Title: Socialism Revealed: Why Socialism’s Issues Have Never Permitted Success in a Real Economy
Author: Philip J. Bryson
Publisher: PageTurner Press and Media, LLC
ISBN: 978-1-63871-719-5
Pages: 178
Genre: Political Philosophy and Economics
Reviewed by: Jason Lulos

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In modern history, notable failures of socialist and communist states (i.e. USSR, Cuba, Venezuela) should have relegated socialism to an historical anecdote: an unworkable economic system at worst or a theoretical foil/critique of capitalism at best. In spite of these historical lessons, socialism has seen a rise in popularity, namely with liberals and progressives. Why is this occurring and why are politicians like Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, experiencing unprecedented popularity?

In Socialism Revealed: Why Socialism’s Issues Have Never Permitted Success in a Real Economy, author Philip Bryson addresses this resurgence with a concise, well-researched history of socialism and the reality that people, by and large, do not fully understand socialism or capitalism and the market economy for that matter. Bryson provides a cogent analysis of the seeds of failure inherent in socialist philosophies when put into practice. He notes the moralistic and popular appeal of income redistribution but extrapolates the problems that result from such an approach. He surmises that the short- and long-term effects of socialist states not only lead to economic collapse but also the suppression and/or destruction of core cultural mores like family values, self-reliance, individualism, and even the spiritual well-being of a country’s people.

An economics professor with four decades of studying socialism, Bryson notes that he was intrigued by the subject early on. Whilst living in Berlin in 1961, he was determined to understand why a country must build a wall to keep its people from leaving. Thus begins his decades long study and why he’d eventually leave the Democratic party. He notes historical reasons for the tendency for a nation to look to socialism as a panacea: inequality, recessions, disasters, or disillusionment following the world wars and the Great Depression. However, in each case, Bryson describes how these socialist programs inevitably backfire, leaving things like poverty and class struggle just as bad if not worse following the institutionalization of a socialist regime. In the end, untenable problems ensue: the unwieldy bureaucracy of centralized governance, the increased dependency on the government to solve/pay for all of society’s problems, and a whole host of cultural regressions that follow in socialism’s wake.

Bryson does not try to hide the fact that this is a wholly negative view of socialism. He writes that genuine socialism is a thing of the past, but modern fascination with socialist policies could devolve down a slippery slope to genuine socialism: marked by absolute government control (Big Brother) and necessarily dictatorial regimes. His prescription is to educate and explain why laissez-faire capitalism is a more efficient and largely self-regulating system and how socialism’s centralization results in a centralized government bureaucracy that simply can’t handle all of society’s issues. He admits that limited social services and government intervention are necessary in a capitalist system, but the best shot for a thriving economy and one which encourages self-determination and nuclear family values, is one in which the government interferes as little as possible.

Bryson’s work is thorough, well-written, and holistic in terms of explaining benefits of the capitalist market system and the inevitable problems of socialist systems. His asides are, at times, provocative (naming Barack Obama as the “first socialist president”) and a general antipathy toward the Left. However, his analyses of economics and cultural implications are reasonable, logical, and based upon research and real-life applications.

Regardless of your ideological background, I recommend Socialism Revealed because it contains brilliant analyses of economic systems and their consequences. It is a distillation of Bryson’s much larger work Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline and the Attempted Revival in the United States. Given how thought-provoking Socialism Revealed has been to read, I will certainly delve into that larger tome.