Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A strangely neglected work, January 28, 2001
I can not claim to be a terrific scholar of economics or history but this struck me as the most significant writing I have ever came across on (the title is precise) the "socialist phenomenon." The author is a world-class mathematician, with dozens of math books (in English) for sale. The preface to this work is by Solshenitsyn, who explains the reason a mathametician had to write it was that the Soviet's "maximum leaders" had killed all the sociologists and humanists who might otherwise have written it. It is a total condemnation based on world historical evidence of socialism. Not a cheery thesis: the author says tht socialism is the way of all the world except for a tiny window over less than 3 millennia in the West that opened to freedom, initiative, and science. My query is, why is such an extraordinary and valuable work out of print?
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing New Under The Sun, April 20, 2002
King Solomon would've agreed with the author, a Soviet-era Russian mathematician, in his contention that the impulse to seek utopia is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Examining pre-Christian communal societies, both actual ones (Pythagorians) and fictional (Plato's "Republic"), he found commonalities with many of the major heresies of Christianity. Of the latter, Schafrevich divided those of ancient and medaeval origin from those occurring from the time of the Reformation onward. The earlier hereises, such as the Cathars, Paulicians, and Bogomils)generally had in common ascetism gnostic traits, and looked to the next world for their Paradise, regardless of their living arrangements here on Earth.
The author plausibly argues for a continuous strand of existence for the core heretical doctrines, by making a case for the earliest groups having passed their beliefs on to the latter ones. (The Bogomil-Albagensian connection is well established, in this regard.) Along with Plato, these groups advocated the communality of women as the major departure from their asceticism. (The family unit arguably is the basis of private property; groups having all in common, including wives and children, have no basis for the accumulation of inhereted wealth.)
Later heresies tended to favor the bringing about of the Kingdom of God on Earth, now, by putting their beliefs into action. Noting the linkage between some modern Christian denominations and earlier medaeval heresies (groups sometimes mis-classified as "Protestant"), the author shows how the drive for Earthly Paradise gradually dispensed with God, until the movements became wholly socialist, as in Saint-Simonism.
The author describes the workings of actual socialist states throughout history. The prime examples given are Pharonic Egypt and the Inca. Of the latter, Schafrevich notes how eerily it resembled Thomas More's "Utopia" in several aspects, even though More wrote a generation before Pizarro. Of the Inca, the author says that they had the best examplye of an isolated, socialist state, and he notes that the social and intellectual life of the Inca resembled an anthill, not a Workers Paradise. Unlike some leading economists (von Mises), Schafrevich believes that socialism is workable, but that the result, if carried through to the fullest practical application, resembles the Incan anthill, where only one will matters, and human nature is so deformed that even a century later, Jesuits noted that the people posessed no independant will to action. (In this regard, he more nearly resembles Nobel Laureate Frederich von Hayek, who believed that socialism could practically exist, but that the result would be a grossly inefficient totalitarianism.)
Schafrevich concludes that Socialism/Communism is perhaps the greatest heresy, an attempt to have Man become Creator of His own Paradise on Earth. The hollowing out of the faith of many Protestant and other non-orthodox faiths leaves behing people who believe in doing works to bring about the Great Society, but they do so without reference to God. These people became the Dzerhezinskis of the Communist movement.
As a history of heretical theology, this book is outstanding. As a guide to the animating force that impels people to advance Socialism, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is unworkable and contradictory, it is peerless.
-Lloyd A. Conway
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely insightful, April 30, 2005
Might be a bit boring for the non-historian but extremely insightful. Worth reading if you want to understand history. Most of the facts in this book were new to me, and that is uncommon for a history book.
Shafarevich claims that socialism is the default condition of the human race. He proves that nearly every ancient regime was basically socialist: from Mesopotamia to China. The most socialistic out of them all was the Inca Empire. Nobody owned property, children were collectively raised, the government assigned where you lived, what clothes you wear, and what haircut you get. People worked constantly on collective farms until they died of hunger or disease. He describes socialist-religious cults that would terrorize medieval Europe by capturing states, imposing socialist rule, and massacring hundreds in every village. He shows amazing similarities between religion and socialism. Shafarevich explains that the only time when mankind has not lived under socialism was when principles such as individual rights and democracy were enforced, first in Greece, then England, then finally America: the closest man every got to capitalism.
--Ron Cogan, Upstate NY
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