Read Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies

Kristian Niemietz

4.9/5 (25473 ratings)

Description:Socialism is popular in the UK – not just among students, but also among people in their 30s and 40s. This is confirmed by survey after survey. Surveys also show that support for socialism in general terms is matched by support for a broad range of individual policies that could reasonably be described as socialist.Curiously, support for socialism in the abstract is not matched by positive perceptions of any actual example, contemporary or historical, of a socialist system in action. People with a rose-tinted view of, for example, the former Warsaw Pact countries, of Maoist China, of North Vietnam or North Korea are a small minority in Britain today. Socialists have successfully distanced themselves from the over two dozen failed attempts to build a socialist society. Their claim that these systems were never ‘really’ socialist, but represented a distortion of the socialist ideal, has become conventional wisdom. Today, holding the failures of, for example, the former Soviet Union against a contemporary socialist is considered crass and boorish.Yet while socialists distance themselves from contemporary and historical examples of socialism, they usually struggle to explain what exactly they would do differently. Socialists tend to escape into abstraction, and talk about lofty aspirations rather than tangible institutional characteristics. Those aspirations (for example, ‘democratising the economy’), however, are nothing new. They are the same aspirations that motivated earlier socialist projects. Socialism has never fulfilled those aspirations, butthis is not for a lack of trying.The not-real-socialism defence is only ever invoked retrospectively, namely, when a socialist experiment has already been widely discredited. As long as a socialist experiment is in its prime, almost nobody disputes its socialist credentials. On the contrary: practically all socialist regimes have gone through honeymoon periods, during which they were enthusiastically praised and held up as role models by plenty of prominent Western intellectuals.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. To get started finding Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: 374

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Institute of Economic Affairs

Release: 2019

ISBN: 0255367716

Description: Socialism is popular in the UK – not just among students, but also among people in their 30s and 40s. This is confirmed by survey after survey. Surveys also show that support for socialism in general terms is matched by support for a broad range of individual policies that could reasonably be described as socialist.Curiously, support for socialism in the abstract is not matched by positive perceptions of any actual example, contemporary or historical, of a socialist system in action. People with a rose-tinted view of, for example, the former Warsaw Pact countries, of Maoist China, of North Vietnam or North Korea are a small minority in Britain today. Socialists have successfully distanced themselves from the over two dozen failed attempts to build a socialist society. Their claim that these systems were never ‘really’ socialist, but represented a distortion of the socialist ideal, has become conventional wisdom. Today, holding the failures of, for example, the former Soviet Union against a contemporary socialist is considered crass and boorish.Yet while socialists distance themselves from contemporary and historical examples of socialism, they usually struggle to explain what exactly they would do differently. Socialists tend to escape into abstraction, and talk about lofty aspirations rather than tangible institutional characteristics. Those aspirations (for example, ‘democratising the economy’), however, are nothing new. They are the same aspirations that motivated earlier socialist projects. Socialism has never fulfilled those aspirations, butthis is not for a lack of trying.The not-real-socialism defence is only ever invoked retrospectively, namely, when a socialist experiment has already been widely discredited. As long as a socialist experiment is in its prime, almost nobody disputes its socialist credentials. On the contrary: practically all socialist regimes have gone through honeymoon periods, during which they were enthusiastically praised and held up as role models by plenty of prominent Western intellectuals.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. To get started finding Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Special Offer | $0.00

Special Offer! | $0.00

Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies

Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies

More Books

Redefining the Poverty Debate: Why a War on Markets Is No Substitute for a War on Poverty (IEA Research Monographs)

Redefining the Poverty Debate: Why a War on Markets Is No Substitute for a War on Poverty (IEA Research Monographs)

Redefining the Poverty Debate: Why a War on Markets Is No Substitute for a War on Poverty (IEA Research Monographs) by Niemietz, Kristian (2012) Paperback

Redefining the Poverty Debate: Why a War on Markets Is No Substitute for a War on Poverty (IEA Research Monographs) by Niemietz, Kristian (2012) Paperback

Imperial Measurement: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism

Imperial Measurement: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism

Universal Healthcare Without the Nhs: Towards a Patient-Centred Health System

Universal Healthcare Without the Nhs: Towards a Patient-Centred Health System

A New Understanding of Poverty

A New Understanding of Poverty

Die kapitalgedeckte Altersvorsorge am Beispiel Chile: Ergebnisse, Auswirkungen, Lehren und Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten (German Edition)

Die kapitalgedeckte Altersvorsorge am Beispiel Chile: Ergebnisse, Auswirkungen, Lehren und Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten (German Edition)

New Understanding of Poverty. Institute of Economic Affairs (UK). 2011.

New Understanding of Poverty. Institute of Economic Affairs (UK). 2011.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Britain and Europe's Dysfunctional Relationship

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Britain and Europe's Dysfunctional Relationship