Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

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Just a few generations ago, socialism was regarded as the wave of the future by millions of "enlightened" thinkers across the world; the promise of socialism motivated hard-line Marxists, Western-educated men of the Third World who fought for political independence, and Americans and Europeans repelled by the inequalities of capitalism. Now, of course, socialism is widely discredited; even former Communists in Eastern Europe proclaim allegiance to a market economy. This engrossing history of various socialist movements is told through portraits of the leaders who provided the intellectual and political support for those movements. With eloquence, skepticism, and even sympathy, Muravchik examines the careers of figures as varied as Friedrich Engels, Clement Atlee, and Julius Nyerere. Although each had a somewhat different interpretation of socialism, they all shared the fatal assumption that they could use the coercive power of the state to "improve" human nature. This is an important work and an object lesson showing great harm is frequently done by those with the purest motives. Jay Freeman
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Product Description

Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in "science." Indeed, no religion ever spread so far so fast. Yet while socialism had established itself as a fact of life by the beginning of the 20th century, it did not create societies of abundance or give birth to "the New Man." Each failure inspired new searches for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, Communism, Fascism, Third World socialism. None worked, and some exacted staggering human tolls. Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes.

In Heaven on Earth, Joshua Muravchik traces this fiery trajectory through sketches of the thinkers and leaders who developed the theory, led it to power, and presided over its collapse. We see such dreamers and doers as the French revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf, whose "Conspiracy of Equals" were the first to try to outlaw private property; Robert Owen, who hoped to plant a model socialist utopia in the United States; Friedrich Engels, who created the cult of Karl Marx and "scientific" socialism; Benito Mussolini, self proclaimed socialist heretic and inventor of Fascism; Clement Attlee, who rejected the fanatics and set out to build socialism democratically in Britain; Julius Nyerere, who merged social democracy and communism in the hope of making Tanzania a model for the developing world; and Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping and Tony Blair, who became socialism's inadvertent undertakers.

Muravchik's accomplishment in Heaven on Earth is to tell 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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 391 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (April 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893554457
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554450
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #769,489 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

108 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Socialism with a human face, June 7, 2002

By	Craig Kennedy (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

188 of 205 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Review By Thomas Sowell, December 5, 2002

By A Customer

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 record of socialism among human beings on earth shows that this is not the place.

Worst of all, the concentration of political power necessary to try to reduce economic inequalities has allowed tyrants like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to impose their notions and caprices on millions of others -- draining them economically or slaughtering them en masse or exploiting them sexually.

Mao Zedong, for example, had harems of young girls -- and occasionally boys -- for his pleasure in various parts of China.

There is no point blaming the tragedies of socialism on the flaws or corruption of particular leaders. Any system which allows some people to exercise unbridled power over other people is an open invitation to abuse, whether that system is called slavery or socialism or something else.

Socialism has long sought to create a heaven on earth but an even older philosophy pointed out that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

48 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Socialism is not Dead -- but it should be., June 3, 2002

By	Benjamin G. Pratt "prattb" (Wichita, KS USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Readers finding "Heaven on Earth" interesting will benefit as well from reading Brink Lindsey's "Against the Dead Hand". Reading through some of the dissenters in the resulting reviews of this book, it is quite clear that we still don't understand as a people the basic truths of a free and civil society. That those dissenters can read a book like this and counter with false examples like Denmark is more a fault of the author than the dissenters.

There is much careless use of facts and terms. A more careful review of the facts will show that socialism is not sustainable -- it does not work. Period. Every experiment has failed, every treatise has been decisively refuted at its logical roots. And places where we continue to dabble - education, medicine, etc. -- in our "mixed" economy, are unmitigated disasters.

It comes down to this (with great respect to Lawrence Reed), and this book provides great edifying examples -- but could do a better job of distilling the principles:

(1) Free people are not equal -- and equal people are not free. I'm not referring to equality before the law -- I'm talking about equalness in income and material wealth. We shouldn't get hung up about differences in wealth as result of people being themselves. If it's a result of artificial political barriers then we should do what we can to get rid of them -- but don't try to place fundamentally unequal people into a homogenous heap -- it won't work and you'll destroy everything in trying. Read up on the histories of Stalin, Khmer Rouge, etc.

(2) What belongs to you, you take care of; what belongs to no one or everyong tends to fall into disrepair. This is the magic of private property -- and a big reason why socialism fails.

(3) If you encourage something you get more of it; if you discourage something you get less of it. We are creatures of incentives and disincentives. What to break up families? Offer a bigger welfare check if the father splits. Want to get less work? Impose such high tax penalties on it that people decide it's not worth the effort... Want to discourage investment? How about a high capital gains tax?

(4) Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

(5) Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes away from somebody, and a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got. This bears some serious reflection for those who think, "ya but we can be different this time..."

To further quote Mr. Reed: "Liberty isn't just a luxury or a nice idea. It's not just a defensible idea or a happy circumstance. It's what makes just about everything else happen. Without it, life is a bore at best. At worst, there is no life at all."

George Washington said, "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it can be a dangerous servant or a fearful master." This is not some radical, ideological, anti-government set of ideals here, folks... these are just some of the hard-earned facts you should have written on your soul. Many -- many -- have given their lives before you to establish these truths.

Sadly, we haven't learned very well -- and there are perhaps more eloquent authors out there -- Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" comes to mind. Still, "Heaven on Earth" is worth your time.