...the core audience for the Manifesto is swing voters who prefer their critiques of capitalism unsullied by identitarian cant about racial divisions ... who can fault Sunkara as he deigns to appeal to the people as they are? ... A stickler for concision, Sunkara packs into its 288-page frame, alongside the inaugural speculative fiction, a condensed history of prior socialist movements across the world ... No sentence is difficult to diagram; the imposing analytic thickets typical of Western Marxist writing have been leveled down to the simplicity of grass ... Sunkara presents an encyclopedic knowledge of various American anti-capitalist parties ... By the end of the recital a lamenting tone creeps into his measured prose ... The Socialist Manifesto is restrained, almost apologetic; it is haunted by the specters of pessimism and belatedness, the knowledge that socialism has already been tried, already been found wanting ... a sustained and penetrating analysis of present-day America—its economy, society, culture, and politics—is as absent from The Socialist Manifesto as the hard accounting of how much risk one runs in seeking to improve America for its most oppressed citizens. Not only does this book begin with make-believe, its unrealness never ends.
Like all socialists, the author vastly underestimates both man’s inclination to increase his own wealth and his concomitant penchant for freeloading. But unlike the ordinary socialist, Mr. Sunkara writes with a self-effacing cheerfulness ... What distinguishes the manifesto of this 29-year-old Brooklyn-based editor of Jacobin magazine is its open admission that the future could go either way ... We should probably be encouraged to see socialists drop the conceit that the future is theirs and admit the reality that unhappiness awaits us no matter the size of our welfare state, but surely the allure of socialism was always its glorious inevitability. Without that, it’s left with aesthetics and attitude.
... makes worthwhile reading, even though it's not really a manifesto per se ... Sunkara's imaginary journey is a bit too short and densely detailed to fully achieve its aims; efforts to inject pop culture references to make it hip don't really succeed either, but it deserves credit for imagination and ambition ... Sunkara hits his stride in these chapters – he's a first-rate storyteller, and at his best when spinning out an engaging narrative, with smart yet accessible political analysis – but the goal of this section is less clear. The stories all share pessimistic outcomes. It's difficult to tell what lesson is meant to be learned here, especially if the book aspires to be a manifesto ... It's here that Sunkara's manifesto coheres as a whole: the histories of part two informing his road map in part three, with the goal of achieving the socialist future imagined in part one. It's not exactly a manifesto, but The Socialist Manifesto is important reading for our tumultuous and transformative present.
...a smart book ... The book has a hipster feel. It begins with a joke about Jon Bon Jovi...and concludes with chapters entitled 'Return of the Mack' and Stay Fly.' At the same time, the book is politically serious and even earnest about the importance of reviving the tradition of Marxian socialism, and it demands much of its readers by way of historical understanding and political conviction ... There is drama to his story, and a sense of direction. But at the same time, the drama is too simplistic, too buoyant, and too self-assured — as any text claiming to be The Manifesto must be. It fails to take account of the deeper failings of Marxism ... Sunkara’s 'manifesto' encourages a kind of historical comfort and political rigidity that ill serves his readers ... Sunkara hinges his argument on his reading of history. As he acknowledges, all histories are in some sense 'selective.' The problem with Sunkara’s account is how selective it is, and how much of importance it either leaves out or considers only as a footnote to Sunkara’s Marx-centered history of socialism ... Many young socialists will read the book. I hope they will learn from it. But I also hope they will interrogate it, and treat it as a spur to learn more about the things it fails adequately to discuss, so that they can better engage the others with whom they must work to defend democracy and extend the politics of social and economic justice.
...[an] erudite call to action ... The whimsy fades away, however, in the second section ... Sunkara does not attempt to seem unbiased; he draws more positives out of the socialist-turned-authoritarian movements in Russia and China than most history textbooks do. Still, his recommendations for today’s socialists are logical and well-informed.
...[an] accessible narrative ... His lengthy opening explication of this idyllic view—a day in the life of a socialist citizen—will appeal strongly to readers ... He suggests more than a dozen complex, nuanced actions ... A sharp, hopeful, and useful primer short on evidence that a socialist future is at hand.
