Sub-headed ‘The Rise and Fall of Socialism’ and complementary quotes from Vaclav Havel, Christopher Hitchens and Paul Johnson on the dust jacket hardly makes this an appealing book on initial inspection.
A closer look also throws up more problems. The subject matter of a history and critique of world socialism from the French onwards means that whole episodes and complex arguments have to be ditched to satisfy a 345-page limit.
The style of writing also begs questions with the author choosing to concentrate on a series of prominent individual leaders that start from Babeuf and then proceeds through Owen, Marx, Lenin, Attlee and Gorbachev amongst many others. This is a particularly problematic approach considering that the whole raison d’être of socialism is the ascent and supremacy of the masses. Although maybe Joshue Muravchik was led to this form of analysis by the left themselves who spent much of the twentieth century in unhealthy hero worship of certain individuals.
Part of the problem is just what the author defines as socialism, with the index at the back naming countries as diverse as India, Iraq and Tunisia, but nevertheless, the last century is littered with failed leftist social experiments. There is plenty for Joshua Muravchik to pick from.
It’s not to deny that much of his criticism is valid – central command economies have rarely delivered and often just combusted with little long-term benefits to the people, but the central argument he presents is quite disturbing – that is, co-operative efforts are doomed to fail.
In reaching this conclusion he often falls for silly Cold War arguments, for instance, the October 1917 revolution becomes that old chestnut, a ‘coup’.
It’s not to deny that
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