April 29, 2019
Socialism and the Jews: A Brief History
By Joshua MuravchikSocialism, so recently considered over and done with, is now back. What does it mean for the Jews?
In late January 1989, almost exactly 30 years ago, the economic historian Robert Heilbroner wrote this epitaph:
Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won. . . . Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.
That verdict, pronounced by a leading economist who also happened to be a career-long socialist, expressed what seemed to be a global consensus on an issue that had torn the world apart for generations. For a moment, relief and joy at the end of the cold war and of the larger debate behind it soothed the pain of the many nations that had been blighted, some quite horribly, by the lethal fantasy of socialism.