Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism

This book provides a one-stop history of socialist ideology from the French Revolution through the Blair government from the perspective of a self-described original red-diaper baby who has since rejected socialism. Although it is probably impossible to get an objective discussion of the intellectual history of socialism, this probably comes as close as anyone could get. If there were one flaw in the book, it would be the neglect of the Scandinavian experience with socialism, including its ultimate rejection by the voters in those countries (rejection? Yes. Ikea, Nokia, and Saab aren't state-owned, are they?) I originally saw it in a bookstore and was especially surprised by the chapter on Mussolini. Apparently, Benito grew up in a socialist household, rose through the ranks of the socialist party, and broke from them in the aftermath of WWI. His father - a member of the International - named him after four different famous socialists, read Marxist texts at the dinner table every night. Young Benito was a rising star in the Italian Socialist party, edited their magazine, and eventually became a party leader. On the outbreak of WWI, Benito had the same reaction as his hero, Lenin: they both saw that the workers in various countries rejected Marx's internationalist philosophy and rushed to arms and exclaimed, "the international is dead". Benito, however, began to develop a new variation on Marxism: he believed that stronger countries oppressed weaker countries like Italy in the same way they believe that capitalists oppress workers. He believed that the entire country must rise up against the stronger nations in order to allow the workers to rise up as predicted by Marxist dogma. He also saw how camaraderie in the army was the epitome of the class solidarity they sought, and decided to pursue a strong state based on a strong, army-like command structure. You know: Fascism. Throughout his life, he continued to admire the work of Lenin and Stalin, and the feeling appears to have been mutual until he tossed in with Hitler. The other chapters were also enlightening, but not as surprising. The failure of Owen utopianism is traced directly to Engels' appearance in his Church of Science. Engels and Marx are traced to their selected successor, Bernstein, and his observation that the Fabians' approach of reform was having the results that Marx claimed could only come about through revolution. This in turn led to a response by a young Russian named V.I. Lenin, bringing forth the theory of perpetual revolution, in which reform would be rejected and workers would be kept in a constant state of agitation. To see the outcome of that line of thought, I'd recommend the Black Book of Communism. There are also several chapters on the policies of Clements and the failure of the Socialist experiment in England, the experience of Socialism in Africa, and the fall of communism featuring Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev. However, I found the chapt

Huh? Oh, sorry, I was reading a previous review, and the thought struck me that someone has already uploaded his brain "unto" a computer database. Anyhow, this was a great read, coming from a red diaper baby, and it reminded me of Irving Kristol's comment that "socialism is what socialism does.", not what its adherents would wish it to be. Muravchik emphasizes the nobility of the collectivist intent, men opening their eyes at the dawn of the scientific/industrial revolution, and thinking all things possible. "We are as gods, so we might as well get good at it." wrote Stewart Brand in the fabled sixties, and the leftist dream has spiraled downward ever since. As Isaiah Berlin recently said, for the first time since 1789, the European left has no ongoing project. A previous reviewer scornfully opined that this book was for people "...who need to be reminded, yet again, that people prefer democracy to totalitarianism." Well, yes, that's obvious, the question at hand being why socialist regimes turn despotic with such depressing regularity. When you consider the battalions of Western intellectuals who took Potemkin tours of the Soviet Union in the Thirties and proclaimed it "the future that works", it appears that a lot of very smart people living on this planet missed that message. I liked Muravchik's comment in the introduction, that the epitaph for socialist regimes in the twentieth century should be "build it and they will leave."

The errors of the communal impulse are meticulously documented in Joshua Muravchik's sensational Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. I have seldom encountered a book that is such a perfect balance of entertainment and education as is Muravchik's. In a world where one can pay $25 for 200 pages of utter tripe, Heaven on Earth stands as a bargain and an ideal. It entertains as much as it educates. His compendium of the mayhem of that is socialism is also a testament to the necessity for historical analysis. He is similar to Anthony Beevor in the way his prose and style can create interest in a topic that one never wanted to study before. The author of this work made a clever decision, and it was to focus on many of the lesser known members of the cult of socialism. Less publicized figures like Gracchus Babeuf, Robert Owen, and Julius Nyerere are given chapter long treatments. Clement Atlee, Samuel Gompers, George Meany, and the Israeli kibbutzim are discussed in order to flesh out the overall picture of the political actualities behind the success or lack of success of the socialist movement. It makes for a surprisingly suspenseful read, as many of the facts, stories, and quotations contained it the book the reader may never have gazed upon before. The men who founded the movement known as socialism can best be described by a quote meant for Robert Owen which was, "He became a humanitarian, and lost his humanity." No better sentence can sum up the socialist mind and their 150 years of ruthless social engineering. Pass a cemetery and think of their legacy to the world. It is unfortunate that their bankrupt ideology remains politically viable in many locales today. Upon reading Heaven on Earth, the reader will realize that you can no more build a socialism which works than you can create a human being who will live forever.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export. Its economic disasters have afflicted virtually every industry. In its Communist version, it killed far more innocent civilians in peacetime than Hitler killed in his death camps during World War II. Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders. Many of the intelligentsia remain convinced that if only there had been better leaders -- people like themselves, for example -- it would all have worked out fine, according to plan. A remarkable new book makes the history of socialism come alive. Its title is "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism." Its author, Joshua Muravchik, is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a leading think tank in Washington. 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. The story told in "Heaven on Earth" is so dramatic and compelling that the author finds no need to gild the lily with rhetoric or hype. It is a great read. This history of socialism begins more than two centuries ago, at the time of the French Revolution, with the radical conspirator Babeuf, who wanted to carry the revolutionary ideas of the times even farther, to a communist society. It ends with current British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who brought the Labour Party back to power by dropping the core of its socialist agenda and putting distance between himself and previous Labour Party governments, whose socialist policies had so backfired that the party lost four consecutive national elections. In between, there are stories of small communal societies, such as that founded in the 19th century by Robert Owen, the man who coined the word "socialism," as well as stories of huge nations like China and the empire that was known as the Soviet Union. In all these very different societies around the world, the story of socialism has been a story of high hopes and bitter disappointments. Attempts to redistribute wealth repeatedly led to the redistribution of poverty. Attempts to free ordinary people from oppression repeatedly led to what Mikhail Gorbachev frankly called "servility" to new despots. How and why are spelled out with both facts and brilliant insights expressed in plain words. Human nature has been at the heart of the failures of socialism to produce the results it sought, even when socialist leaders were idealists like Julius Nyerere in Tanzania or Pandit Nehru in India. Nowhere have people been willing to work as well for the common good as they do for their own benefit. Perhaps in some other galaxy there are creatures who would, but the track

Heaven on Earth is a captivating intellectual history of the first rank. When I first heard about this book, I imagined 450 dense pages devoted to socialism's political splits, rivalries and intellectual schisms over the past two centuries. Not a very inviting prospect. The reality is much different. Josh Muravchik tells the story of the socialist idea and of the socialist movement(s) through a series of fascinating vignettes and brief biographies. Starting with the French revolutionary Babeuf and taking the story through the fall of the Soviet Union (and the troubled current state of the Israeli kibbutz movement), Muravchik uses this format to highlight the central philosophical and political issues addressed by the key figures in a particular historical setting. It is a very effective approach. The biographical portraits provide a very human dimension to his larger task of telling the story of socialism. By attaching political developments and ideas to the lives of real people, he also manages to create a real sense of drama in examining each historical period. Even though you know how the story will end, you become caught up in each personal narrative.The entire book is first rate, but several chapters are especially notable. The first portrait of Babeuf and his contemporaries give you a historical footing in the development of socialism as an economic and political ideal that few of us have. A later chapter on Clement Atlee and the British Labor Party in the post-World War II era does a great job of describing how this patrician figure became the champion of democratic socialism. However, my favorite segment is the one on the American labor movement that features Samuel Gompers and George Meany. Muravchik uses this chapter to explore the failure of socialism as a movement in the United States and he does it with considerable skill.One final aspect of the book is worth noting. Muravchik explains in the introduction that he was a third generation socialist who turned his political interests elsewhere in the 1970s. However, unlike many others who have migrated away from the Left, Muravchik is able to discuss socialism in a calm, analytical and, at times, understanding manner. This book is not a tirade against the evils of socialism, but rather a thoughtful explication of a flawed ideal and the failed and often dangerous political movements it spawned. Heaven on Earth is an intelligent and insightful book that is well worth reading by anyone who has an interest in modern politics and history.