History

George Orwell, “Review of *The Totalitarian Enemy* by F. Borkenau” [Atlas Intellectuals]

This week on the Atlas University course on Socialism we feature the Executive Summary of George Orwell’s “Review of The Totalitarian Enemy by F. Borkenau.” Orwell was clear-eyed about the dangers of authoritarian socialisms in Germany and Russia. In this 1940 review of The Totalitarian Enemy by Franz Borkenau, Orwell weighs the socialist credentials of Adolf Hitler’s

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Stephen Hicks, “Your Sex Life Under Socialism” [Atlas Intellectuals]

This unit on Socialism features Stephen Hicks’s “Your Sex Life Under Socialism.” Here’s the logic: “If human beings are the most important means of production and socialism means collective ownership of the means of production, then socialism means collective ownership of human beings. And if human beings are produced by sexual reproduction and socialism is

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Ayn Rand, “The Left: Old and New” [Atlas Intellectuals]

In this unit of Atlas University’s course on Socialism: Rand analyzes a major shift in leftist strategy—the narrative shift from Old Left to New Left defenses of socialism as the ultimate moral system. Their fundamental principles of “mysticism-altruism-collectivism” have not changed—rather the New Left is “cruder and more honest” in its explicit goals and practical

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Robert Heilbroner, “Socialism” [Atlas Intellectuals]

In this week on the Waterfall course on Socialism: Robert Heilbroner, “Socialism”. Robert Heilbroner (1919-2005) was the most distinguished American academic socialist of the 20th century. In this article, written after the fall of the Soviet Union, Heilbroner argues as a social scientist that socialists must diagnose accurately the failings of socialist experiments in order to correct

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Mises, *Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis* [Atlas Intellectuals]

In this unit of our self-paced course on Socialism, we start with a 7-point summary of Ludwig von Mises’s classic Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, focusing on socialism’s economic inconsistencies. Mises compares the principles of Socialism and Liberal-Capitalism and finds they differ not in their aims, but in their understanding of justice and the

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Vladimir Lenin, “How to Organize Competition” [Atlas Intellectuals]

This unit of the self-paced course on Socialism focuses on a theorist, revolutionary, and a leading figure in the October Revolution and the foundation of the Soviet Union. See our Executive Summary of Vladimir Lenin’s “How to Organize Competition”: ‘to achieve competitive socialism, Lenin urges that all the “vermin” be eradicated in Russia. War must

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Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, *The Communist Manifesto* [Atlas University course]

This week in the A.U. course on Socialism we cover Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Manifesto of the Communist Party. Marx, who devised the ideology of communism, proclaims the inevitable self-destruction of capitalism due to its internal contradictions and urges communists to lead the world to a classless society. The full course: https://www.atlassociety.org/course/socialism. Other Waterfall

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