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Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism Hardcover – April 25, 2002

by Joshua Muravchik (Author)

26 ratings

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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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Hardcover: 391 pages
Publisher: Encounter Books (April 25, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1893554457
ISBN-13: 978-1893554450
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.6 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 26 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #205 in Radical Political Thought
- #501 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #9777 in World History (Books)

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26 customer reviews

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Harmonious

Socialism exhibits the same trappings and behavior as organized religions

December 27, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

My copy of this book is sturdily bound and the lettering big enough. Mr Muravchik systematically exposes the incompatibility of Socialism with the current spiritual state of humankind. Socialism worked best when coupled with faith. At the end of the book the author makes the case why Socialism should be considered a secular religion. Great book.

7 people found this helpful

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Bernard Chapin

I wish everyone would read this.

June 5, 2004

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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.

18 people found this helpful

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Rodger Hammerstein

Excellent Book

February 18, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Excellent history of Socialism

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Jeffrey L. Armbruster

A superb history of socialism

October 10, 2005

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This is a superb chronicle of the history of socialism. The author does not mistake socialism for totalitarianism. Historical socialism is the religious belief that if you steal property from every individual and hand it to the state (who defines the state?), people will magically become better human beings -- all will be egalitarian, err equal.

Socialism is state religion forced on the individual by its believers. Simple. Stealing any form of property from those who earn to hand it out to those who did not is pure theft. Look what has happened in China when the communist priests (The Party) finally allowed capitalism (ownership and merit) into China. Marx is wrong.

Socialism should be treated like all religions, no one has the right to impose their religious beliefs on another adult.

"Heaven on Earth" proves it.

16 people found this helpful

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Jeffrey Morseburg

The God That Failed...

October 1, 2004

Format: Hardcover

Not so long ago, millions of people thought they saw the future in the secular religion of socialism. With its claims of being a "scientific" was of organizing the world's political and economic systems, socialism attracted enlightened "progressives" who saw it as the answer to the world's ills. Repelled by the crassness of mass-market capitalism, weary of the tyranny of the boom and bust business cycle and seeking relief for a post-colonial third world, the educated elite adopted different forms of socialism as the way to bring about a paradise on earth. In "Heaven and Earth" Joshua Muravchik brings a storyteller's gifts to explain how this secular form of religion swept the globe faster than Christianity or Islam. Although the topic is portentous and weighty, the author has produced a very readable book, which depends on a series of vignettes - profiles of the men who gave socialism it's intellectual framework and then tried to make it a workable system. Muravchik begins with the origins of the left in the French Revolutionary era and the ideas of the radical egalitarian Gracchus Babeuf, describes the utopian socialism of 19th century radicals, explains the intellectual developments of Marx and Engels and then reveals the path that took us to the hellish world of the 20th Century Communist regimes. The author grew up as a third-generation socialist and his background as a "red diaper" has given him insights into radical socialism's appeal that others may not have. He describes the rise of Clement Atlee, the labor movement and the development of social democracy with a sympathetic but critical eye. While he clearly understands the appeal of socialism - which as recently as the 1970's was the form of government for sixty percent of the world's nations - Muravchik explains its fatal contradictions. As a former socialist be has embraced market capitalism as an imperfect but better superior answer and like millions of others, he has rejected the idea that human nature can be overcome and virtue enforced by the heavy hand of the state.

12 people found this helpful

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