Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154434 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-25
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 391 pages

Synopsis
Joshua Muravchik traces the fiery trajectory of socialism with sketches of dreamers and doers who developed the theory, led it to power and presided over its collapse.

Customer Reviews

PROPERTY IS GOOD, BUT PROPER COFFEE'S BETTER
Opposing socialism as I do, and advocating the property rights of the person, free market small state government, and individual liberty, I found this well-written and sympathetic book most enlightening. I have tried it on double-dyed socialists, who find it sobering. Stanford economist Professor Thomas Sowell remarks: `It is hard to find a book on the history of socialism that is either readable or accurate...[this] is both...It is a great read'. And as I find it hard to find a readable book on socialism itself, let alone its history, this book will do for both. (For the hardier soul I have added a few titles of further reading along these lines below. The one by Professor Sowell is quite easy going and more a backgrounder than a stance on socialism.)

The religious title of the book is indicative, the author states on page one line one: `Socialism was the faith in which I was raised.' It quotes Moses Hess, `A Communist Confession of Faith', 1846 - a prophet of little profit - fortelling `this heaven on earth'. Socialism is a faith, with its bibles, practised religiously, intended as a road from superstition to inevitable rational scientific enlightenment, final freedom from the chains of church dogma.

The author is of Russian Jewish background, not hostile in tone, baptised into his socialist birth-faith, but converted in his thirties. He is a kind critic, and all the more effective for that. The first chapter `Prologue: Changing Faiths', pages 3-6, forms a useful abstract of the book in three pages, but belies the detail and coherence of the whole. The skill of this author is in pulling together highly detailed and disparate insider accounts of real existent socialist entities and relating the truth to the propagandist picture we have been shown. He is no iconoclast, more a sort of political undertaker with printer's ink as embalming fluid. The epilogue on the Socialism of the Israeli kibbutz is an eye-opener, and all the more touching for the intimate details of the young mothers and children who suffered it. The tale of Tanzania is a sad chapter of hope poured down a gutter.

Let's face it. Reality is right-wing, property is progress. Entrepreneurism is good. Buying and selling benefits both parties, or they would not trade. Profit is proper, losses are Nature's way of saying, `Do something else'. People are not equal, you can't make them equal, and it is wrong to try. The Barking Bolshevik Club cannot see it because they do not want to - it's against their religion.

CONTENTS
Prologue: Changing Faiths
Section: BEGINNINGS
1. Conspiracy of Equals: Babeuf, blood and revolution, France
2. New Harmony: Owen, UK exports damp-squib socialism to USA, sorry guys
3. Scientific Socialism: Engels & co., all scientists they!
4. Theoretical wrangles: Bernstein doubts Marx, Lenin ahoy

Section: TRIUMPHS
5. Lenin seizes power and people die, Russia
6. Fascism: Mussolini - socialista fascisti, und Socialisten Realpolitik
7. Social Democracy: Atlee, UK
8. Ujamaa: Nyerere, Tanzania

Section: COLLAPSE
9. Unions: Gompers and Meany, USA - an eye-opener this chapter
10. Perestroika and Modernisation: Deng and Gorbachev, China/USSR
11. The Party of Business: Blair redefines social democracy, sends out the troops

Epilogue
Kibbutzim kebab, Israel

These chapters and headings sell the book short. There is far more drawing of connections between the topics than would be understood at a glance. The apparent lack of comment on China is only apparent. The index reveals dozens of references to grimness that was and is Chinese communism and its influence on the world events. The China-Tanzania link is particularly revealing, and explains why Tanzania, the great African `benign' socialist experiment shambled on for so long. I was shocked by so many of these chapters, but the chapter on the well-intentioned obtuseness of Tanzanian socialism left me open-mouthed: being colonised by the UK was ten times better than being colonised by interfering socialists from the world over. Skip the theoreticals in chapter 4 if you are in any type of hurry. The recipe for socialist crumble with propaganda custard seems to have been shared by so many amateur cooks the world round. After having poisoned so many the wonder is that it is still not universally regarded as toadstool pie and gravy today.

If this book is light anywhere it is in the economics, which it does not claim to cover. Further reading may be found in 1) `The Turning Point - Revitalizing the Soviet Economy', (1989) by Shmelev and Popov, two senior Soviet economists. The professionally detailed insider account of the slow death-in-life demise of Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Reckless industrialisation and - the clue is in the title - formation of the `Union of Soviet Socialist Republics', an entity of no less world-dominating intentions than Adolf Hitler, which took just one human lifetime (1917-1989) to buckle at the knees and collapse in the Soviet slums. 2) `Basic Economics', by Thomas Sowell. A sanity-enhancer. 3) `The Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A grim aperient. 4) `The Counter-Revolution of Science' by F.A. Hayek (especially part two). First part, a tough read. Genesis of positivism and scientism. Second part, historical analysis of the genesis of socialism and sociology. Comte, etc, easier reading.

The appendices of `Heaven on Earth' give the countries of the `high tide' of Socialism in 1985. (Forget not that even in 1989 socialists of all denominations were in denial about the global crises of their faith.) Just glancing down that 1985 list of 18 officially communist countries, the largest number the world had ever suffered, is faith-building today. In 2007 I make the communists to be just two little fish. Let us hope and pray that Cuba and North Korea are free soon. And Joshua Muravchik must have the last word - `socialism's epitaph turned out to be: If you build it, they will leave.', (p.6).