Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism (Brief Encounters)

In Heaven on Earth, Joshua Muravchik traces this fiery trajectory through sketches Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism Brief Encounters Series.
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And not only human nature: The starry-eyed aspect of socialist thinking did not preclude a large element of steel. It was then that the philosophy of Rousseau emerged from the pages of tracts and manifestos to strut across the bloody field of history. T his metamorphosis does not come easily. Human nature is a recalcitrant thing. It is embodied as much in persistent human institutions like the family and the church as in the human heart.


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Since history is little more than an accumulation of errors, history as hitherto known must be abolished. The past, a vast repository of injustice, is by definition the enemy. Accordingly, the revolutionists tossed out the Gregorian calendar and started again at Year One. They replaced the Genesis-inspired seven-day week with a ten-day cycle and rebaptized the months with names reflecting their new cult of nature: A new religion was born, as imperious as it was jealous.

It is significant that the socialist mentality is usually also an atheistic mentality, where atheism is understood not so much as the disbelief in God as the hatred of God—an attitude as precarious logically as it has been destructive in practice.

The death of Socialism

There is an important sense in which religion as traditionally understood reconciles humanity to imperfection and to failure. Since the socialist sets out to abolish failure, traditional religion is worse than de trop: The anti-clericalism that had been a prominent feature of revolutionary sentiment grew increasingly vicious.


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It is one of the great ironies of modern history that socialism, which promises a more humane, caring, and equitable society, has consistently delivered a more oppressive and mismanaged one. If, one must add, they are allowed to leave. The socialist pretends to have glimpsed paradise on earth. Those who decline the invitation to embrace the vision are not just ungrateful: Dissent is therefore not mere disagreement but treachery. Treachery is properly met not with arguments but as circumstances permit the guillotine, the concentration camp, the purge. Muravchik provides a devastating anatomy of the socialist dream—a dream that with clocklike regularity becomes a nightmare.

Of course, many who profess socialism are decent and humane people. And it is worth noting that socialism comes in mild as well as tyrannical versions. Muravchik, who was once a socialist himself, pays frequent homage to the generous impulses that lie behind some allotropes of the socialist enterprise. A large part of the answer lies in the intellectual dynamics of utopianism.

Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik

It experiences the friction of reality as an intolerable brake on its expectations. There was also the intervention of Marx. Intellectually, Marxism is the most highly developed—as well as the most influential and most murderous—form of socialism the world has seen.

But in fact capitalism has always made societies richer, much richer. Capitalists get rich, and workers become more prosperous than their grandparents could have ever imagined possible. The curious thing is that this phenomenon, which any dispassionate observer might count as a refutation, leaves the true-believing Marxist entirely unruffled. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union. Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy. The Fall of Soviet Communism, Considerations on Western Marxism.

Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism

Detente, Democracy and Dictatorship. Praxis and Method RLE: Collected Works, Volume 2. Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism. Making David into Goliath.

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Socialism: Heaven on Earth PART 1

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Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes. In Heaven on Earth, Joshua Muravchik traces this fiery trajectory through sketches of the thinkers and leaders who developed the theory, led it to power, and presided over its collapse. Ratings and Reviews 0 0 star ratings 0 reviews.

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