by James F. Davis

A discussion of the history of socialism for the past 200 years should be as dreary as reading the Communist Manifesto or Das Capital. Incredibly, this book is not.

Before reading any book, it is advisable to have an idea from where the author is coming. This author was born and raised in an American socialist family. He was the national chairman of the Young People's Socialist League from 1968 until 1973. He is presently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Quite a shift!

Yet he gives a true believer's lively account of socialism by telling us about the lives and ideas of the thinkers and leaders who have had the greatest impact in developing the theories of socialism. He also details the virtually always disastrous results of the application of those theories. Knowledge of the results is necessary to discuss these theories.

The book's title comes from Moses Hess, the man who got Marx and Engels fired up about socialism. Hess wrote, "The Christian . . . imagines the better future of the human species . . . in the image of heavenly joy. . . . We (socialists) on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth." Therein lies socialism's great appeal.

The people the author chooses to highlight in this evolutionary history of socialism are Gracchus Babeuf, Robert Owen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Benito Mussolini, Clement Attlee, Julius Nyerere, Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, and Tony Blair, the present prime minister of Great Britain. Through chapters about each, he explains and documents 200 years of socialism.

The French revolutionary Babeuf came up with the idea of outlawing private property so that all could be "equal." "Liberty, equality, fraternity," said the French revolutionaries. It was very different from the American "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Whereas the American founders wanted equality of opportunity, the French socialists promised equality of outcomes, i.e., Heaven on Earth. Huge difference!

Robert Owen, who coined the term "socialist," is one of the very few socialists who ever actually created wealth for himself and others. He made his fortune in textiles during the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s in England. Whereas Babeuf thought that one must take by force through the power of the state to implement socialism, Owen recognized that if someone just gave land and capital, a socialist community could be set up. Since he had the money, he set one up in the American Midwest.

Owen believed that no human "is responsible for his will or his own actions." He thought he could shape people into working collectively for the higher good by educating (indoctrinating) them from the age of one. He seemed never to have noticed that his socialist experiment failed miserably and that it seemed to attract the less industrious-even after it cost him his fortune!

Engels came up with the idea that all private property is theft and that competition and capital lead to a concentration of wealth, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

It is fitting that Karl Marx is the most famous socialist of all. Muravchik details how much of a deadbeat he was and how he spent his entire life mooching off others, like many socialists. Further, he had virtually no contact with, nor did he want anything to do with, the poor working-man he claimed to want to help.

Lenin was another pampered brat who lived off of others. Like many so-called intellectuals, he thought socialism should be "created for the workers, not by them!" He realized that he would have to terrorize the working man into collectivism. He did so at the cost of tens of millions of lives.

Stalin, his heir, started out as Lenin's fundraiser. He robbed banks. No big surprise that he followed in Lenin's brutal footsteps.

Mussolini, a draft dodger, modified socialism. He realized that Lenin's violent methods worked best. But he noticed that Italy was not yet industrialized, so to get elected he decided to modify socialism into something called fascism. Under fascism, he would wait until entrepreneurs had created something of value worth taking, then nationalize it or create so many rules and regulations that he could force the private entrepreneur to do whatever he-the government-decided. Mussolini said he hated communism, yet mimicked it as often as he could.

Hitler and his National Socialists differed from other socialists in that they were nationalistic in their looting of wealth. When Hitler took power he immediately set up four-year plans, so that no one would think he was copying the USSR's five-year plans.

After World War II, Clement Attlee, another pampered socialist, was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. He decided to socialize and nationalize the UK, bit by bit, evoking the "class struggle" and envy of the rich approach that works so well today in the U.S. for the Democratic Party.

Muravchik thinks socialism is dead because it has failed just about everywhere. And Margaret Thatcher's Tory government reversed many of Atlee's socialist nationalizations. Lastly, the socialist Labor Party of the UK got Tony Blair elected by campaigning on a platform that was anti-socialist. But socialism has yet to disappear in the UK.

Nyerere's socialization of Tanzania, one of the first African colonies to get independence, is detailed by the author. He subsidized farmers, took over the education system to teach people to work for the common good, etc. Despite massive aid from the developed world and China, the economy shrunk for the 23 years he was in power.

Muravchik says socialism never got a foothold in America, and then explains how Samuel Gompers, the most significant organizer of labor unions, and George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, the country's largest union, kept the socialists/communists from taking total control of the unions in this country. Gompers and Meany were from working-class backgrounds and were acutely aware that socialists would subordinate the workers' goals to someone else's goals. They knew that the workers would starve without the capitalist owners and that government intervention was socialist. They had no use for middle-class theorists who appointed themselves to lead labor. They were anti-communist and referred to Stalin rightly as a brutal fascist dictator.

China's Communist dictators Mao and Deng both came from privileged backgrounds. After almost 40 years of Mao's socialist experiments and millions of deaths, Deng noticed that giving people personal responsibility and rewards for their efforts worked better than collectivization. He turned Communist China into a Fascist dictatorship and started allowing private ownership and a market economy. For Deng, the dictatorship of the party was the essence of socialism; all else was negotiable.

Gorbachev's siblings and grandparents died, along with millions of others in the 1932-33 collectivizing of the Ukraine. Once he traveled to the West, he knew he had to do something different. His conclusion: if he could just clean up the corruption and inefficient bureaucracy, socialism would work. He thought he could do this by allowing a little democracy. It had never occurred to him that maybe it was the system that caused the corruption, inefficiency, and horrible living conditions in most socialist societies. Yet even today he remains a committed socialist.

Why then has socialism continued to have such popularity? My wife, who grew up in a socialist family, says its eternal appeal is that is makes people feel good about themselves. It is particularly popular with people who would never directly help their fellow man, but they claim the higher moral ground by declaring to want to help their fellow man by taking someone else's hard earned money and redistributing it to someone else who has not earned it.

Muravchik says socialism was popular because, "Not only did it vow to deliver the goods in this world rather than the next, but it asked little in return." He thinks socialism is dead. A look at our own government suggests he is wrong.

Our government promises medical care and social security, expropriates private property without due process, subsidizes or pays special interests not to produce, fixes prices, and controls production of certain commodities. It intrudes in our private lives more and more, and uses welfare to strip people of their dignity as unique persons by asking nothing in return, etc. These are all socialist/fascist programs and should be called as such.

Yet this book demonstrates with many examples how socialism goes against human nature, how it has virtually always hurt the poor the most, has caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century and billions of people to live in horrible conditions. But it still sounds nice to idealistic people who have not experienced it first hand or studied its horrible results. That is why socialist ideas are still so popular in universities throughout the world.

These ideas are also popular with politicians, since taking other people's money and taking credit for giving it to someone else is how they get elected. Government employees also usually like politicians who give them more money.

Having experienced firsthand the lack of liberty and brutality of living under a socialist government, I was disappointed that the author glossed over how horrible it is to live under socialism. And although I do not agree with the author's contention that socialism has been defeated, there is so much excellent history in this concise, interesting narrative that makes it worth reading.

Mr. Davis is president of AIA, formerly the head of the international division of a major bank, married to the niece of the head of Chile's Communist Party ,and spent time in jail in Communist/Socialist countries, never having been charged with a crime.