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Title: Communism: A History by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0-679-64050-9 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 04 September, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.09 (53 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A masterpiece
Comment: This book is simply brilliant.
Richard Pipes has put the entire history of Communism into a short, handy book well under 200 pages in length. If you're unclear on the differences between socialism, Marxism, Bolshevism, Leninism, and Communism -- that's all very clearly explained.
Pipes also demonstrates that the history of Communism begins with Plato and his dialogues on the ideal state. This "ideal" of an absolutely ruthless egalitarian society has been around for thousands of years. What Marx and his followers brought was a theory which supported a "practical program" to put this "ideal" into practice. Result? The worst mass-murders in human history.
This book (along with a similar book on evolution) should be required reading in schools around the world. But then again,
as Pipes points out, at the same time as he is writing the history of communism, he is also writing its obituary. I hope he's not mistaken, and that this ghastly beast is in fact dead and buried.
Highest possible recommendation!!
Rating: 5
Summary: Communism laid bare!
Comment: For anyone interested in the events of the 20th Century, this is a must read. Pipes, one of the foremost experts on communism and the Soviet Union, lays bare the fallacies of communism and the tragedy that it has visited upon the world.
Yes, Pipes is anti-communist, but then any rational person who looks at the evidence must be. To those who continue, against the judgment of history, to apologize for communism ("when you make an omelette some eggs get broken"), Pipes has the perfect response: the millions of victims of communism represent a lot of eggs and, by the way, where's the omelette? Communism has consistently produced lower living standards while destroying lives and freedom and oppressing workers and everyone else. It's been demonstrated to be the classic "lose-lose" situation.
The Modern Library is to be congratulated for creating these short histories of important issues. These are books for people who desire to be well informed, but who lack the time or inclination to be experts. I believe there's a great market niche for such books.
Read this book. You'll understand the past century a whole lot better when you're through.
Rating: 5
Summary: Concise and Brilliant.
Comment: Oscar Wilde said that the cigarette was the perfect type of pleasure, as it was exquisite but left one unsatisfied. The same can be said regarding Richard Pipes' Communism: A History. It is a concise work, and its 160 pages of narrative are perfect for those under time constraints, but when you're done, you'll wish there was another section hidden behind the index. To corrupt the words of Stalin, this book is an essential and short course on communism, which, in hindsight, can be defined as the desire of a government to destroy its own people.
Pipes had an ambitious task before him when he classified so much history into so little space, but the end product is first rate. His conclusion that, "Communism was not a good idea that went wrong; it was a bad idea" rings true to the majority who have studied it. Communism's survey is quite damning and leaves little room for exculpatory evidence for all the tragedies committed on the behalf of a pseudo-philosopher named Marx.
Pipes visits the theoretical underpinnings of Marxism and finds every premise flawed. First, there has never been a society where man did not value his possessions. Even in the days of feudalism, the serf had his own plot of land he worked and was allowed to maintain. What he did not give to his lord he kept for himself. Communism pretends that man will productively work when he is inherently not vested in the results of his labors. This has never been the case. When one acknowledges this theoretical misassumption, the doom that flows from it is not surprising. Traditionally, the landowner and the tenant were partners, and the landowner could not profit without the tenant's successful tilling of the soil. With communism, no such interaction between citizen and bureaucrat was necessary. If the yields were low, only the citizens starved. The bureaucrats never did. In Russia , there was no motivation to work at all. As one peasant said, "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." Another said, "If you don't steal from your government, you are stealing from your family." If you get any time off over the summer and are at the beach (or even at a laundromat), I recommend reading or skimming Communism: A History. If nothing else, it helps us give thanks for all we've been given (and avoided) by living in the United States of America.
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Title: Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik ISBN: 1893554457 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois, Mark Kramer, Jonathan Murphy, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin ISBN: 0674076087 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $42.50 |
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Title: Hitler and the Holocaust by Robert S. Wistrich ISBN: 0679642226 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 02 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present by Anthony Pagden ISBN: 0812967615 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0375704477 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 13 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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