IT'S BACK! Just thirty years ago, socialism seemed utterly discredited.
An economic, moral, and political failure, socialism had rightly been thrown on the ash heap of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Unfortunately, bad ideas never truly go away—and socialism has come back with a vengeance.
A generation of young people who don’t remember the misery that socialism inflicted on Russia and Eastern Europe is embracing it all over again. Oblivious to the unexampled prosperity capitalism has showered upon them, they are demanding utopia.
In his provocative new book,
The Socialist Temptation, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains:
- Why the socialist temptation is suddenly so powerful among young people
- That even when socialism doesn’t usher in a bloody tyranny (as, for example, in the Soviet Union, China, and Venezuela), it still makes everyone poor and miserable
- Why under the relatively benign democractic socialism of Murray's youth in pre-Thatcher Britain, he had to do his homework by candlelight
- That the Scandinavian economies are not really socialist at all
- The inconsistencies in socialist thought that prevent it from ever working in practice
- How we can show young people the sorry truth about socialism and turn the tide of history against this destructive pipe dream
Sprightly, convincing, and original,
The Socialist Temptation is a powerful warning that the resurgence of socialism could rob us of our freedom and prosperity.
"Socialism is tempting, seductive, alluring. It comes in many forms and speaks in many different ways. It appeals to people who value fairness, who value freedom, and who value security. It comes in many varieties, sometimes clothing itself in the dress of nationalism, sometimes in the garb of environmentalism. Yet there is one single, unifying feature - subjugation of the individual to the collective. While Americans have always been skeptical of socialism, even in the progressive and New Deal eras, that is beginning to change. Large numbers of Americans now express admiration for socialism, and similar numbers are critical of the free enterprise system. The problem is particularly acute among America's young people. This is not the first time we have been here. In 1977, when America was deep in an economic malaise, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in which he wondered, "Whatever happened to free enterprise?" Noting that the free enterprise system "for 200 years made us the light of the world," he warned that freedom is "never more than one generation away from extinction." He took the lead in preserving it for the previous generation. It is time for this generation to take up the torch. Reagan framed the defense of freedom as first and foremost a communications challenge. Today, a field of study known as cultural cognition theory understands that our political choices are guided by certain values. Americans generally fall into one of three value groups, valuing fairness (egalitarians), freedom (libertarians), and security (conservatives) respectively. The Socialist Temptation is an attempt to meet the modern version of the communications challenge posed by Ronald Reagan. There are reasons why socialism appeals to each of these value groups. The Socialist Temptation tackles these reasons head on and responds with a vigorous case for free enterprise as better matching American values"--
