Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism

"... How could an idea that so consistently showed itself to be incongruent with human nature have spread faster and further than any other belief system ever devised? And how did an idea calling upon so many humane sentiments lend its name to the cruelest regimes in human history?" (Joshua Muravchik, pp. 338 & 339)

Joshua Muravchik presents us in the American "experiment" ample reason to do what we can to avoid the socialist siren. He presents the story of significant socialist experiments in world history (including their unhappy consequences) in a masterful narrative. Particularly interesting is his account of Julius Nyerere's Tanzania and the Kibbutz movement in Israel.

Tagging off of the opening quote, one more question about socialism penetrates our contemporary American political scene:

When socialism is the most failed "experiment" in history, why is its siren successful in casting her spell over our elite populous today? It appears our elite stand ready to butter themselves up and rush to be devoured by the Siren herself ... dragging the rest of us with them.

This book is a must read for us in this election year. For while our three democratic candidates promise the world to include the moon and stars, we forget that only the Creator of that earth, moon, and those stars is the only one smart enough to provide according to the intermeshed intricacies of our deepest human needs. In other words Government makes a pretty pathetic god ... but quite a powerful devil. Yet, the architects of Socialism strove exactly to replace God ... and in the end became the devil incarnate.

"The biblical account of Adam and Eve's fall explained the hardships of life. It also portrayed mankind's capacity for evil as well as good, suggesting that we might ameliorate the hardship by cultivating our better natures. As Harrington's bold promise suggests, socialism made things easier. Not only did it vow to deliver the goods in this world rather than the next, but it asked little in return. At the most, you had to support the revolution. At the least, you had to do nothing, since ineluctable historical forces would bring about socialism anyway. In either case you did not have to worship or obey. You did not have to make sacrifices or give charity. You did not have to confess or repent or encounter that tragic sense of life that is the lot of those who embrace a nonsecular religion. No doubt, many or most of those drawn to socialism felt some sense of humane idealism, but its demands were deflected outward onto society as a whole. If this is what made the religion of socialism so attractive, it also explains what made it so destructive" (Muravchik, p. 343).