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This book provides a historical overview of socialism as a modern political religion. Taking a global history approach, the author explores the varieties of the socialist experience, including Marxism, anarchism, Soviet communism, German national socialism, Maoism, Israeli kibbutzim, Tanzanian ujamaa, and the cultural woke left in the West.
List of contents
Introduction: The Varieties of the Left Experience
Chapter 1: Religion of Modernity: How an English Textile Baron and a French Aristocrat Jump Started the Socialist Creed
Chapter 2: "Sabbath of History": Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Moses Hess Make Socialism "Scientific"
Chapter 3: Great Schism: Social Democracy, Radical Cosmopolitans, and War Socialism (1870s-1920s)
Chapter 4: Prophecy of the World Revolution and Nationalist Temptations, 1917-1930s
Chapter 5: National Bolshevism: Stalin's Soviet Union (1929-1953)
Chapter 6: True Believers, Fellow Travelers, and Dissenters (1920s-1940s)
Chapter 7: Creating Community: National Socialist Biopolitics in Germany, 1933-1945
Chapter 8: "Regime of Goodness": Social Democracy and the Swedish Model, 1920s-1990s
Chapter 9: Blood and Soil in the Palestine Desert: Kibbutz Socialism, 1920s-1970s
Chapter 10: The East is Red: Communism in China, North Korea, and Cambodia
Chapter 11: African Socialism: Tanzanian "Village Socialism" and Zimbabwe Ethno-Racial State
Chapter 12: The Western Left: "Third Way" and Neoliberalism, 1970s-2010s
Chapter 13: Retreat of Socialism in the Soviet Union and China (1980s-2008)
Chapter 14: How Marxism Became Cultural: Frankfurt School, British Cultural Studies, and the New Left
Chapter 15: The Cultural Left and the "Curse" of the Western Civilization, 1960s-2010s
Conclusion: From Left Melancholia to New Militancy
About the author
By Andrei Znamenski
