Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik (PDF)

Description

Socialism was man’s most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in “science.” Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to “the New Man” inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Arab socialism, African socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment, socialism imploded in a fin de siècle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes. It was an astonishing denouement but what followed was no less astonishing. After the hiatus of a couple of decades, new voices were raised, as if innocent of all that had come before, proposing to try it all over again. Joshua Muravchik traces the pursuit of this phantasm, presenting sketches of the thinkers and leaders who developed the theory, led it to power, and presided over its collapse, as well as those who are trying to revive it today. Heaven on Earth is a story filled with character and event while at the same time giving us an epic chronicle of a movement that tried to turn the world upside down―and for a time succeeded.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “This is contemporary history at its best.” ―Choice “An illuminating history that traces the great and not-so-great individuals who made socialism happen.” ―Wall Street Journal “It is hard to find a book on the history of socialism that is either readable or accurate, so it is especially remarkable to find one that is both…. It is a great read.” ―Thomas Sowell About the Author Joshua Muravchik is the author of hundreds of articles appearing in major U.S. newspapers and intellectual magazines, and eleven books including Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel; Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny; The Imperative of American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism; and Trailblazers of the Arab Spring: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is an updated 2002 book with a new chapter, “Epilogue: Rising from the Ashes.” The latter recounts the current state of things—Venezuela, the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, the rise of far left congresswomen and the shifting ideological identifications of democrat voters.The author is a sometime socialist who learned from Clemenceau’s observation that a 20 year-old who is not a socialist has no heart and a 40 year-old who remains a socialist has no brain. Sometimes attributed to Churchill, the comment indicates the sine-wave nature of the phenomenon, one that inverts the young Hegelian/Marxist take on the sweep of history. Where Marx saw communism as inevitable, critics see socialism and communism’s ultimate failure as inevitable, given the fact that they are not aligned with human nature and, hence, require coercion for their functioning. In lieu of heaven on earth they offer us a staggering death toll. Left-leaning intellectuals often respond that there is no such thing as human nature, but the fact that there is is one of the principal lessons learned when socialist experiments are attempted. The principal example here of that phenomenon is the experience of those on Israeli kibbutzim. The bottom line is that agriculture (necessary for survival) is not a lucrative enterprise. At the same time, those often drawn to utopian schemes are gifted intellectuals. They want more than subsistence wages and, as humans, they bristle at the behavior of freeriders. Hence, accommodations are made—subsidiary enterprises, wage differentials, and so on. Ultimately a sojourn on a kibbutz is more like a spiritual retreat than an ultimate way of life.This corresponds with another key conclusion. Sane and honest observers come to the conclusion that the private sector is a far greater generator of wealth than the state. Hence, those who desire a large number of “socialist” services, entitlements, and so on, must have the private sector to generate the resources to support those activities. Hence, we have hybrid economies in which the electorate receives some of the ‘free’ goods that they desire but their liberty is not taken from them and they are not taxed into the ground to receive them.The argument is historical/biographical. The author charts three courses of socialism: its beginnings, its triumphs and its collapse. Key individuals are selected to exemplify both the notion’s ideas, variants on those ideas and its supporters, from Babeuf in the French Revolution, Robert Owen in the 19th century, to Mussollini, Clement Attlee, Julius Nyerere, Samuel Gompers, Deng Xiaoping and Tony Blair.The biographical analysis is fascinating. Attlee’s socialism, e.g., was made palatable by the fact that he was conservative in every other aspect of his thought and experience. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of labor leaders like Gompers and George Meany (and in England Ernest Bevin). These men had great street smarts and were systematically suspicious of larger enterprises such as the state abusing the laboring men and women who were likely to prosper under a system of collective bargaining and the opportunity to strike rather than under some abstract utopian scheme. Gompers famously labeled the socialists “the men of isms and schisms” (p. 247), a group who saw the actual working people as a “tail to their political party kite” (p. 247). The Owen section is interesting because Marx famously claimed that his thought was “scientific”; hence, Owen’s “experiments” could be seen as following an actual scientific process. The problem is that the experiments failed and Owen had to keep bailing them out with his own money.Bottom line: a fascinating, detailed and interesting read, a book that all should read as we find ourselves among neosocialists who are often unaware of the history behind the movement that they believe might save use.

⭐The author tackles this vast topic by focusing on the key figures in the history of Socialism as a way to explain its ideas and results throughout modern history. He starts with the idealists who founded communes in the early nineteenth century. He explains how the good intentions of the ideology have simply never panned out wherever and whenever they were tried. Instead of learning from these failures, starry-eyed idealists keep making the same mistakes, expecting a different result, thus fulfilling Einstein’s definition of insanity. The evidence shows that communes virtually never lasted beyond three generations, with the rare exception of some religious organizations. The discussion on the gradual privatization of the Israeli kibbutz model was a good example. The author draws on his personal experience here as a former high-ranking socialist as well as from personal knowledge of the kibbutz project. One of the most interesting points of the book was the discussion on how the gradual evolution of the social safety net impacted socialist thinking, tending to moderate draconian demands for total government ownership and control of the economy. Sadly, that progression was cut short in Russia when Lenin introduced Communist totalitarianism. Another interesting part was the history of the American labor movement as effected by Samuel Gompers and George Meany. Gompers learned early on that non-working class socialist and communist radicals were trying to exploit the movement, often violently, so he banned all but workers as members and limited the goal of the movement to bargaining to improve working conditions. He decisively eschewed Socialism. Meany continued this sensible and successful strategy when he formed the AFL-CIO. The side lesson here is that it’s important for the success of an organization to have attainable goals and strict membership discipline. This book is very relevant today as Socialism is alive and well on the political left and in universities. The book describes how many third world leaders were indoctrinated at Western universities, only to see their ideas founder when put into practice – Julius Nyerere in Tanganyika for example. Perhaps academics simply can’t face the realities of selfish human nature. This book is really beautifully written and makes for fascinating reading.

⭐This was my first book on the exclusive topic of socialism since high school. I also had a capitalism vs communism class in high school too. The beginning of the book, explaining who predated Marx was interesting but a bit dry. The history of Engel and Marx followed by the efforts in the first half of the 20th Century was full of a lot of information, but again, dry. Once the author arrived at the current events, everything fell into place and completed a full circle. The part about the history of a Kibbutz was surprising to me. I knew what a Kibbutz was, but didn’t realize the foundation was the only successful socialist community… at least until the third generation of children were born and raised. Now 21st Century Kibbutzim (plural) are not the pioneering (socialist) community they were 70 years ago. They need private enterprise and capitalism to continue to function. I look now at the idea of Generation Three and see parallels to our current history since the 1950’s. I won’t go into details… you can reflect on what you see from the current generation of teens to 20 somethings still living at home, unmarried, playing video games, etc. I gave it 4 stars because it was a bit dry.

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