mass bureaucracies promised phenomenal levels of material abundance. Operating on a large scale, mastery of logistics would generate enormous wealth through efficiency. To ensure this level of efficiency, a new class of experts would need to apply a standardized set of management techniques. Just as uniformity of gears in a machine is necessary for an assembly line to operate, mass management bureaucracies require universalization to expand the mass reach of human organization.
His book “Leviathan and His EnemiesIn The 1920s, Paleoconservative theorist Samuel Francis continued Burnham’s critical work by outlining the process by which the managerial revolution would dismantle the competing structures of bourgeois capitalism: capital had already revolutionized many competing spheres of society, but managerialism demanded their complete abolition.
Power in all times and in all places tends to centralize, and managerialism gains strength through centralization by mass bureaucratic social organizations.Cultural and moral particularities from competing spheres of social sovereignty prevent the uniform application of managerial techniques.
A worker with a large family with many children may be unwilling to devote his or her life to a corporation. A devout Christian may object to the practices of trading on the Sabbath or usury. A devout Muslim may demand observance of certain dietary restrictions. An individual whose family has lived in an area for generations may be unwilling to sacrifice the well-being of that particular community in the name of economic efficiency. Certain peoples with particular identities and ways of life are the enemies of universalized bureaucratic control.
From community to dependency
Francis observed that the controlling elite seeks to break down the barriers of universal application by homogenizing culture. Hedonistic and cosmopolitan identities are highly flexible, so the controlling elite desire a rootless population that can be easily manipulated. By replacing reliance on morally and culturally specific structures such as the family and the church with reliance on mass control structures such as public education and the welfare state, the controlling class can gain power over individuals and separate them from the rest of society.
By focusing on abstract issues, managerial elites are able to center decision-making far away from the state, making it nearly impossible to hold those in power to account.
Progressive secular humanism, or wokeism, allies itself with the managerial revolution by preventing the creation of competing sovereign spheres. Family formation and traditional religion are stigmatized and labeled as of low status. Organic identities are replaced with more generic, commodifiable identities that are consumed and discarded. In the name of liberation, individuals are stripped of all natural obligations and dependencies and made totally dependent on managerial systems. Without the protection of competing social spheres, uprooted individuals are left defenseless against states and corporations that demand total loyalty.
In addition to outlining managerialism’s necessary cultural assimilation, Samuel Francis predicted that its internal logic would compel it to pursue globalization. Managerial structures generate wealth through large-scale organizations and require the continuous expansion of logistics networks. National borders are arbitrary barriers to the mindset of mass bureaucrats, and once managerial elites have completed their revolution at home, they naturally turn their attention outward. New markets mean access to new consumers, natural resources, and workers, but the revolution is never purely economic.
The United States and other Western countries have insisted on spreading liberal democracy because they believe it is easier for management systems to coordinate with other management systems of the same order.
George W. Bush and other conservatives have often been ridiculed for the idea that at the heart of every nation is a liberal democracy that aspires to freedom, but this is simply an extension of the universalism that the managerial revolution demands. Massified national organizations naturally seek to expand their power by becoming international organizations. The World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum, NATO, and several other international organizations are constantly seeking to add new nodes to their managerial networks, creating a loose global managerial order without a formal name.
These organizations always emphasize problems of international scale: global warming, responding to pandemics, and world overpopulation, all of which are too big for any one country to tackle alone. Focusing on large, abstract problems allows managerial elites to center decision-making outside the country. This makes it nearly impossible for citizens to hold those in power accountable, even if they continue to participate in the democratic process.
Mac culture trumps tradition
For an ever-expanding network of administrative bureaucracies to spread profitably into new geographies, they need to successfully homogenize cultures: it is not enough for culture to be uniform within a country, it must be uniform across the entire international network.
Transforming a nation into a liberal democracy facilitates this process: democratic elites need to install mass media, bureaucratic structures, and therapeutic reforms to achieve the social engineering necessary to maintain power under a system of popular sovereignty.
New democratic leaders abroad gain greatly by linking their citizens to the global networks of administrators already established by the West: the mass media springs into action, and McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Apple stores soon follow.
The good news for those who see the state as the best social institution for human flourishing is that the current administrative order will not last.
As the tide of foreign culture rolls in, a nation’s traditions and history slowly disappear. International organizations become major employers and cultural centers, growing in importance until they become so essential to the running of the country that no one can imagine how they could get by without them. Administrators and employees flow across borders as naturally as the goods they produce.
The very idea that a nation is in any significant way different from the nations of other nations gradually disappears. No group can lay claim to a particular nation, since all nations are now part of a mass-managerial network. Managerial elites develop international class interests, as interdependent networks make nations themselves replaceable units.
Managing a government is perceived to be no different from running an international corporation or a non-governmental organization: all of these organizations feature similar bureaucratic structures, and it is easy for managers to move between organizations.
Humans are not widgets
A global administrative order must overcome the particularities of the nations it seeks to expand, just as it has attempted to homogenize cultures within its original borders.
This is why wokeness has spread internationally, why movements like Black Lives Matter are gaining momentum in countries like the UK and Ireland that have no history of racist conflict. Starbucks is running transgender ads in India for a reason, which, properly understood, has everything to do with coffee consumption. The US is using gay rights as part of the justification for sending billions of dollars in military aid to both Ukraine and Israel.
Progressive secular humanism is a universal acid designed to dissolve all cultural particularities and turn the peoples of each nation into blank slates onto which management techniques can be freely applied.
The good news for those who believe that the state is the best social organization for human flourishing is that the current administrative order will not last. Human beings are not interchangeable parts. We should not lose our heritage, traditions, religion, and language because of a bureaucratic Tower of Babel.
Like Soviet Communism, managerial liberalism makes false assumptions about human nature that will doom it. Late managerialism will eventually collapse. The question is whether the West has leaders ready to lead their peoples to a brighter future.
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a speech delivered at the Fourth Annual Conference on National Conservatism in Washington, DC on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.
