Monday, April 15, 2019

Review: 'Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism' by Joshua Muravchik

Via Billy

Stalin statue

Joshua Muravchik's definitive history Heaven on Earth was originally published in 2002 with the subtitle "The Rise and Fall of Socialism." In order to stay definitive, it is now being updated and rereleased, with a third act added on to the historical drama of socialism in the form of its 21st century "Afterlife."

Socialism, Muravchik writes, "was the faith in which I was raised." And while he doesn't belabor the personal, his status as an apostate from a long period as an involved socialist lends the entire project a bit of authority and a lot of fluency. He knows his stuff from the inside out, and he wants to understand and analyze, not merely attack, this tradition.

To quote another onetime socialist, George Orwell wrote in 1948 that:

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