From the archives: The rise and fall and rise again of socialism? - Publications

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From the archives: The rise and fall and rise again of socialism?

The title above is a play on Joshua Muravchik’s book “Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism” (Encounter Books). Published in 2002, Muravchik, then a resident scholar at AEI, began his account by telling his readers that “Socialism was the faith in which I was raised. It was my father’s faith and his father’s before him.” He recounted how his grandparents, who arrived in the United States in 1905, worked at the Jewish Daily Forward (now the Forward), whose masthead included the famous words “Workers of the World Unite.” Muravchik himself joined the Socialist Party in his teens.

In the book, he traces the history of socialism, noting that “150 years after the term socialist was coined by the followers of Robert Owen in the late 1820s, roughly 60 percent of the earth’s population found itself living under socialist rule of one kind or another.” But socialism did not deliver on its promises, he says, and within several decades it was officially repudiated in “half the places where it had triumphed.”

In recent columns, AEI Visiting Fellow Roger Noriega has chronicled developments in one of the places where socialism remains. In describing Venezuela’s socialist experiment, he details how the regimes of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro “destroyed the independent legislature and courts; looted oil revenue and the national treasury; caused the collapse of the petroleum sector; [and] wrecked the private economy.” The socialist leaders have shown utter disregard, Noriega says, for the suffering people of Venezuela.

Today, despite the reality in places such as Venezuela, the term socialism is in vogue again. A young Washington Post columnist suggests “It’s time to give socialism a try.” Bernie Sanders does not shy away from the label. A 2017 poll found that socialism edged out capitalism among millennials. And in China on the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth a few weeks ago, Chinese president Xi Jinping said Marx’s vision was correct for China, and he urged party members to read Marxist works as a “way of life” and a “spiritual pursuit.”

AEI’s founders have long been defenders of the free enterprise system. They knew that it was not foreordained and that it would have to be continually defended. They have done this throughout the Institute’s 80-year history. AEI’s current president Arthur Brooks reminds his audiences that capitalism has lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty while socialism has delivered misery. Capitalism isn’t perfect, but it is far superior to socialism that has never delivered on its promises and left millions in terrible circumstances. Now seems like a good time to revisit Muravchik’s history and the PBS special based on the book to understand the history of socialism.