
Talk of socialism is everywhere nowadays. Marx is being referenced constantly on all corners of social media. Capitalism is looking shaky nowadays, too. It’s hard to believe not that long ago, people still talked about “the end of history” with any sort of seriousness. They thought that capitalism had triumphed, forever, when the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. From that point on, capitalist “liberal democracies” would be the way forward for everyone. Yet folks who were paying attention to the WTO protests in Seattle or 9/11 realized history wasn’t quite over. After the Great Recession of 2008, thinking that capitalism had triumphed and ushered in an uneventful future absurd. Now, after COVID exposed so much weakness in our system, it’s hard to dispute that Marxism is relevant.
Professor Terry Eagleton thinks the same. Here, he sets out to prove it. Eagleton dispells ten objections that critics of Karl Marx give about Marxist ideas. He’s not saying that Marx was always right, but that he was often enough to reasonably call oneself a Marxist. Eagleton has useful insight into what Marx actually believed, and what people misunderstand about him. Still, I questioned a few of his points or knew that I’d have to seek a second and third opinion somewhere down the road.
Eagleton rejects the idea that Marx doesn’t have relevance to modern society. For one thing, his predictions about capitalism’s future behavior were uncanny in retrospect. Marx foresaw much of the globalization, rising income inequality, and pressure on blue collar workers in the West. Then, Why Marx Was Right tackles the oh-too-common line that “Marxism works well in theory, but in practice it’s a totalitarian, famine-ridden horror.” Eagleton acknowledges that many prior communist movements did lead to horror. But he refuses to whitewash the bloody history of slavery, genocide and exploitation under capitalism. After all, even the UK is a product of many bloody upheavals, and the United States was born in a bloody revolution. “Successful revolutions are those which end up erasing all traces of themselves,” Eagleton writes. “In doing so, they make the situation they struggled to bring about seem entirely natural.” We discuss the American Revolution a great deal in American life, but we do it as if it were almost preordained and holy. We treat it as if it were the exceptional revolution. This means we rarely talk about the bloody compromises and horrors that the winning side had to enact to complete their goals.
The places where socialist revolutions succeeded were economically undeveloped compared to Western Europe. These weren’t the conditions Marx thought necessary to successfully transition away from capitalism. Semi-feudal Russia was not the ideal spot to build socialism. Capitalism was needed first to build industry and infrastructure before socialism could become reality. Even Marx acknowledged this. This was always the theoretical standpoint of classical Marxism. The end-run that leaders like Stalin attempted to take around that theory did lead to industrialization , but with bloody and horrifying consequences. Eagleton makes a point of acknowledging this. Marx did believe that violent tactics might be needed beyond a certain point against the forces of capital. Capitalist governments always reach for similar tactics when their red lines are crossed. Yet Marx was optimistic that workers movements could bring about some nonviolent change and reform. It probably wouldn’t be enough, but it could help their situation in the interim. Marx saw promise in places like the United States. There, he wondered if a more democratic system was emerging without the need for imminent bloody revolution of the workers. All of this colors our understanding of Marxism in an important way. They’re worth considering when we think of the conditions leaders like Stalin and Mao encountered. It doesn’t excuse all their actions, but it does inform the very different choices they made. Eagleton argues their failures and crimes were attempts at Marxism, but not inevitable outcomes of Marxism.
Eagleton uses his book for more than an opportunity to push back against objections. He dives deep into Marx’s philosophical views of the Enlightenment and other ideas that steered his thinking. The section on what exactly “dialectical materialism” is, and isn’t, was one of the most useful explanations I’ve found. On the same note, he discusses how Marx viewed human nature and was actually quite suspicious of utopian thinking. Some of it’s definitely coming up in a debate with relatives at some Thanksgiving dinner or another. That’s just how it seems to go for me.
Marx doesn’t come across not as the jealous wannabe autocrat that capitalists caricature him to be. Instead he’s a deeply passionate, thoughtful and creative individual. He enjoyed life, championed the arts and free speech. He also occasionally got kicked out of bars for engaging in overzealous pub crawls. Like I said, Eagleton makes no pretensions toward Marx being perfect or polite, nor should he. When the author delves into what Marxism has to say about the human spirit – what we really want, and what we owe each other – he’s at peak effectiveness. The narrative he weaves almost always gets left on the cutting room floor when American teachers and media talk about socialism. Like Marx, Eagleton won’t ignore that we are physical beings that need resources to survive before we’re anything else. We need sustenance and shelter before we can strive to be anything more. In his words, “the economic is the foundation of our life together. It is the vital link between the biological and the spiritual.”
Still, at times I doubted Eagleton’s interpretation of Marx’s theories. or felt like I had to bookmark these points in order to seek more perspectives later on. Eagleton asserts that Marx was a firm defender of liberal political values like free expression. Still, he saw capitalist societies betray these ideals whenever they jeopardized the power of the ruling classes. I’ve read some Marx on my own. I suspect Marx’s showed real ambivalence and two-mindedness on this issue. He never rejected the liberal values of the Enlightenment or settled on how to integrate them into a socialist future. He wasn’t sure how to implement them for the benefit of all people. Nor did he know how to prevent capitalists from abusing them. At least, not without the same hypocrisy that capitalist governments engage in today. Another hangnail in the account given by Why Marx Was Right is how Eagleton describes Marx’s views on the state. What Eagleton gets right is that Marx detested the state as it was implemented in his time. He condemned its violent and coercive powers. Marx believed the state benefitted the ruling classes and oppressed the poor. He saw socialism as a temporary system. In it, the state would be wielded to abolish class and worker exploitation. At this point communism could take hold. Eventually, the coercive state itself would “wither away.” We’d be left with a system where the only government we need is a direct democratic sort. It’d be mostly administration to decide how goods and public resources get allocated. But then Eagleton says that we would still need police, courts, prisons and militias. I couldn’t help but place a large asterisk on my notes. Marx was vaguer about the future than he was about the clear and present flaws of the capitalist system. He expected future revolutionary movements to find the right strategies. They’d figure out how to balance these competing forces in their own time and place.
This is a deeply insightful book. It’s funny, inviting and informative about Marxism’s basic ideas. It also shows that Marxism still matters in the fights for gender and racial equality. The book would have benefited from a little more discussion of Marxist fundamentals. Chief among them is the Labor Theory of Value – I noticed this was mostly absent. Yet it’s essential to understanding Marx’s core arguments about worker exploitation. The book also stakes out some controversial positions that won’t make the entire left sing Eagleton’s praises. But with so much diversity in this movement and so much left to fight about, how couldn’t it? There remains so much left to explore, and so much left to fight for in Marx’s vision. This book still makes an invaluable contribution to understanding the next phase of history unfolding before us.
Why Marx Was Right
Professor Terry Eagleton skillfully refutes ten of the most common criticisms of Marxism. In the process, he exposes Karl Marx's freedom-loving, creative and occasionally hard-partying qualities.
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