In The Socialist Temptation, CEI Vice President Iain Murray examines why, despite its lethal record, skepticism of socialism has waned. To reverse this dangerous trend, he suggests we approach it as a communications challenge. Throughout the book, Murray artfully appeals to our core values of fairness, freedom, and security to reframe the narrative about why socialism doesn’t work.

Please join CEI for an online book forum on The Socialist Temptation featuring author Iain Murray and literary, freedom radical Kevin Williamson. In praise of Murray’s new book, Williamson writes:

Iain Murray has written a book that is horrifyingly essential. Socialism was a backward idea in the nineteenth century and a catastrophe in the twentieth, and yet it somehow limps on among the worst sort of political cretins in the twenty-first. As Murray shows, socialism’s promises of justice and liberation are a lie and always have been. It is a philosophy of domination and brutality—it always has been and always will be. It is our good fortune that Iain Murray is around to write this book—and our tragedy that we need him to.

Kevin Williamson, Roving Correspondent, National Review

Iain Murray, Vice President, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Kent Lassman, President, Competitive Enterprise Institute


Thursday, August 6, 2020
12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Register: https://cei-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Sj1mPxwrSgSQ4aJmqeZrgg

Registration confirmation and event reminder emails will be sent from CEI Events at [email protected]

Questions? Email [email protected]


Kevin D. Williamson is the roving correspondent for National Review and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism and The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics. His work has appeared everywhere from The Washington Post to Academic Questions to Playboy. He began his journalism career at the Bombay-based Indian Express Newspaper Group. He has served as the theater critic for The New Criterion and taught at King’s College, New York.

Iain Murray is Vice President for Strategy and a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He also directs the Center for Economic Freedom at CEI. He is author of the recently published The Socialist Temptation and bestselling books, The Really Inconvenient Truths and Stealing You Blind: How Government Fat Cats Are Getting Rich Off of You. He has written extensively on free markets and the environment, labor policy, finance, European Union policy, and trade.

Kent Lassman is President and CEO of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He oversees strategy for the organization, including management of a team of policy, communications, and fundraising staff. Prior to joining CEI, Lassman spent eight years as vice president at a public affairs firm in Washington, D.C., counseling clients on campaign approaches to issues ranging from telecommunications to privacy to biotechnology and state licensing.

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