Socialism : the failed idea that never dies / Kristian Niemietz.

By:

Niemietz, Kristian [author.]

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: London : Institute of Economic Affairs, in association with London Publishing Partnership Ltd, 2019Description: 1 online resource (xix, 374 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780255367714
0255367716

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Electronic books.

DDC classification:

335 23

LOC classification:

HX73 .N54 2019

Online resources:

EBSCOhost

Summary: Socialism is strangely impervious to refutation by real-world experience. Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to Venezuela. All of them have ended in varying degrees of failure. But, according to socialism's adherents, that is only because none of these experiments were "real socialism". This book documents the history of this, by now, standard response. It shows how the claim of fake socialism is only ever made after the event. As long as a socialist project is in its prime, almost nobody claims that it is not real socialism. On the contrary, virtually every socialist project in history has gone through a honeymoon period, during which it was enthusiastically praised by prominent Western intellectuals. It was only when their failures became too obvious to deny that they got retroactively reclassified as "not real socialism".

Holdings ( 1 )
Title notes ( 4 )

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
eBook	e-Library	EBSCO Business		Available

Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references.

Socialism is strangely impervious to refutation by real-world experience. Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society, from the Soviet Union to Maoist China to Venezuela. All of them have ended in varying degrees of failure. But, according to socialism's adherents, that is only because none of these experiments were "real socialism". This book documents the history of this, by now, standard response. It shows how the claim of fake socialism is only ever made after the event. As long as a socialist project is in its prime, almost nobody claims that it is not real socialism. On the contrary, virtually every socialist project in history has gone through a honeymoon period, during which it was enthusiastically praised by prominent Western intellectuals. It was only when their failures became too obvious to deny that they got retroactively reclassified as "not real socialism".

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on March 13, 2019).

Master record variable field(s) change: 050