Awards

• Commended for Book of the Year: Understanding the World 2021
• Winner of Book of the Year: Understanding the World 2021

Overview

Andrei Znamenski argues that socialism arose out of activities of secularized apocalyptic sects, the Enlightenment tradition, and dislocations produced by the Industrial Revolution. He examines how, by the 1850s, Marx and Engels made the socialist creed “scientific” by linking it to “history laws” and inventing the proletariat—the “chosen people” that were to redeem the world from oppression. Focusing on the fractions between social democracy and communism, Znamenski explores why, historically, socialism became associated with social engineering and centralized planning. He explains the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and its role in fostering the cultural left that came to privilege race and identity over class. Exploring the global retreat of the left in the 1980s–1990s and the “great neoliberalism scare,” Znamenski also analyzes the subsequent renaissance of socialism in wake of the 2007–2008 crisis.

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9781498557320

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Reviews

Andrei Znamenski's history is told with verse combined with scholarship, comparable to old classics such as Wilson's To the Finland Station and Kolakowski 's Main Currents of Marxism. Any fair-minded leftist will be brought up short. Read it. -- Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, professor emerita, University of Illinois at Chicago Andrei Znamenski, who experienced socialism firsthand, recalls the murder, mayhem, ethnic cleansing, arbitrary detentions, corruption, starvation, labor camps, warfare, forced disappearances, and famine that resulted from Marxism and its various iterations and offshoots. Socialism as a Secular Creed meticulously traces the concrete consequences of the spread of these ideologies, which, he suggests, displaced traditional expressions of religion and established secular eschatologies. His rigorously researched account is not to be missed. -- Allen Mendenhall, Troy University Greatly erudite and richly detailed, Andrei Znamenski's Socialism as a Secular Creed is an important addition to the literature on history's most popular idea about how society ought to be organized. -- Joshua Muravchik, World Affairs Institute; author of Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism

Author Information

Andrei Znamenski is professor of history at the University of Memphis.

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