J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph Stalin shared one passionately held belief: that “socialism” denoted the one-party dictatorship in Moscow and its satellites. The fact that this dictatorship would have been emphatically repudiated by a great many people with a much better right to adjudicate the use of the word “socialism”—Marx, Engels, William Morris, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Jean Jaurès, Bertrand Russell, Eugene Debs, Antonio Gramsci, Ignazio Silone, George Orwell, Dwight Macdonald, and C.L.R. James, among many others—would have made no impression on Hoover or Stalin. The terminological status quo was far too convenient for both of them. It allowed Hoover to pretend that socialism was Stalinist tyranny tout court rather than the democratic movement that he had helped destroy in the United States earlier in the century, before the Bolshevik Revolution provided even the excuse of hysterical overreaction. And it allowed Stalin to claim the moral prestige of the socialist tradition, chief repository of the ideals of equality and full democracy, even as he was murdering every socialist he could get his hands on. I imagine the two old malefactors cackling together now in the lowest circle of Hell, comparing notes on their outrages against decency and humanity.



WHY YOU SHOULD BE A SOCIALIST By Nathan J. Robinson All Points Books, 336 pp., $27.99

It is long, very long, past time Americans discarded Cold War shibboleths and talked sense to one another about equality, democracy, and cooperation. When we do, we will be talking about socialism, though it doesn’t matter what we call it. We may even have to give up the word—depressingly many Americans still believe what J. Edgar Hoover believed or, even more depressingly, what Ayn Rand believed: that solidarity is a delusion and altruism a pathology. A lot of fancy stepping may be required to avoid the deadly bog of misunderstanding that almost immediately materializes when a left-wing American engages in political discussion with a right-wing fellow citizen. But there’s no avoiding it.

Two new books should make the left-winger’s job much easier, supplying many telling facts, much relevant history, and, in these spiritually parched times, a welcome spritz of utopian imagination. Both aged 30, Nathan Robinson and Bhaskar Sunkara are leading left intellectuals and entrepreneurs. In the latter capacity, each started a radical magazine in print form—Robinson’s Current Affairs and Sunkara’s Jacobin—and within a few years made a financial success of it. Compared with that remarkable feat, organizing a socialist revolution will doubtless present few difficulties. Not surprisingly, these two books reflect the personalities of the two magazines. Like Current Affairs, Why You Should Be a Socialist is first-person and playful, anecdotal and indignant. Like Jacobin, The Socialist Manifesto is earnest and analytical, sober and strategic. Two guides, with something for every temperament.

The root of socialism, Robinson writes, is revulsion. Unnecessary suffering, untasted joys, unexercised talents, wasted lives: These are everywhere, if you have eyes to see; and if you also have a heart to feel, then you’re on the threshold of socialism. Robinson aims to bring you over. “In the United States last year, 41 percent of workers didn’t have even one day of paid vacation,” he writes. “Thirty-six percent didn’t have a single day of paid sick leave.” Half of all private-sector pensions have disappeared. One in five households has zero or negative net worth. The net worth of the top one percent is greater than the net worth of the bottom 95 percent. Suicide and depression rates are up; life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution is down; and poor adults are five times as likely to report being in poor health as rich adults. Hundreds more examples follow in the same vein. Robinson preaches this familiar socialist sermon with wit and fervor. Your mileage may vary, but I find it never gets old.

THE SOCIALIST MANIFESTO: THE CASE FOR RADICAL POLITICS IN AN ERA OF EXTREME INEQUALITY By Bhaskar Sunkara Basic Books, 288 pp., $28.00

Another endearing trait: Why You Should Be a Socialist is full of answers to imagined objections by nonsocialists. (There are 300 million guns in America, very few of them owned by socialists, so we will have to get very good at answering objections.) Robinson is particularly adept at countering the standard libertarian complaint that the rich deserve what they have. Quite a few of them, he points out, merely took the trouble to be born to other rich people. And those who “earned” their money wouldn’t last a day in the marketplace without the social, legal, and physical infrastructure constructed and maintained by government: courts, roads, police, schools, food and drug inspections; environmental, occupational safety, and transportation safety regulations; not to mention a vast amount of basic research, which has made possible a great many commercial products for which business claimed the credit (and the profits).