Why Marx Was Right [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Terry Eagleton's "Why Marx Was Right" is a wonderfully written and accessible introduction to the thought of Karl Marx. It is fashionable to dismiss Marxism as "outdated" or "irrelevant" as it pertains to contemporary economic and political problems. Eagleton provides a much needed correction to this ignorant viewpoint.

Eagleton takes the many objections voiced by the enemies of Marxism (e.g. Marxism is "great in theory" but only leads to bloodshed; Marxism is utopian; Marxism reduces everything to economics; Marxism is deterministic, etc.) and demolishes them one by one. Here is Eagleton's take on those who hypocritically condemn Marxism as "bloodstained":

"Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union. Capitalism, too, was forged in blood and tears; it is just that it has survived long enough to forget about much of this horror, which is not the case with Stalinism and Maoism." (p. 12-13)

Ever argue with someone who claims that socialism is an "unrealizable utopia"? Here's Eagleton's answer:

"There is good reason that there can never be any complete reconciliation between the individual and society....Marx's claim in the Communist Manifesto about the free self-development of all can never be fully realized. Like all the finest ideals it is a goal to aim at, not a state to be literally achieved....Those who scoff at socialist ideals should remember that the free market can never be perfectly realized either...Some of those who claim that socialism is unworkable are confident that they can eradicate poverty, solve the global warming crisis, spread liberal democracy to Afghanistan and resolve world conflicts by UN resolutions. It is only socialism which for some mysterious reason is out of reach." (p. 87-88)

These are only two of the many criticisms demolished by Eagleton. "Why Marx Was Right" is an entertaining and informative defense of Marxism and its relevance for modern humans. Highly recommended!

I'll admit upfront that I haven't' read much of Marx or Engels directly - only the assigned pages way back in the haze of college years, which reading I poorly understood at the time and has long since drained from consciousness. Rectifying this gap is one of those things - along with running a marathon and organizing my closet - that I've been meaning to do for quite some time, but somehow hasn't happened yet. Therefore, it is quite handy to have a single volume reference guide to address the most common criticisms of Marx.

Eagleton breaks up the book into ten chapters, each of which purports to address one common criticism of Marx. The actual division is perhaps my biggest criticism of the book. While each chapter header does indeed give common criticism, and one certainly can't accuse Eagleton of creating strawmen to knock down, he does tend to lump too much into each critique.

Chapter Six, for instance, begins, "Marx was a materialist.... He was brutally dismissive of religion, and regarded morality simply as a question of the end justifying the means.... There is an obvious route from this dreary, soulless vision of humanity to the atrocities of Stalin and other disciples of Marx." There are several different themes running through that critique - materialism, religion, morality, and atrocities of Marx's avowed followers. Certainly, such themes are all arguably related, but trying to address them all together makes it rather confusing to remember exactly what critique Eagleton is rebutting. Several times I found myself flipping back to the beginning of the chapter to refresh my memory. Also, it makes the book rather repetitive because many themes end up getting addressed in several sections. It seems that Eagleton could have done a better job of breaking up the individual critiques into more discreet chapters.

But beyond my complaint about the organization, Eagleton's content is masterful. He does an excellent job of demonstrating how Marx's critics contradict themselves, how they (often intentionally) misunderstand and distort Marx's message into the exact opposite, and how they project many of the faults of capitalism - conformity and rigidity, among others - onto Marxism.

I can't say that this book converted me to Marxism (not that I was ever anti-Marxist to begin with - the idea of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" has always sounded appealing, if rather idealistic). To be fair, Eagleton himself is not a Marx literalist; he too finds faults with Marx's thinking. But the book helped to clarify the depth and richness of Marxist thought which is so often parodied and pigeon-holed. Whether you are a life-long socialist or an ardent capitalist, I recommend this book. You may not - probably won't - agree with everything it has to say, but if you read it with an open mind, it should broaden your understanding of Marxism/socialism/communism, which have become so distorted in the popular mind that they are almost as frightening as "Islamofascism".

Presumably, readers of this book fall into two broadly defined categories: 1) avid students of Marx looking for further insights, perspectives and heretofore unnoticed nuances of the dialectical materialist analysis of economics and 2) those driven to alternative analysis of the recurrent and increasingly devastating financial debacles assailing the world's capitalist economies. Regrettably, Eagleton's book will likely fail to satisfy the interest or needs of either category of reader.

This book is difficult to review without mentioning certain specifics, many of which undermine its central premises. Beginning with Eagleton's assertion that capitalism has "delivered the goods" (so to say) with regard to providing the material wealth on which the socialist transition is predicated: no doubt about that, at least in the West. Next, the notion of "class solidarity" on which both Eagleton and Marx base the socialist imperative: this has been refuted by the trajectory of human economic and social behavior repeatedly and irrefutably throughout the course of history. Why, for instance, would Russia (nexus of the former USSR) have evolved from a flawed version of "socialism" into a state capitalist, authoritarian, highly nationalist, corrupt nation instead of a better socialist one? Is the current version of Chinese "Communism" any less rapacious and predatory than the Western version of "market capitalism"? Why no evolution to benign socialism in these or other members of the former "Communist Block"? This begs the question, as the answer is, of course, the avarice that appears fundamental to human nature; enlightened (or not-so-enlightened) self-interest trumps putative class consciousness (a concept still awaiting empirical validation) each and every time.

Eagleton repeatedly asserts that Marx, as a thinker, has been "travestied": in fact, that's the basis for the book. Doubtlessly that's correct as a generality, but unfortunately for this argument, many highly sophisticated students of Marxist theory (Lenin, Trotsky and legions of others) derived remarkably consistent conclusions from his works and these, each and every one of them, are diametrically opposite from those posited by Eagleton. However perverted in implementation, the central tenants of Marxism as understood by its most prominent practitioners probably helps explain why 20th century socialist states were so uniform in their general modes of governance.

The ineluctable progression of economic systems (simplified version:feudalism;industiral capitalism; bourgeoise parliamentary democracy; transition stage to socialism via the "dictatorship of the proletariat"; culminating in communism) is the core of Marx's dialectic. But the "scientific" analysis so carefully cultivated and repeatedly asserted by Marx with its significant authoritarian overtones is dismissed as a misconstruction by Eagleton. The repeated and starkly authoritarian statements by Marx (such as this one, "We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror", from ''Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe", 1849) are simply elided. Not to be pedantic nor to claim authority as a Marxist scholar, but having read, amongst others, "Capital", "The Communist Manifesto", "The Eighteenth Brumaire"; works by and on Trotsky, Marx, Stalin and Thornton Anderson's (highly recommended) but long out-of-print survey of the "Masters of Russian Marxism" (Plekhanov through Lenin, Martov, Trotsky, Kollontai, Bukharin, Stalin and Khruschchev) myself, I believe Eagleton is oftentimes incorrect when asserting his alternative and squishy humanistic interpretation of Marx.

A major thesis presented in "Why Marx Was Right" is that Marx posits a society of individuals in complete harmony with society (some sort of organic social unity): this is known as "the collective". That is accurate, with qualifications. Eagleton acknowledges that, "There is good reason to suspect that there can never be any complete reconciliation between individuals and society..." but fails to note that this concept has also served as the underpinning for all sorts of "social engineering" efforts, including those of radical Right movements (Nazism, for instance) as well as the radical Left: attempts to implement such a society have fallen afoul of individual rights with horrible and often-times barbaric consequences.

Marx's insights and abundant writing on the invidious aspects of religion (which, contrary to reasonable expectations for human progress, continues to assert its baleful effects on social, political and economic harmony) are inaccurately portrayed by Eagleton. Marx wrote, "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." (Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843). It follows directly from this that religion ought to evaporate along with capitalism because the oppressed are no longer suffering under the socialist/communist system. But, Eagleton himself has religious proclivities of his own to protect, perhaps accounting for his tangential mention (and incorrect interpretation) of Marx's accurate assertion that religion is both an instrument for and expression of class repression.

Marx was famously, absolutely and demonstrably correct on one salient aspect of capitalism: its inherent instability with its resulting disruptive social effects. The fatuous notion that "unfettered and self-correcting" markets, as so stridently advanced by current-generation Republicans has, as any sentient observer can see, been utterly discredited by recent events. The "virtuous" concept of the "Great (capitalist) Moderation" has been utterly discredited, as well. Based on its present destabilizing trajectory, it seems quite likely that capitalism will provoke ever increasing social, economic and environmental crises and, in so doing, fulfill at least one of Marx's principle predictions. The question remains: What follows?

Eagleton correctly notes that the property-owning middle class (the "bourgeoisie", in common parlance) is rapidly evaporating. Many governments have enthusiastically espoused the most predatory forms of capitalism, becoming indistinguishable from the moneyed interests they represent. In concert with that expected development, the concept of social democracy has fallen into the dust as the global scramble for profit homogenizes, marginalizes and eliminates security for the bulk of the people, both in financial and social terms. So, Eagleton accurately characterizes governments as protectors of the propertied "classes" (a term he does not define until chapter 7 and then, for the "proletariat" in such a way as to dilute the term to the point of meaninglessness) but he often fails to coherently carry his arguments on to logical conclusions. Many astringent comments by Marx could have been selected to buttress the text, but Eagleton's digressions and pseudo-philosophical tangents confuse the issues. Much more trenchant criticisms of capitalism in its current forms have been made by highly respected "mainstream" economists, including John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini, all to better effect than Eagleton's efforts.

According to Eagleton, "Capitalist society generates enormous wealth, but in a way that cannot help putting it beyond the reach of most of its citizens. Even so, that wealth can always be brought within reach. It can be disentangled from the acquisitive, individualist forms which bred it, invested in the community as a whole and used to restrict disagreeable work to a minimum" (chapter 3). This is obviously true and the logical conclusion from it is that wealth should be "re-distributed", either by policy (taxation) or by force. The problem is that, by Eagleton (and Marx's) own admission, the necessary predicate for a socialist society is one of material abundance and the ever disagreeable "haves" do not want to relinquish their perquisites to the "have nots": so, trouble and violence loom, especially as resources vanish. In this case, Thomas Malthus appears more prescient than Karl Marx: population increases beyond the carrying capacity of the planet and increasing competition over ever-declining resource pools (witness Chinese capitalism at work in Africa, for instance) strongly suggest a major catastrophe is looming; in other words, a socialist utopia based on "plenty" is not likely on the horizon. This, in my estimation, is the major flaw in Marx's (and Eagleton's) thinking.

In summary, Marx was, beyond any doubt, an important thinker whose impact can scarcely be minimized...in some cases for better and in many cases for worse. Nonetheless, at least in the immediate future, a more practical and pragmatic solution to the problem of capitalism can be found in the much-reviled (by strict Marxist thinkers, anyhow) Social Democratic approach, which is, in my estimation, best encapsulated in the motto of the Dutch Labor Party: "Freedom, democracy, justice, sustainability and solidarity. These are the ideals of Social Democracy". I highly recommend their succinctly and lucidly stated party platform. Regrettably, while this approach may work for the EU and (hopefully) for the US for the near-term future, I'd bet on world-wide disaster in line with Malthus' predictions on the longer-term horizon. I suspect we will not realize a communist utopia as Eagleton tepidly and uninspiringly imagines in this book, but rather a dystopian and authoritarian future riven by conflict driven by shortages, religious, ethnic, nationalistic and regressive capitalist forces.