Book Report: Heaven on Earth by Joshua Muravchik . For more great content go to http://lessonsforus.com/

1. Heaven on Earth
The Rise and Fall of Socialism
by Joshua Muravchik
David L. Johnson, Ph.D.
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2. About the Author
Joshua Muravchik, Ph.D. Foreign Policy
Institute Fellow, Johns Hopkins
University
• Three generations of his family, including
himself, embraced socialism as their religion
• Grandfather turned away from Judaism and
embraced socialism in high school in Kiev.
• Grandparent immigrated to U.S. in 1905
• Joshua was a member of the Socialistic
Party and leader of the Young People's
Socialistic.
• Recognized bankruptcy of socialism in his
30s and drifted back to Judaism
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3. Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Babeuf Plots a Revolution
 Owen Conducts an Experiment
 Engel Interprets an Oracle
 Bernstein Develops Doubts
 Lenin Seizes Power
 Mussolini Becomes a Heretic
 Attlee Takes the Slow Road
 Nyerere Forges a Synthesis
 Gompers and Meany Hear a Different Drummer
 Deng and Gorbachev Repeal Communism
 Blair Redefines Social Democracy
 Summary
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4. Introduction
Socialism
 Most powerful religion on earth
 Spread to 60% of world within 150 years
 Born during French Revolution
 Anti-religious, collectivize property
 Robert Owens built churchlike “halls of science”
 Sermons at Sunday services.
 Marx and Engels provided “religious texts”
 Man's history, cause of man’s sorrows, vision of redemptive future
 Lenin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy
 Pinnacle in 1970s
 Decline
 Dismal economic performance; made things worse
 Failure to spread to U.S.
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5. Babeuf Plots a Revolution
 French Revolution
 Francois-Noel Babeuf, “Gracchus”
 Humble family, father soldier
 Writer, lived off friends loans
 Proposed “Conspiracy of Equals”
 Communal living; no private
property
 Money abolished
 Everybody possess same property
 Live in same location as occupational group
 Children raised in same-sex boarding schools
 Country over family
 Abolish traditional religion
 The state becomes new religion
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6. Owen Conducts an Experiment
 Robert Owen was a British industrialist (Scottish cotton mills) who sought to replace
“individual selfish system” with a “united social” one. Followers coined term “socialism”
 Formed own communities: not through the state
 Humans not responsible for own will and actions; “his whole character—physical, mental, and
moral—is formed independently of himself”
 Opposition to religion; wished to “terminate the existence of religion on earth”
New Lanark, Scotland New Harmony, Indiana
 Company village employing 1800  Failed in 3 years due to lack of skilled
people, including 500 pauper children labor, too many “idlers,” inefficient
 Reduced hours, brought order and production and distribution
cleanliness, provided education
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7. Engel Interprets an Oracle
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels Karl Marx
 Son of wealthy textile owners and  Descended from two
devout Christians. distinguished lines of rabbis
 Became an atheist and communist  Father abandoned Judaism,
 Worked at Engels and Ermen in baptized as Lutheran. Karl
Manchester, eventually receiving became an atheist Karl Marx
inheritance which allowed him to retire.  Never self-supporting at any time.
 Maintained two homes. Rode to hounds. Received financial support from
 Common law marriage with Mary Burns. family, friends, and Engels. Marx
When she died, lived with her sister household, though poor, kept 1-2
Lizzie, who he married on her deathbed. servants
 2 daughters committed suicide
Writings
 Communist Manifesto
 Marx Volume 1 Capital; Engels Volumes 2 and 3
 Engels originated many of the key ideas that came to be called
Marxism and really launched the Marxist movement.
 Private property is theft; man became a commodity; middle class will
disappear until world divided into millionaires and paupers; proletariat
Engels’ house, Barmen
will rise; state will die; communism will reign.
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8. Bernstein Develops Doubts
 Eduard Bernstein born in 1850
 Unlike most other socialists was actually raised in poverty
 Became a protégé of Engels, asked to write Volume 4 of Capital
 However, developed doubts about socialism
 Growth of trade unions and democracy had counteracted the power of
capitalism
 Through political and social legislation, create better pay and working
conditions, without revolution
 50 years had passed since Marx and Engels forecasted that the rich would
become fewer, the poor poorer and the middle class would disappear.
 Bernstein observed the opposite: the rich were more numerous, as were the
middle classes, and the poor were better off.
 Economic history shows that per capita income in Germany and England
adjusted for inflation doubled between the publication of the Communist
Manifesto in 1848 and Evolutionary Socialism in 1899.
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9. Lenin Seizes Power
 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, was born in 1870.
 Mother’s family was wealthy and father was nobility
 Brother, Alexander, executed for assassination attempt on Tsar
 Lenin became an atheist
 Married Nadya Krupskaya
 Fought Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism and
revisionism
 The proletarian revolution did not need to be carried
out by the proletarians; it could be done for them!
 Founded Bolsheviks; split with Menshevik faction of
the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
 Bolsheviks took control of Russia through better funding and terror
 Lenin, “Do you think we can be victors without the most severe revolutionary
terror?”
 Employed the Cheka, Bolshevik secret police, and executed tens of thousands.
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10. Mussolini Becomes a Heretic
 Benito Mussolini began a socialist and became a fascist.
 Father, a blacksmith, member of the first International Working Man's
Association; read sections of Marx’s Capital to his family
 Benito became politically active in socialist groups and published socialist
articles and promoted atheism
 Facism (“fascio” bundle) was pro WW I and nationalistic unlike socialism
 Mussolini: “Everything inside the state; nothing outside the state.”
 Fascist regime extended welfare state; became anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic;
 Spread to Germany: National Socialistic German Workers Party or Nazi
(Nationalsozialist).
 Hitler's programs were socialistic in nature:
 Abolished unearned income, nationalized trusts; shared wholesale
trade profit, provided for old age and higher education, communalized
department stores, confiscated land for common purposes
 Hitler: “National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it
could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with the democratic
order.”
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11. Attlee Takes the Slow Road
 Clement Atlee, the seventh of eight children, was born in 1883 into a
wealthy family
 His parents were devout Christians, but Clement became an atheist
and substituted socialism for his Christian faith.
 Went to Oxford, became a lawyer, joined the Labour Party
 Labour Party unabashedly Socialistic with Clause IV in their constitution
 Became PM in 1945; enacted socialistic program
including:
 Nationalization of Bank of England, coal mines, civil aviation,
communications, railroads, trucking, and electricity/gas
 Social welfare included universal coverage for illness,
unemployment, retirement, widowhood, maternity and death,
occupational disability; subsidies to poor, universal
education, public housing, medical care paid by government.
 Programs created shortages and England was kept aloft by US Loans
and the Marshall Plan
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12. Nyerere Forges a Synthesis
 Julius Nyerere, the poor son of a Tanzanian village chief; hunted on
Serengeti Plain and tended goats
 Attended boarding school run by Catholic missionaries, where
learned English and embraced Christianity
 In 1949 went to college in Edinburgh Scotland, a hub of left-wing
thinking. Studied socialism and saw resemblance to tribe’s culture
 Completed degree, returned to Tanzania, joined Tanzanian
African National Union (TANU)
 Rose up through the party, gained prominence, after 1961 Tanzania independence,
won first presidential election
 Outlawed any party except TANA; nationalized land, formed
communal farms; nationalized banks and large capitalistic
firms, seized commercial real estate not occupied by owners
 Achieved income equality by keeping everyone poor; according
to World Bank 1990 study, Tanzania's economy shrunk ½ % a
year from 1965-1988
 In contrast, poor countries, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong
Kong, and Singapore, who promoted private ownership and
foreign trade, achieved Western-like prosperity
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13. Gompers and Meany Hear a
Different Drummer
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers George Meany
 Born in East London 1850; parents were  Born in 1894 in East Harlem,
Dutch Jewish immigrants NY ; father was plumber
 1863, family immigrated to America.  Was committed
 Samuel and father rolled cigars anti-Communist, voted for
 Organized cigar makers. Dewey George Meany
 Founded AFL 1886  Denounced Soviet occupation of nations
after WWII
 Resisted socialism and hated communism.  Agreed to sign affidavits that wasn’t a
 workers organizations should be Communist, breaking with John L. Lewis
composed of and led by workers over signing
 distrusted any but the most minimal  Was ruthless in purging communists and
government intervention gangsters from union
 opposed minimum wage
legislation, government social
insurance except physical disability
 Was pro-military and pro-American
involvement in WWI
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14. Deng and Gorbachev Repeal
Communism
Deng Xiaoping
 Deng Xiaoping Mikhail Gorbachev
 Born a child of privilege  Born in in a tiny village in
 Met Zhou Enlai while at school in France Ukraine; parents simple
 Joined the Communist Party and farmers; mother illiterate
progressed  Grandfather purged as kulak
 After disastrous Great Leap but lived
Forward, proposed a partial undoing of  Didn’t blame Soviet system
communism  At age 14, he joined the Mikhail Gorbachev
 Was arrested during the Cultural Komsomol, Communist Party
Revolution students but eventually youth organization
reinstated  In 1984, became General Secretary
 Admired “Little Tigers” of East Asia and  Attempted to rehabilitate Soviet system
emulated, designating four coastal areas and save socialism.
as “special zones for export.”  agreed to multiparty system and
 Felt that dictatorship of the Communist private property
Party was essence of socialism  However, USSR collapsed
 Chinese system became capitalism under
the rule of communists
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15. Blair Redefines Social
Democracy
 At age fifteen Tony’s father, Leo, was secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League.
 As Leo got older, he changed, becoming chairman of a conservative association.
 Tony attended Oxford, where he was more interested in rock 'n roll band than politics
 In 1979 conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher swept Labour from office
 With several more defeats and socialists moving to the right, the Labour Party changed, led
by Blair
 Blair criticized “penal rates of taxation” of individuals
 Called for reviewing corporate taxes, because “companies will not invest without
decent profits.”
 Proposed reducing welfare, “a nation at work, not on benefit--that is our pledge.”
 Proclaimed “the Labour Party is now the party of law and order.”
 Said, “governments don't raise children--families do.”
 Said, “The days of the all-embracing theories of politics--religious in nature, whose
adoption would solve all human problems are over.”
 Wish to create “a nation of entrepreneurs.”
 Said “era of tax-and-spend is dead and buried” and, “Labor is the party of business.”
 In 1997 Labour had its largest win ever
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16. Summary
 Parties with the name “Socialist,” “Labor” or “Social Democrat”
continue to win elections, but they have eliminated most of
founding principles.
 Now are more accepting of markets, private enterprise, and
economic inequality.
 The right has yielded some issues to the left.
 All democratic capitalistic economies have a large public sector
that includes education, healthcare, and social insurance for the
old, the disabled, and the poor.
 We are not all socialists, now, but all capitalists, now.
 Voters like government benefits, but not high taxes.
 Socialists not longer believe that state ownership or planning is
more efficient than private competition.
 Most acknowledge that the wealth is created in the private sector.
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