Socialism or Barbarism.

• Author: Burke, R.
• Position: Why Marx Was Right - Book review

Why Marx Was Right, by Terry Eagleton, Yale University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-300-16943-0, 258 pages, $25.00.

Along with Slavoj Zizek and Antonio Negri, Terry Eagleton is one of the better known figures of the Marxist left. In some ways this is ironic, considering that his 2008 book Reason, Faith, and Revolution is a devastating critique of the "new atheists" Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. His latest work, Why Marx Was Right, is an insightful, humorous, and informative defense of Marxism. Eagleton has produced what may be the best argument for socialism to be offered in recent years.

Eagleton, a Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and Notre Dame, has undertaken to clear the record regarding the continued relevance of Marx's work. Considering the recent financial crisis, as well as the fact that we see an increasing reversion to the style of capitalism practiced in his day, there is indeed a strong case for Marx.

The book is divided into 10 chapters, each of which takes on a popular misconception of Marx's work. Eagleton does not defend Marx in a fundamentalist sense. "No Freudian imagines Freud never blundered, just as no fan of Alfred Hitchcock defends the master's every shot and line of screenplay. I am out to present Marx's ideas not as perfect but as plausible."

Beginning with the question of why Marxism is considered to be outdated, Eagleton demonstrates that this cannot be because capitalism has improved or advanced in some revolutionary way. The answer, he concludes, has something to do with the recognition of just how hard it is, and how long it will take, to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism. In some ways the problem is connected with a collective disappointment in the wake of the heady Utopian hopes roused in the 60s. The irony is that Marx is "accused of being outdated by the champions of a capitalism rapidly reverting to Victorian levels of inequality."

Eagleton is masterful in his critique of claims that Marxism is inherently tyrannical and murderous. He reminds us that "[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."

Capitalism was responsible for "the tens of millions of Indians, Africans, Chinese, Brazilians...