Socialism as a Secular Creed

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

• 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

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.