Heaven on Earth

The Rise, Fall, and Reincarnation of Socialism

Joshua Muravchik

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781594039645
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in "science." Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to "the New Man" inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third World socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in a fin du siècle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes. Joshua Muravchik traces the fiery trajectory through sketches of the thinkers and leaders who developed the theory, led it to power, and presided over its collapse. Heaven on Earth is a story filled with character and event while at the same time giving us an epic chronicle of a movement that tried to turn the world upside down—and for a time succeeded.

NOTES

PROLOGUE: CHANGING FAITHS

1 Michael Harrington, Socialism (New York: Bantam, 1973), p. 131.

CHAPTER ONE: CONSPIRACY OF EQUALS

1 James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 25.

2 Gracchus Babeuf, The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf before the High Court of Vendome, ed. and trans. John Anthony Scott (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967), pp. 60, 48.

3 David Thomson, The Babeuf Plot: The Making of a Republican Legend (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Col, Ltd., 1947; reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975), p. 1 (page citations are to the reprint edition).

4 Quoted in R. B. Rose, Gracchus Babeuf: The First Revolutionary Communist (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1978), p. 22.

5 Ibid., p. 54.

6 “Lives of the French Revolutionists,” Quarterly Review (London), vol. 7 (March & June 1812), p. 436.

7 Ernest Belfort Bax, The Last Episode of the French Revolution: Being a History of Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals (London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1911), p. 62.

8 Rose, First Revolutionary Communist, p. 118.

9 Ibid., p. 124.

10 Ian H. Birchall, The Spectre of Babeuf (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), p. 39.

11 Ibid., p. 134; Philippe Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality, trans. Bronterre O’Brien (London: H. Hetherington, 1836), p. 30.

12 Rose, First Revolutionary Communist, p. 220.

13 Reprinted in Albert Mathiez, The Fall of Robespierre and Other Essays (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968; reprint of 1927 translation by Williams & Norgate Ltd. of London), p. 243.

14 Ibid., pp. 246–47.

15 Quoted in “French Revolution: Conspiration de Babeuf,” Quarterly Review (London), vol. 45 (April & July 1831), p. 179. The quote is in French; the translation is mine.

16 Ibid., p. 180.

17 Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, p. 76.

18 Ibid., p. 66.

19 Birchall, Spectre, p. 40.

20 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 90.

21 Sylvain Maréchal, “Manifesto of the Equals,” in Birchall, Spectre, p. 167.

22 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 159.

23 Birchall, Spectre, p. 169.

24 “Manifesto of the Plebeians,” in Birchall, Spectre, p. 172.

25 Ibid., p. 171.

26 “Babeuf’s Reply to a Letter Signed M.V.,” reprinted in Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 370.

27 Letter to Dubois de Fosseux, 8 July 1787, in Socialist Thought: A Documentary History, ed. Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1964), p. 49.

28 Babeuf, Defense, p. 57.

29 “Draft Economic Decree,” in Birchall, Spectre, p. 174.

30 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 164.

31 “Draft Economic Decree,” in Birchall, Spectre, pp. 175, 174.

32 From Le Tribun du Peuple, reprinted in Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 371.

33 Babeuf, Defense, p. 57.

34 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 204.

35 Ibid., p. 207.

36 Ibid., p. 159.

37 Ibid., p. 172.

38 Ibid., p. 230.

39 Ibid., p. 30.

40 Patrice L.-R. Higonnet, “Babeuf: Communist or Proto-Communist?” Journal of Modern History, vol. 51, no. 4 (December 1979), p. 778.

41 Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), p. 730.

42 Quoted in “French Revolution,” Quarterly Review, pp. 205–6.

43 Quoted in R. B. Rose, “Gracchus Babeuf: The First Modern Revolutionary,” Encounter, vol. 47, no. 1 (July 1976), p. 31.

44 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 115.

45 Rose, First Revolutionary Communist, pp. 239–40.

46 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 143.

47 Bax, Last Episode, p. 150.

48 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 147.

49 R. B. Rose, “Babeuf, Dictatorship and Democracy,” Historical Studies, vol. 15, no. 58 (April 1972), p. 233.

50 Rose, “Dictatorship and Democracy,” p. 234.

51 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 230.

52 Rose, First Revolutionary Communist, p. 214.

53 Buonarroti, Babeuf’s Conspiracy, p. 210.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Prologue: Changing Faiths
• Beginnings
• Triumphs
• Collapse
• Afterlife
• Appendices
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index