Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Brief Encounters)

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 chapters on the anti-socialist and anti-communist philosophies of Samuel Gompers and George Meany, and the epilogue describing the history of the kibbutzim in Israel to be the most fascinating. Despite leading the labor movement, Gompers and Meany were both strongly anti-communist and insisted that the goal of the labor movement was to negotiate for workers so that they could earn their way into the middle class. That stands in stark contrast to the union movement today, in which they are hardly distinguishable from the socialist parties. The kibbutz experience was similarly fascinating: it seems to have been successful so long as the survival of Israel hung in the balance, but has since fallen apart as younger people felt the desire for something more than working their lives away at subsistence level while giving away all privacy. They discovered that capitalism yields both individual economic results as well as moral bonuses like individual rights and privacy.

Against the brain-washed and self-deluded Socialists in the story are some heroic -but nevertheless common- people. What's an authentic American, do you want to know? A true American is a man like George Meany. Thank God most Americans can recognize themselves in Meany, still in this age and time."To him, a plumber was a plumber, not a proletarian. A worker was a guy trying to squeeze the most he could out of his job and hoping to get a better one. And if he was something more than flesh and blood, as he assuredly was, it was not because he was an embodiment of historical processes, but rather a husband, father, worshiper, patriot, pianist, artist, baseball player." Gotta love common-sense like that.Mr. Muravchik explains in the epilogue the only case of a successful socialist community, the kibbutzim in Israel. Successful yes, but only for a generation or two. What happened? "[A debt crisis]. What was so devastating about all the borrowing [...] was that little of the money had been used as capital to boost the kibbutzim's earnings. Instead, it had been spent to raise the standard of living. The impulse to do this did not grow out of hedonism, but in the hopes of stemming the loss of members. By some point in the 1970s the majority of kibbutz-raised children were leaving." The children of the founders, being raised in this irrational pseudo-religion, were expected to be "the best kibbutzniks". It failed. It just goes against human nature. Decent humans want to be free. Amazing that Christians in the West should be looked down on by this crazy and dangerous God-haters as unscientific and irrational; well look at them!One of the kibbutzniks admitted: "People like me who started as socialists concluded that you can work hard and get nothing while others don't work hard. It's so unfair." And this simple deduction had to take a whole life-span to be learned! Well, doesn't it look like 2 plus 2 to you? And "Those who leave [the kibbutz] are often the most economically productive." Wow, that's some deep, deep, thinking.This book is about Socialism in action, not ideology, though it obviously gets explained while coursing the lives of those nutty fellows, the wealthy founders of this elitist ideology called Socialism. But it's a 100% history book, delving on the lives of the dudes, on what they preached (and this is not a metaphor) and what they lived, what they said to the crowds, and what they said among themselves. What a bunch of scoundrels, oh my.You can safely read this book, no matter what your prejudices may be. This is not a politically biased book, it is history, factual, with names, locations, dudes, and their doings. No refuting the facts. It covers the whole wide-world, in their main scenarios, the main characters of the farce, their stories, their origin and their outcome. It is history from the street level. There's more action here than in all Tom Cruise's movies, and nothing is fake.One of the most enriching reading experiences in my life. The colorless cover doesn't do it justice.

This is an excellent history of the rise and fall of socialism.If you want to understand why socialism is such a bad idea then read this book!One of the more interesting facts in this book is that the median age of allcommunes founded in the U.S. is 2 years. So the U.S. has not been a fertilebreeding ground for socialistic communities. Also very interesting , the last chapteron one of the Israeli Kibbutzim. It was an example among others of full blownsocialism, without all of the attendant problems of socialism in other countries, and|it even received congrats from Gorbachev at one point as a true example of socialism,However once it was formed, the third generation decided that they just didn't want anypart of it any more,and the kibbutz split up and became a collection of private individuals|each with their own land and interests. Fascinating. Once they built it they didn't want it.

Joshua Muravchik is an apostate, a former National chairman of the Young People's Socialist League (USA), both of his parents were committed socialists, his mother apparently deeply upset by the contents of this book. Muravchik however, is not the hectoring, shouty, pointy fingered type. His review ( at just 350 pages) of the history of socialist development from Babeuf to Blairism is incomplete, Sweden being the most obvious exclusion, but contains sufficient information on a range of socialist intellectuals and followers to be both precise and informative. His writing style is easy to follow, well paced and engaging. Even though an American writer, other than a chapter on the two most prominent anti-socialist union leaders in the US, his case studies run the usual gamut, Robert Owen, a man apparently so esteemed in the US, that John Quincy Adams on his first full day as president when to listen to him lecture; Marx and Engels, I came away with the feeling that Engels was something of an intellectual masochist; Eduard Bernstein, one of the fathers of social democracy; Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Deng and Gorbachev. A chapter on Mussolini and Fascism shows the development and indeed seriousness with which Mussolini was taken at this period. It is interesting to note that his father corresponded with Lenin.However, the most interesting chapters for me were on Clement Atlee, he was described as in every way a conservative except in his socialism. It is also interesting to note that despite his anti-war beliefs, he discovered that his socialist philosophy had not nullified his patriotism which he called 'the natural emotion of every true Briton'. He also said that 'it was not until the Great War that I fully grasped the strength of the ties that bind men to the land of their birth'. It is of course the conflict between international socialism and patriotic nationalism, both within and between countries that so many post WW1 conflicts have sat. It was not socialism that enabled Stalin to galvanise the Soviet Union into it's resistance to Hitler, but semi-theocratic nationalism.The Chapter on Julius Nyrere in Tanzania is again full of interest because I knew so little about it, and it summed up very well the disparity between the socialist sentiment and it's inability to deliver standards of western living that the majority, even in avowedly theocratic countries aspire to.But the most interesting chapter for me was the epilogue, which deals with the creation and decline of the Kibbutz system. A noble if limited experiment in some people's eyes, and one almost entirely dependant on a modernist state to protect and support it. The breakdown seems to have begun with the education and dormitory sleeping arrangements for children, many of whom were separated from their parents. Mothers particularly disliked the distress this sometimes caused and took their children back home. The additional space then required in their houses, then caused the buildings to be extended, made them more remote from communal living and gave them an enhanced pride in their personal surroundings, which they then wished to acquire and develop further. It is a fascinating examination of the battle between the communal and personal space. It is also similar to the communal living arrangements introduced at Magnitogorsk when it was being constructed. Workers were housed in open dormitories, but immediately looked to create private space. Some leaving altogether to build private mud and wood dwellings they could occupy privately.A major thrust and a commonplace of discussions about socialism is the denial of its theocratic nature but the congruence with that fact. Eric Hoffer describes the need to believe in his book 'True Believer', and Muravchik illustrates it to good effect. In its frequent obsessions and schisms socialism reminds me of Millerism, the mid 19th century religious cult in America that once again prophesied the second coming and the end of time. It attracted a huge following, many people gave up everything to wait for salvation. Even when it failed to occur (again and again and again), it did not stop belief which merely morphed into other variants including the Seventh Day Adventists. It was known as the Great Disappointment. The fact that Marx tried to create a 'scientific' cause and effect in an effort to deny utopianism, does not of course make the argument persuasive.There were and are many noble minded advocates of socialism, but like anything life in dealing with what Isiah Berlin called the crooked timber of humanity it is not a panacea or even from my perspective the majority of one in the everyday effort to support and maintain ever changing societies.A good book from which I gained a lot. Recommended

A very interesting history of the rise and fall of socialism. Easy and fluent to read, would have been a 5 stars if there had been a bit deeper analysis of the reasons behind the fall of the regimes...