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Why Marx Was Right
In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are. In a world in which capitalism has been shaken to its roots by some major crises, Why Marx Was Right is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia.
258 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2011
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About the author
Terry Eagleton
154books1,219followersWidely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.
He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.
He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.
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December 28, 2015
This is a fabulous book. It’s not an apology for Marxism but rather a reinvigoration of the original philosophy of the man, a philosophy which has been unfairly maligned over the last century due mainly to the twin state-capitalist monstrosities built in its name by Stalin and Mao. There is nothing in Marx’s writing that leads one to think of state terror and closed societies, quite the contrary.
In this book, Eagleton takes a different, commonly held criticism about Marxism for each chapter heading and then explains why this view is misguided or, mostly, false. As usual his writing comes across as fully rounded and inclusive � he never backs away from admitting when the critics may have a point but neither does he shy away from slamming them when their facts are clearly awry. I was impressed at the careful and deliberate way in which the author picks through each explanation, each question that the text raises being fully answered at a later point in the chapter. Terry Eagleton also has a natural humor, which makes some of the more difficult themes seemingly easier to process.
It’s fairly easy for modern Marxists to criticize Stalin’s Russia and Maoist China, as they clearly have more to do with right-wing totalitarianism than they have with true socialism. But what is more difficult for the average Marxist is to have the tools to argue down some of the more shrill criticisms that we have to endure � this book provides a great toolkit and allows the reader to think “No, I’m not abnormal for believing in these ideas�.
It’s clear to me that the reason Marx’s ideas are slammed and ridiculed by the current ruling classes is not because they’re wrong but because the ruling elite, like Terry Eagleton, knows exactly ‘Why Marx Was Right�.
In this book, Eagleton takes a different, commonly held criticism about Marxism for each chapter heading and then explains why this view is misguided or, mostly, false. As usual his writing comes across as fully rounded and inclusive � he never backs away from admitting when the critics may have a point but neither does he shy away from slamming them when their facts are clearly awry. I was impressed at the careful and deliberate way in which the author picks through each explanation, each question that the text raises being fully answered at a later point in the chapter. Terry Eagleton also has a natural humor, which makes some of the more difficult themes seemingly easier to process.
It’s fairly easy for modern Marxists to criticize Stalin’s Russia and Maoist China, as they clearly have more to do with right-wing totalitarianism than they have with true socialism. But what is more difficult for the average Marxist is to have the tools to argue down some of the more shrill criticisms that we have to endure � this book provides a great toolkit and allows the reader to think “No, I’m not abnormal for believing in these ideas�.
It’s clear to me that the reason Marx’s ideas are slammed and ridiculed by the current ruling classes is not because they’re wrong but because the ruling elite, like Terry Eagleton, knows exactly ‘Why Marx Was Right�.
January 11, 2013
Ever need a handy compendium to use when you were in discussions with tiresome right-wingers about how Marx and Marxism was a “Fatal Conceit� or “The Road to Serfdom�? (The quoted references are, of course, to anti-socialist tracts by F. A. Hayek.) Well, if you live in the United States, there would be plenty of individuals who would so debate you. But then again, probably not so many of you would want to. But, for those who would, Terry Eagleton has provided such a compendium. His new book, Why Marx Was Right, provides thoughtful and often amusing responses to ten common objections to Marx and Marxism. Each chapter addresses one of these claims:
1) Marxism’s time has passed. We are in a post-industrial, classless world now.
2) Marxism may be well in theory, but whenever it has been put into practice, the result has been terror, tyranny, and mass murder.
3) Marxism is a form of determinism. It doesn’t allow for human freedom.
4) Marxism is a dream of utopia. It believes in the possibility of a perfect society. In reality, humans are naturally selfish, aggressive, and competitive.
5) Marxism reduces everything to economics. Marx was simply an inverted image of the capitalist system he opposed.
6) Marx was a materialist. He had no interest in the spiritual aspects of humanity.
7) Marx was tediously obsessed with class. Nothing could be more out-dated.
8) Marxists are advocates of violent political action. They reject a sensible course of moderate reform. The end justifies the means. This is why so many lives were ground out by the communist revolutions of the twentieth century.
9) Marxism believes in an all-powerful state. Liberal democracy may have its faults, but it is much better than being locked up in an psychiatric hospital for daring to criticize an authoritarian government.
10) The most interesting radical movements of the last four decades have grown up outside Marxism. Feminism, environmentalism, gay rights, ethnic politics, the peace movement; all of these have left Marxism behind.
For each of these objections, Eagleton rehearses replies, often with great humor, always with great sympathy for the man, Karl Marx. His method usually includes one or more of the following: 1) Pointing out that the claim is irrelevant to what Marx actually said, 2) Recognizing the truth in the claim and demonstrating how this truth is compatible with what Marx actually said, 3) Pointing out that the negative consequences highlighted in the claim apply often more strongly to capitalism than to socialism, or 4) Pointing out that the claim is untrue.
I won’t try to rehearse his replies to all of these claims but will focus in on two: Claim Number 8 and Claim Number 2.
Claim Number 8 � Marxists are advocates of violence
Eagleton’s full statement of this objection is as follows:
"Marxists are advocates of violent political action. They reject a sensible course of moderate, piecemeal reform and opt instead for the bloodstained chaos of revolution. A small band of insurrectionists will rise up, overthrow the state and impose its will on the majority. This is one of several senses in which Marxism and democracy are at daggers drawn. Because they despise morality as much as mere ideology, Marxists are not especially troubled by the mayhem their politics would unleash on the population. The end justifies the means, however many lives may be lost in the process."
Eagleton’s approach here is first to point out that many reform movements that did not lead to revolution, including the US civil rights movement and liberal reform movements in Latin America during the nineteenth century, in fact involved brutal violence initiated by the government to which the reform movement was opposed. In addition, many actual revolutions, including the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the subsequent fall of the Communist state in the Soviet Union 70 years later, were accomplished with little blood being spilled. Of course a bloody civil war followed the Bolshevik revolution, as the new social order came under attack by conservative forces in Russian society, with support from the Western powers. While Eagleton recognizes that Stalin and Mao Zedong were “mass murderers on an almost unimaginable scale� he points out that the severest critics of Stalinism have been Marxists (he is thinking of Trotsky).
A general line of response that Eagleton doesn’t make much of is to consider the death and destruction resulting from NOT having a revolution. This is the tack taken by Barrington Moore in his study of revolutions, Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. Moore’s book studied revolutions: Capitalist revolutions in Britain, France, and the United States; Fascist revolutions in Germany and Japan; and Communist revolutions in China and Russia. Moore compares the death and suffering resulting from the violent modernization instrumented by Mao to the equally destructive suffering that is still going on in India, where a socialist revolution has not (yet) taken place.
Eagleton does mention the destruction of Dresden and Hiroshima (he doesn’t mention the bombing of Tokyo), bloody suppression of colonial uprisings in African and South Asia, and the million deaths in the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, which he attributes in large measure to the fact that �. . . the British government of the day insisted on observing the laws of the free market in its lamentable relief policy.� He writes that “Marx writes with scarcely suppressed outrage in Capital of the bloody, protracted process by which the English peasantry were driven from the land (during the enclosures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century). It is this history of violent expropriation which lies beneath the tranquility of the English rural landscape. Compared to this horrendous episode, one which stretched over a lengthy period of time, an event like the Cuban revolution was a tea party.�
A last line of discussion in this chapter is to the effect that Marx himself and many followers were not opposed to peaceful reform in countries like England, Holland, and the United States. Believing, as they did, that the best interests of the majority of the populations of these capitalist societies were not served by the ongoing march of capitalism to mechanization, unemployment, and regular crisis, Marx and Engels supported reform movements and at times allowed that these could lead to a non-violent revolution in the ownership of social production. The owners of these enterprises, however, protected by the state, have had no such intention.
Claim Number 2 � Theory and practice of Marxism
An important element of the argument in favor of capitalism is the claim that it has “delivered the goods�; that it is the most efficient system for generation of the surplus that can make mankind’s life on this planet less harsh. These goods include not just pop tarts and video games, but a heritage of “liberty, democracy, civil rights, feminism, republicanism, scientific progress, and a good deal more.�
Marx, of course, agreed. He “never imagined that socialism could be achieved in impoverished conditions� nor that it could be achieved in isolated. backward countries in the face of imperialist capitalist opposition. And while the communist governments of Eastern Europe managed to provide “cheap housing, fuel, transport and culture, full employments and impressive social services for half the citizens of Europe, as well as an incomparably greater degree of equality and (in the end) material well-being than those nations had previously enjoyed� the “gains of Communism scarcely outweighed the losses. It may be that some kind of dictatorial government was well-nigh inevitable in the atrocious conditions of the early Soviet Union; but this did not have to mean Stalinism, or anything like it. Taken overall, Maoism and Stalinism were botched, bloody experiments which made the very of idea of socialism stink in the nostrils of many of those elsewhere in the world who had most to benefit from it.�
Capitalism has worked to deliver the goods. But to whom, how, and at what cost? It has produced fabulous affluence very unequally divided. While multi-billionaires purchase islands in the Caribbean or (to their taste) mount widespread charitable campaigns, a staggering 2/3 of the world’s population today subsist on less than $2 dollars per day and, even in the richest capitalist country, the United States, immense wealth exists side by side with crushing poverty, made worse by periodic crises and an overarching tendency to unemployment for more and more members of the society. The question is rarely asked why a society that requires charity to feed its poor is justified in calling itself a successful one. Capitalism faces the greatest contradiction today that it, more and more, both does and does not need human beings. While it has delivered the goods outlined above, it has also brought us “a history of slumps, sweatshops, fascism, imperial wars, and Mel Gibson.�(!)
What is worse, the un-checked greed for resources that capitalism celebrates is threatening today to consume the entire planet. Eagleton quotes economist Slavov Zizek to the effect that climate change may be seen as “the greatest market failure in history.�
Eagleton’s closing consideration in this chapter is to try to visualize how the incentive qualities of the market could be combined with democratic control of socialized production. He considers a mixed socialist market economy in which “goods which are of vital concern to the community (food, health, pharmaceuticals, education, transport, energy, subsistence products, financial institutions, the media and the like) need to be brought under democratic public control, since those who run them tend to behave antisocially if they sniff the chance of enlarged profits in doing so. Less socially indispensable goods, however (consumer items, luxury products), could be left to the operations of the market.�
In the end, Eagleton recognizes that this is a work in progress. “Socialists will no doubt continue to argue about the detail of a post-capitalist economy. There is no flawless model currently on offer.�
Conclusion
In his brief concluding remarks he summarizes his arguments. “Marx had a passionate faith in the individual and a deep suspicion of abstract dogma. He had no time for the concept of a perfect society, was wary of the notion of equality, and did not dream of a future in which we would all wear boiler suits with our National Insurance numbers stamped on our backs. It was diversity, not uniformity, that he hoped to see. Nor did he teach that men and women were the helpless playthings of history. He was even more hostile to the state than right-wing conservatives are, and saw socialism as a deepening of democracy, not as an enemy of it. His model of the good life was based on the idea of artistic self-expression. He believed that some revolutions might be peacefully accomplished, and was in no sense opposed to social reform. He did not focus narrowly on the manual working class. Nor did he see society in terms of two starkly polarized classes.�
He ends his book with the question, “Was ever a thinker so travestied?� There are many possible alternate candidates here (Jesus of Nazareth, anyone?) but Eagleton has provided a brisk and convincing argument to for his case for “why Marx was right.�
1) Marxism’s time has passed. We are in a post-industrial, classless world now.
2) Marxism may be well in theory, but whenever it has been put into practice, the result has been terror, tyranny, and mass murder.
3) Marxism is a form of determinism. It doesn’t allow for human freedom.
4) Marxism is a dream of utopia. It believes in the possibility of a perfect society. In reality, humans are naturally selfish, aggressive, and competitive.
5) Marxism reduces everything to economics. Marx was simply an inverted image of the capitalist system he opposed.
6) Marx was a materialist. He had no interest in the spiritual aspects of humanity.
7) Marx was tediously obsessed with class. Nothing could be more out-dated.
8) Marxists are advocates of violent political action. They reject a sensible course of moderate reform. The end justifies the means. This is why so many lives were ground out by the communist revolutions of the twentieth century.
9) Marxism believes in an all-powerful state. Liberal democracy may have its faults, but it is much better than being locked up in an psychiatric hospital for daring to criticize an authoritarian government.
10) The most interesting radical movements of the last four decades have grown up outside Marxism. Feminism, environmentalism, gay rights, ethnic politics, the peace movement; all of these have left Marxism behind.
For each of these objections, Eagleton rehearses replies, often with great humor, always with great sympathy for the man, Karl Marx. His method usually includes one or more of the following: 1) Pointing out that the claim is irrelevant to what Marx actually said, 2) Recognizing the truth in the claim and demonstrating how this truth is compatible with what Marx actually said, 3) Pointing out that the negative consequences highlighted in the claim apply often more strongly to capitalism than to socialism, or 4) Pointing out that the claim is untrue.
I won’t try to rehearse his replies to all of these claims but will focus in on two: Claim Number 8 and Claim Number 2.
Claim Number 8 � Marxists are advocates of violence
Eagleton’s full statement of this objection is as follows:
"Marxists are advocates of violent political action. They reject a sensible course of moderate, piecemeal reform and opt instead for the bloodstained chaos of revolution. A small band of insurrectionists will rise up, overthrow the state and impose its will on the majority. This is one of several senses in which Marxism and democracy are at daggers drawn. Because they despise morality as much as mere ideology, Marxists are not especially troubled by the mayhem their politics would unleash on the population. The end justifies the means, however many lives may be lost in the process."
Eagleton’s approach here is first to point out that many reform movements that did not lead to revolution, including the US civil rights movement and liberal reform movements in Latin America during the nineteenth century, in fact involved brutal violence initiated by the government to which the reform movement was opposed. In addition, many actual revolutions, including the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the subsequent fall of the Communist state in the Soviet Union 70 years later, were accomplished with little blood being spilled. Of course a bloody civil war followed the Bolshevik revolution, as the new social order came under attack by conservative forces in Russian society, with support from the Western powers. While Eagleton recognizes that Stalin and Mao Zedong were “mass murderers on an almost unimaginable scale� he points out that the severest critics of Stalinism have been Marxists (he is thinking of Trotsky).
A general line of response that Eagleton doesn’t make much of is to consider the death and destruction resulting from NOT having a revolution. This is the tack taken by Barrington Moore in his study of revolutions, Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. Moore’s book studied revolutions: Capitalist revolutions in Britain, France, and the United States; Fascist revolutions in Germany and Japan; and Communist revolutions in China and Russia. Moore compares the death and suffering resulting from the violent modernization instrumented by Mao to the equally destructive suffering that is still going on in India, where a socialist revolution has not (yet) taken place.
Eagleton does mention the destruction of Dresden and Hiroshima (he doesn’t mention the bombing of Tokyo), bloody suppression of colonial uprisings in African and South Asia, and the million deaths in the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, which he attributes in large measure to the fact that �. . . the British government of the day insisted on observing the laws of the free market in its lamentable relief policy.� He writes that “Marx writes with scarcely suppressed outrage in Capital of the bloody, protracted process by which the English peasantry were driven from the land (during the enclosures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century). It is this history of violent expropriation which lies beneath the tranquility of the English rural landscape. Compared to this horrendous episode, one which stretched over a lengthy period of time, an event like the Cuban revolution was a tea party.�
A last line of discussion in this chapter is to the effect that Marx himself and many followers were not opposed to peaceful reform in countries like England, Holland, and the United States. Believing, as they did, that the best interests of the majority of the populations of these capitalist societies were not served by the ongoing march of capitalism to mechanization, unemployment, and regular crisis, Marx and Engels supported reform movements and at times allowed that these could lead to a non-violent revolution in the ownership of social production. The owners of these enterprises, however, protected by the state, have had no such intention.
Claim Number 2 � Theory and practice of Marxism
An important element of the argument in favor of capitalism is the claim that it has “delivered the goods�; that it is the most efficient system for generation of the surplus that can make mankind’s life on this planet less harsh. These goods include not just pop tarts and video games, but a heritage of “liberty, democracy, civil rights, feminism, republicanism, scientific progress, and a good deal more.�
Marx, of course, agreed. He “never imagined that socialism could be achieved in impoverished conditions� nor that it could be achieved in isolated. backward countries in the face of imperialist capitalist opposition. And while the communist governments of Eastern Europe managed to provide “cheap housing, fuel, transport and culture, full employments and impressive social services for half the citizens of Europe, as well as an incomparably greater degree of equality and (in the end) material well-being than those nations had previously enjoyed� the “gains of Communism scarcely outweighed the losses. It may be that some kind of dictatorial government was well-nigh inevitable in the atrocious conditions of the early Soviet Union; but this did not have to mean Stalinism, or anything like it. Taken overall, Maoism and Stalinism were botched, bloody experiments which made the very of idea of socialism stink in the nostrils of many of those elsewhere in the world who had most to benefit from it.�
Capitalism has worked to deliver the goods. But to whom, how, and at what cost? It has produced fabulous affluence very unequally divided. While multi-billionaires purchase islands in the Caribbean or (to their taste) mount widespread charitable campaigns, a staggering 2/3 of the world’s population today subsist on less than $2 dollars per day and, even in the richest capitalist country, the United States, immense wealth exists side by side with crushing poverty, made worse by periodic crises and an overarching tendency to unemployment for more and more members of the society. The question is rarely asked why a society that requires charity to feed its poor is justified in calling itself a successful one. Capitalism faces the greatest contradiction today that it, more and more, both does and does not need human beings. While it has delivered the goods outlined above, it has also brought us “a history of slumps, sweatshops, fascism, imperial wars, and Mel Gibson.�(!)
What is worse, the un-checked greed for resources that capitalism celebrates is threatening today to consume the entire planet. Eagleton quotes economist Slavov Zizek to the effect that climate change may be seen as “the greatest market failure in history.�
Eagleton’s closing consideration in this chapter is to try to visualize how the incentive qualities of the market could be combined with democratic control of socialized production. He considers a mixed socialist market economy in which “goods which are of vital concern to the community (food, health, pharmaceuticals, education, transport, energy, subsistence products, financial institutions, the media and the like) need to be brought under democratic public control, since those who run them tend to behave antisocially if they sniff the chance of enlarged profits in doing so. Less socially indispensable goods, however (consumer items, luxury products), could be left to the operations of the market.�
In the end, Eagleton recognizes that this is a work in progress. “Socialists will no doubt continue to argue about the detail of a post-capitalist economy. There is no flawless model currently on offer.�
Conclusion
In his brief concluding remarks he summarizes his arguments. “Marx had a passionate faith in the individual and a deep suspicion of abstract dogma. He had no time for the concept of a perfect society, was wary of the notion of equality, and did not dream of a future in which we would all wear boiler suits with our National Insurance numbers stamped on our backs. It was diversity, not uniformity, that he hoped to see. Nor did he teach that men and women were the helpless playthings of history. He was even more hostile to the state than right-wing conservatives are, and saw socialism as a deepening of democracy, not as an enemy of it. His model of the good life was based on the idea of artistic self-expression. He believed that some revolutions might be peacefully accomplished, and was in no sense opposed to social reform. He did not focus narrowly on the manual working class. Nor did he see society in terms of two starkly polarized classes.�
He ends his book with the question, “Was ever a thinker so travestied?� There are many possible alternate candidates here (Jesus of Nazareth, anyone?) but Eagleton has provided a brisk and convincing argument to for his case for “why Marx was right.�
November 3, 2024
3.5 stars. The author shows his knowledge on Marxism and he answers a number of frequently asked questions concerning Marxism in the 21st century societies, he gives out understandable, reasonable explanation as much as he can. However, despite the author's reader-friendly and humorous tone, Marxism is complicated, it's still difficult to understand, you have to have basic knowledge about the topics to understand this book and sometimes the author sounds a bit too smug and too sure of himself (I'm not bothered by his tone, but I'm sure some readers would), I have to wonder how many non-Marxists/non-socialists are going to agree Marx was right after they finish this book.
Anyway, Marxism will still be around because capitalism is still alive and kicking and its many failures are still haunting our societies.
Anyway, Marxism will still be around because capitalism is still alive and kicking and its many failures are still haunting our societies.
February 11, 2017
I have no notion why the publisher's sought to sell this perfectly reasonable book as "controversial". It is in no way shocking. It is a measured account of a very good thinker. It does contain some of Eagleton's (chiefly) decent jokes, which I always enjoyed as a student when reading his famous, and useful, companion to literary criticism. Otherwise, nothing outrageous to see here but a great synopsis for the Marxist beginner.
This is a marvellous introduction to Marxist thought. I imagine it would work especially well for those with an interest in moral philosophy and/or literary criticism. If you're approaching Marx from an artsy Western perspective, Terry is your guy. It ain't perfect for those seeking an economic synopsis of MCM and what-have-you. But for them, there's David Harvey.
That there is minimal recourse to quotation and Marxist terminology here was a really good decision, I think. Eagleton lures you into the point where you *get* dialectical materialism, and by the time he mentions that phrase, you don't even mind it's so long. Because it makes perfect sense. Because Marx largely makes perfect sense.
Make the idiot in your life read this today.
This is a marvellous introduction to Marxist thought. I imagine it would work especially well for those with an interest in moral philosophy and/or literary criticism. If you're approaching Marx from an artsy Western perspective, Terry is your guy. It ain't perfect for those seeking an economic synopsis of MCM and what-have-you. But for them, there's David Harvey.
That there is minimal recourse to quotation and Marxist terminology here was a really good decision, I think. Eagleton lures you into the point where you *get* dialectical materialism, and by the time he mentions that phrase, you don't even mind it's so long. Because it makes perfect sense. Because Marx largely makes perfect sense.
Make the idiot in your life read this today.
February 9, 2020
2019 Re-read and review:
First off: I could do with a less clownishly strident, destined-to-be-polarizing cover. I already own the more sedate earlier hardcover, and this one is fated to be given to a friend!
Seriously now, though: this book aims to engage a particular kind of reader: one for whom Marx is neither an unquestioned (and unquestionable) star in the firmament of European intellectual history, nor an unreadable, unfathomable, aberrant abomination and father of unspeakable horror. The potential reader of this book, then, may not have read much of Marx, but has read widely enough (or whose mind has nevertheless been opened widely enough) to know that (1) Marx is not responsible for Stalin and Mao, (& etc.), and that (2) Marx just might have something to say about what used to be called Political Economy and what now just goes by the misleading name of The Economy, as if it were as much a part of the natural order of things as those dang sun spots that seem to be causing all those hot summers that we've been strangely having lately. In short, the potential reader of this book has noticed that enough not-so-great stuff has been going on in the post-2008 (not to mention post-1989, -1973, -1968, -1929, -1919, -1865, -1848, -1789, etc. Etc. Etc) world to ask the question: well, was Marx right about much, if anything?
To this question Terry Eagleton answers both an unqualified "You bet!", as well as a qualified "But...".
He seeks to rescue Marx both from the hysterical claims made about him by foaming-at-the-mouth detractors on the right and from the pooh-poohing and tut-tutting types from the cultural studies/postcolonial/postmodernist so-called left. He also wants to defend him from his most ardent defenders, seeking to situate him as a, yes, Eurocentric, yes, patriarchal, yes Enlightenment-"blinded" dead white male who nevertheless still has a lot to teach us if we listen to him with a broad, healthily skeptical mind--and if we care about intellectual honesty enough to look dispassionately at what he wrote by reading him closely, but in the context of the world in which he operated, a world of industrial capitalism that was both good enough for its achievements to be rightly celebrated and bad enough for its atrocities to be justly and loudly condemned. He was a limited but brilliant man who started a long conversation about the relationship between economic class and political power which was also necessarily about ethics, (human) nature, gender, race and aesthetics. Crucially, it also was (and still is) a conversation that is necessarily ongoing, ambiguous, and contradictory--as well as one which is not served in any way whatsoever by the sound bite or by reflexive knee-jerky slogans.
Principally, then, Eagleton wants to save this ongoing conversation from certain key errors, and accordingly addresses his attention to the most glaring of criticisms leveled at Marxist thought, at marx himslef, and at socialism in general over the decades since his career as a thoroughly engaged writer and activist was started. These are, in brief:
(1) Marxism is an antiquated philosophy which is no longer "relevant" to 21C issues and concerns
(2) However appealing Marxism may have been in theory, in practice it has been nothing short of a disaster
(3) Since Marxist is a determinist philosophy, it is offensive to human freedom
(4) Marxism is a Utopian dream that cannot adequately deal with the realities of human nature
(5) Marxism erroneously reduces the plurality of human culture and history to one dimension: the economic
(6) Marxism's materialism cannot speak to the whole of the human spirit, and dismisses religion as a mere pipe-dream or as wish-fulfillment
(7) The very notions of economic class and class struggle are seriously out of date in a post-industrial, globalised world
(8) Marxism is an inherently violent philosophy, one for which the end always justifies the means
(9) Marxism happily jettisons individual liberty in favour of the dictatorship of an all-powerful, overarching State
(10) Other criticisms of capitalism, patriarchy and racism have superseded Marxism, which is stuck in the Eurocentric, patriarchal, racist colonialist meta-narrative of the 18C Enlightenment.
Eagleton is remarkably thorough and even-handed in dealing with all of these criticisms, and makes cogent, unhysterical, careful arguments in his responses to them--no straw men are erected to easily, hand-wavingly and dismissively dispatch in this volume, which is why I find it so exciting, as it opens up so many doors to further discussion and closes down none of them. What's more, wherever Marx is short-sighted, limited in his analysis or just plain wrong in his understanding of the world, Eagleton warmly and, er, eagerly reproves him for it, but never, not once, out of a spirit of one-upmanship or gainsaying.
So this is not really the polemic that I thought it would be when I started reading it, and is less like The Communist Manifesto in style than an Apologia Pro Vita Sua written with the kind of scrupulous lack of axe-grinding that you find in, e.g. and John Stuart Mill's On Bentham and Coleridge. It just plain excites one's love of learning to read it, and begs you to go on to read other books by or on Marx and Political Economy after you have closed its pages. I can easily imagine it as serving as a prefatory book in a course called "An Introduction to the History*** of Political Economy" if such a one were to exist--if one did, in fact, it just might include such books as (in rough order of composition):
Smith, Adam
Marx,
Weber, Max
Veblen, Thorstein
Hayek, Friedrich
Polanyi, Karl
Braudel, Fernand
Harvey, David
Perelman, Michael,
Brenner, Robert
Meiksins-Wood, Ellen
I have read some of these books, and have dipped into others, but would love to take that course!
(Feel free to add suggestions!) Would someone out there care to teach it? We can get goin on one of those online MOOC thingys (Massive Open Online Course) that all the kiddz these daze are into!
***In my impecunious post-student life I toiled away in a university bookstore, and one day was instructed to move all of the books on the history of economics out of the economics section and into the history section of the store: the professor teaching the course was, I was told, invited to move from the one department to the other because Economics no longer saw itself as a social science but as a science proper! This all occurred, of course, in the wake of a particular historical event (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the spread of a particular idea (The End of History). We know far better now of course, with nearly 20 years between the beginning of permanent prosperity and its demise. This book is for anyone who has been trained by recent history to want to think historically, dialectically, subtly, measuredly, and critically on matters political, economic, and human.
5* of its kind, then minus 1/2 *, perhaps, for not including a chapter specifically on Marx's economics (Labour theory of Value etc. etc)
[A "Digested Read" orMidrash or synopsis on this book is forthcoming on my personal site...]
First off: I could do with a less clownishly strident, destined-to-be-polarizing cover. I already own the more sedate earlier hardcover, and this one is fated to be given to a friend!
Seriously now, though: this book aims to engage a particular kind of reader: one for whom Marx is neither an unquestioned (and unquestionable) star in the firmament of European intellectual history, nor an unreadable, unfathomable, aberrant abomination and father of unspeakable horror. The potential reader of this book, then, may not have read much of Marx, but has read widely enough (or whose mind has nevertheless been opened widely enough) to know that (1) Marx is not responsible for Stalin and Mao, (& etc.), and that (2) Marx just might have something to say about what used to be called Political Economy and what now just goes by the misleading name of The Economy, as if it were as much a part of the natural order of things as those dang sun spots that seem to be causing all those hot summers that we've been strangely having lately. In short, the potential reader of this book has noticed that enough not-so-great stuff has been going on in the post-2008 (not to mention post-1989, -1973, -1968, -1929, -1919, -1865, -1848, -1789, etc. Etc. Etc) world to ask the question: well, was Marx right about much, if anything?
To this question Terry Eagleton answers both an unqualified "You bet!", as well as a qualified "But...".
He seeks to rescue Marx both from the hysterical claims made about him by foaming-at-the-mouth detractors on the right and from the pooh-poohing and tut-tutting types from the cultural studies/postcolonial/postmodernist so-called left. He also wants to defend him from his most ardent defenders, seeking to situate him as a, yes, Eurocentric, yes, patriarchal, yes Enlightenment-"blinded" dead white male who nevertheless still has a lot to teach us if we listen to him with a broad, healthily skeptical mind--and if we care about intellectual honesty enough to look dispassionately at what he wrote by reading him closely, but in the context of the world in which he operated, a world of industrial capitalism that was both good enough for its achievements to be rightly celebrated and bad enough for its atrocities to be justly and loudly condemned. He was a limited but brilliant man who started a long conversation about the relationship between economic class and political power which was also necessarily about ethics, (human) nature, gender, race and aesthetics. Crucially, it also was (and still is) a conversation that is necessarily ongoing, ambiguous, and contradictory--as well as one which is not served in any way whatsoever by the sound bite or by reflexive knee-jerky slogans.
Principally, then, Eagleton wants to save this ongoing conversation from certain key errors, and accordingly addresses his attention to the most glaring of criticisms leveled at Marxist thought, at marx himslef, and at socialism in general over the decades since his career as a thoroughly engaged writer and activist was started. These are, in brief:
(1) Marxism is an antiquated philosophy which is no longer "relevant" to 21C issues and concerns
(2) However appealing Marxism may have been in theory, in practice it has been nothing short of a disaster
(3) Since Marxist is a determinist philosophy, it is offensive to human freedom
(4) Marxism is a Utopian dream that cannot adequately deal with the realities of human nature
(5) Marxism erroneously reduces the plurality of human culture and history to one dimension: the economic
(6) Marxism's materialism cannot speak to the whole of the human spirit, and dismisses religion as a mere pipe-dream or as wish-fulfillment
(7) The very notions of economic class and class struggle are seriously out of date in a post-industrial, globalised world
(8) Marxism is an inherently violent philosophy, one for which the end always justifies the means
(9) Marxism happily jettisons individual liberty in favour of the dictatorship of an all-powerful, overarching State
(10) Other criticisms of capitalism, patriarchy and racism have superseded Marxism, which is stuck in the Eurocentric, patriarchal, racist colonialist meta-narrative of the 18C Enlightenment.
Eagleton is remarkably thorough and even-handed in dealing with all of these criticisms, and makes cogent, unhysterical, careful arguments in his responses to them--no straw men are erected to easily, hand-wavingly and dismissively dispatch in this volume, which is why I find it so exciting, as it opens up so many doors to further discussion and closes down none of them. What's more, wherever Marx is short-sighted, limited in his analysis or just plain wrong in his understanding of the world, Eagleton warmly and, er, eagerly reproves him for it, but never, not once, out of a spirit of one-upmanship or gainsaying.
So this is not really the polemic that I thought it would be when I started reading it, and is less like The Communist Manifesto in style than an Apologia Pro Vita Sua written with the kind of scrupulous lack of axe-grinding that you find in, e.g. and John Stuart Mill's On Bentham and Coleridge. It just plain excites one's love of learning to read it, and begs you to go on to read other books by or on Marx and Political Economy after you have closed its pages. I can easily imagine it as serving as a prefatory book in a course called "An Introduction to the History*** of Political Economy" if such a one were to exist--if one did, in fact, it just might include such books as (in rough order of composition):
Smith, Adam
Marx,
Weber, Max
Veblen, Thorstein
Hayek, Friedrich
Polanyi, Karl
Braudel, Fernand
Harvey, David
Perelman, Michael,
Brenner, Robert
Meiksins-Wood, Ellen
I have read some of these books, and have dipped into others, but would love to take that course!
(Feel free to add suggestions!) Would someone out there care to teach it? We can get goin on one of those online MOOC thingys (Massive Open Online Course) that all the kiddz these daze are into!
***In my impecunious post-student life I toiled away in a university bookstore, and one day was instructed to move all of the books on the history of economics out of the economics section and into the history section of the store: the professor teaching the course was, I was told, invited to move from the one department to the other because Economics no longer saw itself as a social science but as a science proper! This all occurred, of course, in the wake of a particular historical event (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the spread of a particular idea (The End of History). We know far better now of course, with nearly 20 years between the beginning of permanent prosperity and its demise. This book is for anyone who has been trained by recent history to want to think historically, dialectically, subtly, measuredly, and critically on matters political, economic, and human.
5* of its kind, then minus 1/2 *, perhaps, for not including a chapter specifically on Marx's economics (Labour theory of Value etc. etc)
[A "Digested Read" orMidrash or synopsis on this book is forthcoming on my personal site...]
Read
October 31, 2016Thing is, Eagleton tries to have it both ways when he says that the great thing about Marxism, more than any other theoretical system, has been its practical impact on the world and its influence on historical movements, but then goes on to completely disavow the most obvious, prominent case of this; Eagleton claims that what happened in Russia last century actually had nothing to do with Marxism, Stalin wasn't really a Marxist, etc.
In my view, Zizek displays superior intellectual honesty in his strange attempt at a semi-rehabilitation of Stalin. It does no good to try and save your tradition by defining it in such a way to only include the good parts. Zizek is right to see this. However, his claim that Marxism is still worth preserving even though it contains Stalinism seems highly dubious.
In my view, Zizek displays superior intellectual honesty in his strange attempt at a semi-rehabilitation of Stalin. It does no good to try and save your tradition by defining it in such a way to only include the good parts. Zizek is right to see this. However, his claim that Marxism is still worth preserving even though it contains Stalinism seems highly dubious.
March 9, 2024
never has the fact that i’m not an auditory learner been more apparent to me than when i finished this audiobook and went that was super interesting but i can’t tell you a single thing about it
May 16, 2020
کتاب پاسخی هست به ده پرسش و مغلطها� که راجع به مارکسیسم میشه و با زبان نسبتاً ساده و روون بهشون جواب میده.
پرسشه� به ترتیب و به طور خلاصه این موارد هستند.
"مارکسیسم که دوره� تموم شده و برای قدیم بود."
"مارکسیسم فقط در حرف خوبه و به عمل درنمیاد جز با زور و استبداد."
"مارکس مردم رو مجریها� قوانین سفت و سخت تاریخ و بنابراین فاقد اختیار میدون�."
"کمونیسم ذات انسان رو که طبعاً آزمند و حریصه نادیده میگیر�."
"مارکسیسم همه چیز رو تو اقتصاد خلاصه میدون�."
"مارکس چون ماتریالیست بود وجهها� والای حیات بشر رو نادیده میگرف� و انسان رو در حد ماده میدونس�."
"طبقه� کارگری مارکس ازش دم میز� که دیگه وجود نداره و مال همون دوره بود."
"مارکسیسته� مخالف اصلاحات معقول و در عوض موافق خشونت و آشوب هستند."
"مارکسیسم به دولت قدرت هیولاواری مید� که نتیجها� جز دیکتاتوری نخواهد داشت."
"جنبشها� اجتماعی جدید از جمله حقوق همجنسخواها� یا فمینیسته� یا طرفداران حفظ محیط زیست، از مارکسیسم و مبارزه� طبقاتیِ از مدافتاده فاصله گرفتند."
از اونجای� که این ایرادها و مغلطهه� عموماً در حد "یعنی ۱۹۸۴ رو نخوندی؟!" عه، پاسخها� تری ایگلتون هم در همون حده و خیلی سعی میکن� وارد عمق نشه که البته به نظرم نقطه� قوت کتابه؛ اما خیلی نکات رو هم بهش اشاره نکرد و یا ساده ازشون عبور کرد.
پ.ن : عنوان اصلی کتاب " Why Marx was right? " بود.
پرسشه� به ترتیب و به طور خلاصه این موارد هستند.
"مارکسیسم که دوره� تموم شده و برای قدیم بود."
"مارکسیسم فقط در حرف خوبه و به عمل درنمیاد جز با زور و استبداد."
"مارکس مردم رو مجریها� قوانین سفت و سخت تاریخ و بنابراین فاقد اختیار میدون�."
"کمونیسم ذات انسان رو که طبعاً آزمند و حریصه نادیده میگیر�."
"مارکسیسم همه چیز رو تو اقتصاد خلاصه میدون�."
"مارکس چون ماتریالیست بود وجهها� والای حیات بشر رو نادیده میگرف� و انسان رو در حد ماده میدونس�."
"طبقه� کارگری مارکس ازش دم میز� که دیگه وجود نداره و مال همون دوره بود."
"مارکسیسته� مخالف اصلاحات معقول و در عوض موافق خشونت و آشوب هستند."
"مارکسیسم به دولت قدرت هیولاواری مید� که نتیجها� جز دیکتاتوری نخواهد داشت."
"جنبشها� اجتماعی جدید از جمله حقوق همجنسخواها� یا فمینیسته� یا طرفداران حفظ محیط زیست، از مارکسیسم و مبارزه� طبقاتیِ از مدافتاده فاصله گرفتند."
از اونجای� که این ایرادها و مغلطهه� عموماً در حد "یعنی ۱۹۸۴ رو نخوندی؟!" عه، پاسخها� تری ایگلتون هم در همون حده و خیلی سعی میکن� وارد عمق نشه که البته به نظرم نقطه� قوت کتابه؛ اما خیلی نکات رو هم بهش اشاره نکرد و یا ساده ازشون عبور کرد.
پ.ن : عنوان اصلی کتاب " Why Marx was right? " بود.
December 1, 2018
🔴 کتاب با مؤلفهها� اعتبار بخش مارکسیسم در قرن بیستم و البته بیست و یکم شروع میشو�. بعد از گذشت 150 سال از سرمایهدار� دوره� مارکس، و تغییر شکل سرمایهدار� در این مدت، آیا مارکسیسم در دوره� سرمایهدار� پساصنعتی در قرن بیستم همچنان معتبر است؟ پاسخ آن است که بله. چرا که منطق زیربنایی سرمایهدار� ثابت مانده؛ نابرابری ثروت و قدرت، جنگ امپریالیستی، استثمار و سرکوب همان ویژگیها� سرمایهدار� صنعتی است که در دوره� پساصنعتی هم وجود دارد و این یع��ی نقد مارکسیستی تا حد زیادی پابرجاست. �
بعد به فاصله و نسبت بین مارکسیسم مارکس و مارکسیسم استالین پرداخته میشود� اینکه آیا با وجود تجربه� سهمناک استالینیسم همچنان میتوا� خود را مارکسیسم و امیدوار به سوسیالیسم دانست یا خیر. ایگلتون میگوی� اگر استالینیسم بهای انسانی سنگینی داشته، ممالک سرمایهدار� مدرن هم به بهای خون و رنج انسانه� پدید آمدند. قضیه این است که سرمایهدار� فرصت این را داشته که خاطره� دهشتناکش را از ذهنه� بزداید. گذشته از آن نمیتوا� سوسیالیسم را در درون مرزهای یک کشور واحد و بیش از آن در جامعها� فقرزده متصور شد. که هر دوی اینه� در مورد تجربه� شوری صادق بود. �
اما اگر پایان سرمایهدار� و یک انقلاب سوسیالیستی حتمی است، تودهه� چه کارهاند� فقط ابزار دست تاریخاند� ایگلتون چنین نگاه موجبیتگرایان� و غایتاندیشانها� به مارکسیسم را رد میکن�. گذر از سرمایهدار� به سوسیالیسم به آن معنا اجتناب ناپذی� نیست که انسانه� درست روی دست بگذارند و به انتظار بنشینند. انسانه� ابزار تاریخ نیستند. سازنده� آنند. این لزوما به آن معناست که آنه� آزادند. اجتنابناپذیر� به آن معناست که با فروپاشی سرمایهدار� انسانه� دلیلی ندارند که قدرت را در دست نگیرند. اما ممکن است طبقه� کارگر آنچنا� منسجم نباشد یا نا توان تر از آن باشد که نظامی تازه بر پا کند، در این صورت با نابودی سرمایهداری� نه سوسیالیسم بلکه بربریت یا فاشیسم جای آن را خواهد گرفت. مبارزه� طبقاتی عنصر پیشبرنده� تاریخ است اما نتیجه� آن قابل پیشبین� نیست. بنابراین موجبیتگرای� جایی در مارکسیسم ندارد. سرمایهدار� مشخصا در مورد غرب مصداق دارد. هر ملتی برای گذر از یک شیوه� تولید به شیوه� دیگر مسیر خاص خود را میپیمای�. به گفته� انگلس تاریخ جست و خیز کنان از مسیری پیچ و خم میگذر�. مارکسیسم از نظر تاریخی جبرگرایانه نیست. �
ایگلتون میگوی� که «اتوپیای مارکسیستی» جمع نقیضین است. چرا که مارکس اصلا به چند و چون جامعه� سوسیالیستی نپرداخته است. نقشهها� اتوپیایی از نظر مارکس مصداق شانه خالی کردن از وظایف سیاسی زمان حال بود. بنابراین هدف مارکس نه طرح آینده� بهتر بلکه حل تعارضات زمان حال است. ایگلتون نسبت آینده و سوسیالیسم را به نسبت آن با فمنیسم تشبیه میکن� یعنی حرکتی در زمان حال پیش به سوی آینده. بنابراین آینده باز و نامعلوم است. اما در عین حال، آینده� در مقیاس مشخصی که آن را وضع کنونی تعیین میکند� باز است. جامعه� سوسیالیستی شرارتها� تضادها و کمشکشه� همچنان وجود خواهند داشت. انقلاب سوسیالیستی پایان کشمکش نیست. کشمکشه� فقط با پایان تاریخ تمام میشون�. قضیه� آن است که در نظام سوسیالیستی نهادها که زیر نظر مستقیم مردم هستند اجازه� دستدراز� و فرصتطلب� به افراد نمیدهن�. شرارت شخصی فقط زمانی میتوان� نتایج وحشتناک به بار آورد که در خدمت ساز و کارهای سیاسی باشند.
ایگلتون در رابطه� بین مارکس و اقتصاد نشان میده� این سرمایهدار� است که انسان را به کالا و همه چیز را به اقتصاد و پول فرو میکاه� و نه مارکسیسم. توجه مارکس به اقتصاد از آن رو است که آن را زیربنای تمدن میدان�. یعنی سرشت و چگونگی آن تمدن را تعیین میکن�. اما سیاست، فرهنگ، علم و هستی اجتماعی واقعیت خاص خود را دارند. به نوعی با روبنا در آمد و شد هستند. اما به طور کلی با منافع طبقات مسلط گره خوردهان� چرا که سرمایهدار� اثر انگشت چرکین خود را بر همه چیز زده است.�
ماتریالیسته� به صرف ماتریالیست� بودنشان موجوداتی بیاحسا� نیستند. مارکس زودتر میخواس� از «آت و آشغال اقتصادی» سرمایه رها شود و درباره� ادبیات بنویسد. از آن گذشته معنوی بودن مشروط به مذهبی بودن نیست. چنان که مارکسیستها� اسلامی، مسیحی و یهودی نیز وجود دارند و منادی الاهیات رهایی بخشان�. مسأله� این است که تفکر و سایر جنبهها� زندگی معنوی متأخرند بر وجود. ما پیش از آنکه بتوانیم فکر کنیم وجودی مادی داریم. تفکر نه بازتاب واقعیت بلکه خود نیرویی مادی است. ماتریالیسم مارکس به او اجازه میده� به آینده امیدوار باشد. آیندها� که در آن تفکر لذت واقعی شود. �
اما آیا حالا مارکسیسته� زیادی بر طبقه� تأکید میکنند� حالا که تفاوت ظاهری طبقات کمرن� شدهان� هنوز هم میتوا� از طبقه سخن گفت؟ در جواب باید گفت که سرمایهدار� بنا به ذاتش تمایزها را کمرن� میکن�. بنابراین طبقه ترکیببند� خود را تغییر میده� اما محو نمیشو�. حال آنکه تمایز طبقاتی در اکثر نقاط جهان درست مشابه طبقات زمان مارکس بارز است. اگر مارکسیسم تا این حد مجذوب طبقهاس� از آن روست که میخواه� پس پشت آن را ببیند. مارکس به دفن فردیت زنان و مردان به دنبال کارگر یه سرمایهدا� نامیدنشان آگاه بود، اما میدانس� برای آنک� این بیگانگی از بین برود، باید آن را از درون برانداخت. این از خود بیگانگی یکی از شروط رهایی ایشان است.�
آیا میتوا� از انقلابات به کلی نهی کرد؟ آِیا مارکسیسته� بیخو� و بیجه� در پی انقلابان� با صلح و آرامش میانها� ندارند؟ اصلاحطلبا� راستین اصلاحات را در چشم اندازی فراخت� و ریشهایت� لحاظ میکنن�. اما هنگامی که نظام تن به اصلاح نمیدهد� انتخاب میان اصلاح و انقلاب مطرح میشو�. مارکسیسته� دموکراسی پارلمانی را چندان دموکراتیک نمیدانن�. زیرا مردم نظارتی بر آن ندارند. پارلمان دیوار محافظ مالکیت و نماینده� منافع نهاد مالکیت خصوصی است. مارکس و انگلس اهمیت زیادی برای نهادهای اصلاحطلب� چون احزاب طبقه� کارگر، حق رأی،انجمنها� فرهنگی و روزنامهها� سیاسی قائل بودند. در واقع مارکسیسته� با ماجراجویی و برانگیختن بیمحبا� گروهی از انقلابیون کوچک همواره مخالف بودهان�. از این گذشته انقلابها� سوسیالیستی نمیتوانن� غیردموکراتیک باشند این طبقه� حاکم است که اقلیتی غیردموکراتیک است. ایگلتون میگوی� که همه� ما محصول انقلابات هستیم. و هرقدر بیشت� نتوانیم آن را به یاد بیاوریم و تشخیص دهیم، یعنی انقلاب در دستیابی به اهدافش موفقت� بوده است. انقلاب موفق انقلابی است که هیچ ردی از خود به جا نگذارد. او این این پرسش اساسی به پیش میکش� که صلح طلبی تا کجا مجاز است؟ اینکه آیا میتوا� مارکس را ضداصلاحات دانست؟
روشن است که مارکس مخالف سرسخت دولت بود، اما چه دولتی؟ دولتی که ابزار قهر و خشونت است.دولتی که در نزاعه� بیطر� نیست. دولت تا زمانی بیطر� است که هیچ نشانی از پیروزی منتقدان نبیند. به محض آنک� منافع سرمایه به خطر بیافتد، ماشین سرکوب دولت به راه میافت�. به این ترتیب مارکس مخالف عملکردهای معطوف به طبقات دولت است، دولت عملکردهای دیگری هم دارد که ناظر به طبقه نیستند. دیکتاتوری پرولتاریا که همه را به وحشت میاندازد� به معنای نقض فراقانونی یک قانون اساسی است، قانونی که از منافع گروهها� خاص حمایت میکند� و در نهایت حرکت به سوی یک دموکراسی خلقی است که در سراسر جامعه ریشه دوانده باشد.�
در آخر از رابطه� مارکسیسم و جنبشها� اجتماعی نظیر فمینیسم و مبارزه علیه فاشیسم، جنبش طرفداران حفظ محیط زیست بحث میشو�. این جنبشه� خارج از چارچوب مارکسیسم شکل گرفتهان� اما مارکسیسم در سراسر دنیا الهام بخش آنه� بوده و از آنه� آموخته است در مقاومت در برابر استعمار، رهایی زنان و مبارزه با فاشیسم مارکسیسته� همواره پیشر� بودند.�
بعد به فاصله و نسبت بین مارکسیسم مارکس و مارکسیسم استالین پرداخته میشود� اینکه آیا با وجود تجربه� سهمناک استالینیسم همچنان میتوا� خود را مارکسیسم و امیدوار به سوسیالیسم دانست یا خیر. ایگلتون میگوی� اگر استالینیسم بهای انسانی سنگینی داشته، ممالک سرمایهدار� مدرن هم به بهای خون و رنج انسانه� پدید آمدند. قضیه این است که سرمایهدار� فرصت این را داشته که خاطره� دهشتناکش را از ذهنه� بزداید. گذشته از آن نمیتوا� سوسیالیسم را در درون مرزهای یک کشور واحد و بیش از آن در جامعها� فقرزده متصور شد. که هر دوی اینه� در مورد تجربه� شوری صادق بود. �
اما اگر پایان سرمایهدار� و یک انقلاب سوسیالیستی حتمی است، تودهه� چه کارهاند� فقط ابزار دست تاریخاند� ایگلتون چنین نگاه موجبیتگرایان� و غایتاندیشانها� به مارکسیسم را رد میکن�. گذر از سرمایهدار� به سوسیالیسم به آن معنا اجتناب ناپذی� نیست که انسانه� درست روی دست بگذارند و به انتظار بنشینند. انسانه� ابزار تاریخ نیستند. سازنده� آنند. این لزوما به آن معناست که آنه� آزادند. اجتنابناپذیر� به آن معناست که با فروپاشی سرمایهدار� انسانه� دلیلی ندارند که قدرت را در دست نگیرند. اما ممکن است طبقه� کارگر آنچنا� منسجم نباشد یا نا توان تر از آن باشد که نظامی تازه بر پا کند، در این صورت با نابودی سرمایهداری� نه سوسیالیسم بلکه بربریت یا فاشیسم جای آن را خواهد گرفت. مبارزه� طبقاتی عنصر پیشبرنده� تاریخ است اما نتیجه� آن قابل پیشبین� نیست. بنابراین موجبیتگرای� جایی در مارکسیسم ندارد. سرمایهدار� مشخصا در مورد غرب مصداق دارد. هر ملتی برای گذر از یک شیوه� تولید به شیوه� دیگر مسیر خاص خود را میپیمای�. به گفته� انگلس تاریخ جست و خیز کنان از مسیری پیچ و خم میگذر�. مارکسیسم از نظر تاریخی جبرگرایانه نیست. �
ایگلتون میگوی� که «اتوپیای مارکسیستی» جمع نقیضین است. چرا که مارکس اصلا به چند و چون جامعه� سوسیالیستی نپرداخته است. نقشهها� اتوپیایی از نظر مارکس مصداق شانه خالی کردن از وظایف سیاسی زمان حال بود. بنابراین هدف مارکس نه طرح آینده� بهتر بلکه حل تعارضات زمان حال است. ایگلتون نسبت آینده و سوسیالیسم را به نسبت آن با فمنیسم تشبیه میکن� یعنی حرکتی در زمان حال پیش به سوی آینده. بنابراین آینده باز و نامعلوم است. اما در عین حال، آینده� در مقیاس مشخصی که آن را وضع کنونی تعیین میکند� باز است. جامعه� سوسیالیستی شرارتها� تضادها و کمشکشه� همچنان وجود خواهند داشت. انقلاب سوسیالیستی پایان کشمکش نیست. کشمکشه� فقط با پایان تاریخ تمام میشون�. قضیه� آن است که در نظام سوسیالیستی نهادها که زیر نظر مستقیم مردم هستند اجازه� دستدراز� و فرصتطلب� به افراد نمیدهن�. شرارت شخصی فقط زمانی میتوان� نتایج وحشتناک به بار آورد که در خدمت ساز و کارهای سیاسی باشند.
ایگلتون در رابطه� بین مارکس و اقتصاد نشان میده� این سرمایهدار� است که انسان را به کالا و همه چیز را به اقتصاد و پول فرو میکاه� و نه مارکسیسم. توجه مارکس به اقتصاد از آن رو است که آن را زیربنای تمدن میدان�. یعنی سرشت و چگونگی آن تمدن را تعیین میکن�. اما سیاست، فرهنگ، علم و هستی اجتماعی واقعیت خاص خود را دارند. به نوعی با روبنا در آمد و شد هستند. اما به طور کلی با منافع طبقات مسلط گره خوردهان� چرا که سرمایهدار� اثر انگشت چرکین خود را بر همه چیز زده است.�
ماتریالیسته� به صرف ماتریالیست� بودنشان موجوداتی بیاحسا� نیستند. مارکس زودتر میخواس� از «آت و آشغال اقتصادی» سرمایه رها شود و درباره� ادبیات بنویسد. از آن گذشته معنوی بودن مشروط به مذهبی بودن نیست. چنان که مارکسیستها� اسلامی، مسیحی و یهودی نیز وجود دارند و منادی الاهیات رهایی بخشان�. مسأله� این است که تفکر و سایر جنبهها� زندگی معنوی متأخرند بر وجود. ما پیش از آنکه بتوانیم فکر کنیم وجودی مادی داریم. تفکر نه بازتاب واقعیت بلکه خود نیرویی مادی است. ماتریالیسم مارکس به او اجازه میده� به آینده امیدوار باشد. آیندها� که در آن تفکر لذت واقعی شود. �
اما آیا حالا مارکسیسته� زیادی بر طبقه� تأکید میکنند� حالا که تفاوت ظاهری طبقات کمرن� شدهان� هنوز هم میتوا� از طبقه سخن گفت؟ در جواب باید گفت که سرمایهدار� بنا به ذاتش تمایزها را کمرن� میکن�. بنابراین طبقه ترکیببند� خود را تغییر میده� اما محو نمیشو�. حال آنکه تمایز طبقاتی در اکثر نقاط جهان درست مشابه طبقات زمان مارکس بارز است. اگر مارکسیسم تا این حد مجذوب طبقهاس� از آن روست که میخواه� پس پشت آن را ببیند. مارکس به دفن فردیت زنان و مردان به دنبال کارگر یه سرمایهدا� نامیدنشان آگاه بود، اما میدانس� برای آنک� این بیگانگی از بین برود، باید آن را از درون برانداخت. این از خود بیگانگی یکی از شروط رهایی ایشان است.�
آیا میتوا� از انقلابات به کلی نهی کرد؟ آِیا مارکسیسته� بیخو� و بیجه� در پی انقلابان� با صلح و آرامش میانها� ندارند؟ اصلاحطلبا� راستین اصلاحات را در چشم اندازی فراخت� و ریشهایت� لحاظ میکنن�. اما هنگامی که نظام تن به اصلاح نمیدهد� انتخاب میان اصلاح و انقلاب مطرح میشو�. مارکسیسته� دموکراسی پارلمانی را چندان دموکراتیک نمیدانن�. زیرا مردم نظارتی بر آن ندارند. پارلمان دیوار محافظ مالکیت و نماینده� منافع نهاد مالکیت خصوصی است. مارکس و انگلس اهمیت زیادی برای نهادهای اصلاحطلب� چون احزاب طبقه� کارگر، حق رأی،انجمنها� فرهنگی و روزنامهها� سیاسی قائل بودند. در واقع مارکسیسته� با ماجراجویی و برانگیختن بیمحبا� گروهی از انقلابیون کوچک همواره مخالف بودهان�. از این گذشته انقلابها� سوسیالیستی نمیتوانن� غیردموکراتیک باشند این طبقه� حاکم است که اقلیتی غیردموکراتیک است. ایگلتون میگوی� که همه� ما محصول انقلابات هستیم. و هرقدر بیشت� نتوانیم آن را به یاد بیاوریم و تشخیص دهیم، یعنی انقلاب در دستیابی به اهدافش موفقت� بوده است. انقلاب موفق انقلابی است که هیچ ردی از خود به جا نگذارد. او این این پرسش اساسی به پیش میکش� که صلح طلبی تا کجا مجاز است؟ اینکه آیا میتوا� مارکس را ضداصلاحات دانست؟
روشن است که مارکس مخالف سرسخت دولت بود، اما چه دولتی؟ دولتی که ابزار قهر و خشونت است.دولتی که در نزاعه� بیطر� نیست. دولت تا زمانی بیطر� است که هیچ نشانی از پیروزی منتقدان نبیند. به محض آنک� منافع سرمایه به خطر بیافتد، ماشین سرکوب دولت به راه میافت�. به این ترتیب مارکس مخالف عملکردهای معطوف به طبقات دولت است، دولت عملکردهای دیگری هم دارد که ناظر به طبقه نیستند. دیکتاتوری پرولتاریا که همه را به وحشت میاندازد� به معنای نقض فراقانونی یک قانون اساسی است، قانونی که از منافع گروهها� خاص حمایت میکند� و در نهایت حرکت به سوی یک دموکراسی خلقی است که در سراسر جامعه ریشه دوانده باشد.�
در آخر از رابطه� مارکسیسم و جنبشها� اجتماعی نظیر فمینیسم و مبارزه علیه فاشیسم، جنبش طرفداران حفظ محیط زیست بحث میشو�. این جنبشه� خارج از چارچوب مارکسیسم شکل گرفتهان� اما مارکسیسم در سراسر دنیا الهام بخش آنه� بوده و از آنه� آموخته است در مقاومت در برابر استعمار، رهایی زنان و مبارزه با فاشیسم مارکسیسته� همواره پیشر� بودند.�
November 28, 2016
هذ� الكتاب يُظهر حقيقة الماركسية بذكر نقاطها الإيجابية وأسباب سقوطها، يحاول فيه الكاتب إظهار مكامن القوة والضعف في النظرية الماركسية وكيف أن هذه النظرية كانت نظرية طوباوية أقرب للخيال من التطبيق بسبب محاربتها لطبع بشري متجذّر الا وهو حب التملّك
April 24, 2015
This is an Apologia for the unwitting founder of the latest but possibly not the last of the great ‘herd� religions.
The book itself is not a complete failure. If you are studying Marxism, it would be a good text that summarises the best case for it much as one might go to Tertullian or Augustine to get the best case for Early Christianity.
Similarly, no babies should be thrown out with the bathwater of Communist history. Marx can be seen as analyst and as historical fantasist. As analyst, he offered superb insights into the nature of power and the construction of the social that will be timeless.
As historical fantasist, lesser minds than his (amongst which we must include Professor Eagleton) have made a vicious stew that resulted in the ruination of many lives, not least that of the neurotic activists and martyrs of the religion created out of it.
The book puts forward ten propositions against Marx in a series of chapters (and Eagleton does not stint on these) where he attempts with varying success, intelligence and good faith to counter them. The end result is unconvincing.
Not that he does not write well or with logical argument but he constantly confuses categories, seeking to justify the history of Marxism, distance Marx from the history of Marxism and redraft our understanding of what Marx is supposed to have meant at different times and in different places.
Because it is partly polemical, the final result reads like a desperate attempt to wean the Lefties whose progressive god has failed, the one that thought it could ride the capitalist and markets tiger, back into the fold.
To take the religious analogy again, this is a subtle Jesuit trying to bring High Anglicans back home to Rome. But putting all this to one side (and it is noticeable that the one criticism he does not seek to counter is that Marxism is a religion in all but claim), the book is ultimately futile.
Eagleton can argue until he is blue in the face but Marxism is a busted brand at three levels �
- philosophically, it only works as essentialism in a world that is now too intelligent to take essences at face value,
- politically, in the end, no Marxist state can exist until it happens by dint of a history that will not permit consistently Marxist actions and,
- finally, at a human level, Marxists are often quite limited and neurotic people with a limited understanding of other persons and whose authoritarian instincts are only thinly veiled.
Eagleton, though he writes well, cannot help being constantly snarky about individuals � whether Paris Hilton or Mick Jagger � whom he clearly despises with the sort of snobbery that made the Fabians and Raymond Williams so detached from the population they claimed to serve.
He refuses to give respect to popular individual choices that might embrace these icons. He never really deals with sexuality or transgression except in ways that would make me fear a Cromwellian misery in his communitarian paradise.
In the end, all I see is a sour intellectual of a failed political generation filled with resentment that the current crisis is not being interpreted according to a faith dearly holds. He wants everything � to show how superior he is, how he told us so and why his ancient ways are hip.
The desperate attempt to ally Marx to the fashionable political cultures of feminism, anti-colonialism (with some justification in this one case) and environmentalism (pur-leeze!) shows an amazing lack of understanding.
These deeply flawed identity and single issue movements represent the heart of conflict within but not against market capitalism. For this reason alone, the book may be placed in the library for reference but otherwise ignored.
Marx may be studied as an authentic flawed genius with insights that match, say, those of Freud and Nietzsche but Marxism has little to teach us except to avoid intellectuals claiming to have a solution to our problems.
In reality, Marx may have been right about ‘internal contradictions� in capitalism but the handling of these contradictions will arise from the street and through cultural struggle and not through Marxism.
On the contrary, Marxists are likely to be found up there trying to manage the State against us � that is certainly so across half Europe and in most of our ‘democratic� centre-left parties where closet Marxists still hold sway.
Eagleton repeatedly suggests that our choice is between ‘socialism and barbarism� and this is where he frightens me because he places ‘socialism� on the side of Rome and order against the free creativity of the general population as individuals.
He claims otherwise but he is bluntly not to be trusted in this. In a stark choice between ‘socialism and barbarism�, one is tempted to choose barbarism as the lesser evil.
Social revolution I still welcome (indeed, I think we are in the midst of it), but if you ever see a Marxist trying to take a lead within it, then remove them quickly, by any means necessary. If they do not kill you, they may end up killing your children.
May 11, 2018
I really appreciate the ability to write (on difficult issues) clearly and simply + to write a popular but not vulgar book!
August 19, 2016
The most refreshing and legitimately optimistic book I’ve probably ever read. Eagleton deftly rescues Marx from the dustbin to which right-wingers, postmodernists, silly liberals and capitalist triumphalists have consigned him. And he does it in such a chummy, cant-free style, while thoroughly answering one attack after another, that it’s like the lamplight from a cottage window on a foggy night. While this will always be contentious, he makes a strong case for the fallacy of blaming Marx’s thought for 20th century totalitarianism (any more, in my view, than you would blame Adam Smith for King Leopold, Bhopal, or the genocide of the plains Indians). And frees him from the cultish or clannish behavior of some Marxists as well. In the process, you get a good tour of what the man actually wrote, and why, for as long as capitalism exists, whether it is finally superseded by “socialism or barbarism,� Marx’s critique will be one of the best tools we have not for predicting the future, but for understanding the present.
And I'm particularly grateful to him for citing Oscar Wilde: "The problem with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings."
And I'm particularly grateful to him for citing Oscar Wilde: "The problem with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings."
March 12, 2020
I can't wait to read another book by Terry Eagleton as he is such an engaging writer. Some wonderful, amusing lines and quips as well as thought-provoking observations particularly about the victims of capitalism and the capitalist system.
Some quotations for you without giving the game away:
Successful revolutions are those which end up erasing all traces of themselves.
Most political states came about through revolution, invasion, occupation, usurpation, or extermination. Successful states are those that have managed to wipe this bloody history from the minds of their citizens.
The bad news for socialists is that men and women will be extremely reluctant to transform their situation as long as there is still something in that situation for them.
Some quotations for you without giving the game away:
Successful revolutions are those which end up erasing all traces of themselves.
Most political states came about through revolution, invasion, occupation, usurpation, or extermination. Successful states are those that have managed to wipe this bloody history from the minds of their citizens.
The bad news for socialists is that men and women will be extremely reluctant to transform their situation as long as there is still something in that situation for them.
July 11, 2017
Excelente libro que refuta las principales objeciones al Marxismo. En verdad, más que objeciones, son prejuicios y opiniones basadas en la ignorancia, por eso el trabajo de Eagleton no solo sirve para derribar esos prejuicios, sino que tambien como una buena introducción al marxismo, desde lo económico, filosófico y político.
January 4, 2014
As unfashionable as Marxism is these days, Terry Eagleton believes that the events of our time make a strong case for it. Why Marx Was Right is an argument on two fronts, one being that Karl Marx never advocated for much of what was attributed to him, and the other that what Karl Marx actually proposed is very appropriate for our age.
When I read the book, I was open to giving Marxism a fair hearing, as I wonder if the technological developments and "post-scarcity" world of our time call for a new economic model to replace the various forms of capitalism dominant until now. Perhaps Marx was prescient enough to propose a communal system of transactions that could work smoothly and justly today with all our computers and automated manufacturing?
Eagleton makes the case that Karl Marx's thought is not what most people assume it is from the use of Marxist rhetoric in the Soviet Union and China. Far from being responsible for gulags and famines imposed by a top-down state, Eagleton suggests that Marx called on workers to organize themselves, proposing bottom-up models of doing so that even supporters of a free market might be able to sympathize with. I'm not sure how reliable Eagleton's view of Marx is, but it definitely motivates me to read Marx's original works someday to see for myself.
When it comes to the argument that "Marx was right" in what he actually wrote, Eagleton's book is a failure. As I said, I was hoping we would get a fresh argument for Marxism on the basis of the rapid technological progress we are experiencing today, but Eagleton just retreads old Trotskyist arguments from the first half of the 20th century, and omits anything that might complicate his case.
For example, nowhere does Eagleton grapple with the issue of whether force on the part of the state is justified or not. Eagleton simply assumes that the dictatorship of the proletariat (as even our contemporary mixed-capitalists states do today) is right to redistribute wealth, taking private property away from the rich to give to the needy. I happen to agree with him on this point, but the book required some rebuttal of the libertarian argument for the inviolability of private property.
Furthermore, nowhere does Eagleton discuss Marxism's oppression of religion, in spite of the general Western recognition of freedom of religion as a universal human right (as it is simply a consequence of the freedom of conscience and freedom of association that no one wants to do without). He repeatedly praises the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, claiming little blood was spilled, but ignores the fact that priests were imprisoned or murdered and churches blown up � and not just Christianity, but Russia's other indigenous faiths, namely Islam and Buddhism, also suffered.
Curiously, Eagleton writes "The state as an administrative body would live on. It is the state as an instrument of violence that Marx hopes to see the back of." How would the state have the power to administrate if it does not have a monopoly on power, which is ultimately the barrel of a gun? The Russian Bolsheviks that Eagleton admires certainly used the state as an instrument of violence. As if to avoid the unpleasant thought that the Bolsheviks imposed themselves on the unwilling, he disingenously suggests that it was a society-wide movement, which doesn't square with the actual history of Russia in 1917: a fairly small group of Bolshevik agitators was able to seize key infrastructure and overthrew the multiparty system that Russia was enjoying from the beginning of that year.
Finally, this book is written in too strident a tone, so Eagleton ends up turning off sceptical readers who want to give Marxism a chance, preaching instead to the choir. To end my review with just one example of the inflammatory rhetoric everywhere in this book:
When I read the book, I was open to giving Marxism a fair hearing, as I wonder if the technological developments and "post-scarcity" world of our time call for a new economic model to replace the various forms of capitalism dominant until now. Perhaps Marx was prescient enough to propose a communal system of transactions that could work smoothly and justly today with all our computers and automated manufacturing?
Eagleton makes the case that Karl Marx's thought is not what most people assume it is from the use of Marxist rhetoric in the Soviet Union and China. Far from being responsible for gulags and famines imposed by a top-down state, Eagleton suggests that Marx called on workers to organize themselves, proposing bottom-up models of doing so that even supporters of a free market might be able to sympathize with. I'm not sure how reliable Eagleton's view of Marx is, but it definitely motivates me to read Marx's original works someday to see for myself.
When it comes to the argument that "Marx was right" in what he actually wrote, Eagleton's book is a failure. As I said, I was hoping we would get a fresh argument for Marxism on the basis of the rapid technological progress we are experiencing today, but Eagleton just retreads old Trotskyist arguments from the first half of the 20th century, and omits anything that might complicate his case.
For example, nowhere does Eagleton grapple with the issue of whether force on the part of the state is justified or not. Eagleton simply assumes that the dictatorship of the proletariat (as even our contemporary mixed-capitalists states do today) is right to redistribute wealth, taking private property away from the rich to give to the needy. I happen to agree with him on this point, but the book required some rebuttal of the libertarian argument for the inviolability of private property.
Furthermore, nowhere does Eagleton discuss Marxism's oppression of religion, in spite of the general Western recognition of freedom of religion as a universal human right (as it is simply a consequence of the freedom of conscience and freedom of association that no one wants to do without). He repeatedly praises the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, claiming little blood was spilled, but ignores the fact that priests were imprisoned or murdered and churches blown up � and not just Christianity, but Russia's other indigenous faiths, namely Islam and Buddhism, also suffered.
Curiously, Eagleton writes "The state as an administrative body would live on. It is the state as an instrument of violence that Marx hopes to see the back of." How would the state have the power to administrate if it does not have a monopoly on power, which is ultimately the barrel of a gun? The Russian Bolsheviks that Eagleton admires certainly used the state as an instrument of violence. As if to avoid the unpleasant thought that the Bolsheviks imposed themselves on the unwilling, he disingenously suggests that it was a society-wide movement, which doesn't square with the actual history of Russia in 1917: a fairly small group of Bolshevik agitators was able to seize key infrastructure and overthrew the multiparty system that Russia was enjoying from the beginning of that year.
Finally, this book is written in too strident a tone, so Eagleton ends up turning off sceptical readers who want to give Marxism a chance, preaching instead to the choir. To end my review with just one example of the inflammatory rhetoric everywhere in this book:
We will know that socialism has established itself when we are able to look back with utter incredulity at the idea that a handful of commercial thugs were given free rein to corrupt the minds of the public with Neanderthal political views.
March 27, 2018
اگر به دنبال شناختِ اندکی عمیق از مارکس و نسبت آن با مسئله های مهم تاریخی و امروزی هستید این کتاب را از دست ندهید. ساختار بسیار جذابی دارد: ده پرسش بلند و عام از مارکسیسم و تلاش برای پاسخ به آن از منظر مارکس.
ایگلتون نظریه ادبی و فرهنگی، اینجا چهره مارکسی -آنهم تغییری و نه تفسیری- خودش را خوب نشان می دهد هرچند همنیجا هم کم از خجالت سرآمدان فرهنگ و اقتصاد سرمایه داری در نمی آید. برای همین هم بار اقناعی استدلالها گاهاَ استوار به نشانه رفتن آیرونیک چهره هایی مثل ترامپ و پرنس چارلز و آرنولد شوارتزنگر است: درست همان کاری که ضدمارکسیستها برای کج و کوله نشان دادن آیین مارکسی با نشان دادن گولاک و امثالهم می کنند. با همه اینها ایگلتون انصاف را رعایت کرده و به اقتضا سیخی به تن خودی هم فرو کرده.
برای من که کتاب جذابی بود اما اگر دنبال متنی می گردید که شرحی جانانه از ایده ها و مفاهیم اصلی مارکس بدهد، پرسش هایی از مارکس اثر قانع کننده ای برایتان نخواهد بود. هدف ایگلتون هم این نبوده است که مثلا مفهوم طبقه و مسله دولت در سنت مارکسیستی را آنطور که آلن وود و پولانزاس کاویده و بسط داده اند روشن کند. همانطور که از ساختار پرسش هایی از مارکس برمی آید هدف ایگلتون اقناع مخاطب عام بوده است.
..............
ترجمه کتاب عالی بود.
ایگلتون نظریه ادبی و فرهنگی، اینجا چهره مارکسی -آنهم تغییری و نه تفسیری- خودش را خوب نشان می دهد هرچند همنیجا هم کم از خجالت سرآمدان فرهنگ و اقتصاد سرمایه داری در نمی آید. برای همین هم بار اقناعی استدلالها گاهاَ استوار به نشانه رفتن آیرونیک چهره هایی مثل ترامپ و پرنس چارلز و آرنولد شوارتزنگر است: درست همان کاری که ضدمارکسیستها برای کج و کوله نشان دادن آیین مارکسی با نشان دادن گولاک و امثالهم می کنند. با همه اینها ایگلتون انصاف را رعایت کرده و به اقتضا سیخی به تن خودی هم فرو کرده.
برای من که کتاب جذابی بود اما اگر دنبال متنی می گردید که شرحی جانانه از ایده ها و مفاهیم اصلی مارکس بدهد، پرسش هایی از مارکس اثر قانع کننده ای برایتان نخواهد بود. هدف ایگلتون هم این نبوده است که مثلا مفهوم طبقه و مسله دولت در سنت مارکسیستی را آنطور که آلن وود و پولانزاس کاویده و بسط داده اند روشن کند. همانطور که از ساختار پرسش هایی از مارکس برمی آید هدف ایگلتون اقناع مخاطب عام بوده است.
..............
ترجمه کتاب عالی بود.
September 28, 2024
A few days ago, I finished another book on the principles of economics via the lens of Austrian economy theory. The ideas presented there were mostly libertarian. I did agree with many of them, and I disagreed with many as well, but it was a positive experience - the author has calmly expressed his opinions, used data, and referenced cases in the past. Ideas have been backed up by a clear chain-of-thought reasoning - even the book's structure was designed in a way to back this up.
So, after finishing this book, I came up with the idea of reading something contrarian - if a libertarian economy book was fun & thought-provoking, maybe a Marxist one would be as well. Unfortunately, I was very wrong ...
But why WMWR specifically? Well, because of a few reasons:
- a respected author known of his direct and "smart" style
- published by Yale
- declared to focus on the main theses used to criticise Marxism - sounded like we're getting to the point, right?
OK, you already know (based on the star rating and "I was very wrong" comment) that this is a bad book. But why?
1. instead of facts, data & reasoning, it's fully based on being anti-capitalistic
2. instead of trying to pinpoint what is wrong in capitalism & how to fix it (if it truly needs fixing), it tries to force utopia, completely ignoring the fact that 100% of attempts to enforce it have completely failed in the past - I expected some rational view on that, maybe a summary of mistakes (except "yes, Stalin was a monster, so it's Stalin's fault") or specific list of improvements for the next "attempts" - there was literally ZERO of that here!
3. unfortunately, all "sins" of Marxism are always counter with whataboutism - a very naive one; for example: "Soviets have murdered millions, but how many have died because of feudalism across all the ages before!"; Srsly?
4. the chapter about "class" is simply ridiculous :) you read the author trying to defend Marx's thesis, but in fact - it seems like he's doing the opposite ... let's talk about how the tech. & social progress have equaled the opportunities for people within local communities, but also globally - for some reason the author pretends he doesn't see that
5. the chapter about "peace" is not even a manipulation, it's a streak of lies; when I read such statements like "the bolsheviks wanted the peace so much that their first act after the revolution was a withdrawal from WWI" my blood is boiling. Please, read the history books: why PRECISELY they have done that and what they did next (in 1919). To sum it up: yes, they wanted peace, after conquering all Europe - the communist slavery of oppressed European people.
6. the chapter about the "state" is extremely inconsistent (intellectually) - the alternative to the state is ... state, just ruled by the party - that's exactly what we've seen in the SU; no details on any real no-state alternative are presented here & TBH even libertarians have something more (the idea of the "Network State" as presented by Srinivasan).
OK, enough. It was a waste of time.
I expected an intellectual challenge, but I've approached it openly, assuming that there has to be some truth and goodwill behind the Marxist concepts. But this book has only discouraged me and convinced me that there's no rational discussion or space for common ground here.
P.S. Seriously, Yale has published THAT? I understand the freedom of speech, but there should be some quality/veracity checks. Shame on you, Yale.
So, after finishing this book, I came up with the idea of reading something contrarian - if a libertarian economy book was fun & thought-provoking, maybe a Marxist one would be as well. Unfortunately, I was very wrong ...
But why WMWR specifically? Well, because of a few reasons:
- a respected author known of his direct and "smart" style
- published by Yale
- declared to focus on the main theses used to criticise Marxism - sounded like we're getting to the point, right?
OK, you already know (based on the star rating and "I was very wrong" comment) that this is a bad book. But why?
1. instead of facts, data & reasoning, it's fully based on being anti-capitalistic
2. instead of trying to pinpoint what is wrong in capitalism & how to fix it (if it truly needs fixing), it tries to force utopia, completely ignoring the fact that 100% of attempts to enforce it have completely failed in the past - I expected some rational view on that, maybe a summary of mistakes (except "yes, Stalin was a monster, so it's Stalin's fault") or specific list of improvements for the next "attempts" - there was literally ZERO of that here!
3. unfortunately, all "sins" of Marxism are always counter with whataboutism - a very naive one; for example: "Soviets have murdered millions, but how many have died because of feudalism across all the ages before!"; Srsly?
4. the chapter about "class" is simply ridiculous :) you read the author trying to defend Marx's thesis, but in fact - it seems like he's doing the opposite ... let's talk about how the tech. & social progress have equaled the opportunities for people within local communities, but also globally - for some reason the author pretends he doesn't see that
5. the chapter about "peace" is not even a manipulation, it's a streak of lies; when I read such statements like "the bolsheviks wanted the peace so much that their first act after the revolution was a withdrawal from WWI" my blood is boiling. Please, read the history books: why PRECISELY they have done that and what they did next (in 1919). To sum it up: yes, they wanted peace, after conquering all Europe - the communist slavery of oppressed European people.
6. the chapter about the "state" is extremely inconsistent (intellectually) - the alternative to the state is ... state, just ruled by the party - that's exactly what we've seen in the SU; no details on any real no-state alternative are presented here & TBH even libertarians have something more (the idea of the "Network State" as presented by Srinivasan).
OK, enough. It was a waste of time.
I expected an intellectual challenge, but I've approached it openly, assuming that there has to be some truth and goodwill behind the Marxist concepts. But this book has only discouraged me and convinced me that there's no rational discussion or space for common ground here.
P.S. Seriously, Yale has published THAT? I understand the freedom of speech, but there should be some quality/veracity checks. Shame on you, Yale.
August 2, 2019
تری ایگلتون به ایرادات عامهپسن� علیه مارکس پاسخ میده�. منتها پاسخهای� هم در بیشتر موارد پرداختی سطحی دارند. اصلا نفسِ خود-سوال-پرسیدن و خود-جواب-دادن کمی مسئلهدا� است. پرسشه� را اغراقآمی� میکن� و به تناقضه� و ابهامات بنیادین مارکس اشارها� نمیکن�. تلاش ایگلتون بیشتر شبیه همزد� مارکس و ارزشها� لیبرالدموکراس� است؛ «مارکس میگوی� دولت نه، اما نمیگوی� که کاملا هم نباشد.»
گویا مشکل نویسنده با سرمایهداری� بیشترْ پولدارهای زالوصفت و شاهزادگان انگلیس است. در سوسیالیسم ایگلتونی، اخلاقْ همین اخلاق فعلیِ مبتنی بر خودخواهی خواهد ماند و در واقع، کارگران بخاطر منافع بیشتر خودشان (پول بیشتر، برای مصرف بیشتر؛ دقیقا خلاف حرفی که مارکس در دستنوشتهه� برای رهایی انسانه� میزن�)، باید انقلاب سوسیالیستی بکنند. هرچند این سوسیالیسم ظاهرا خیلی هم چیز انقلابیا� نیست و با یک تقسیم پول عادلانهت� --و نه برابر-- (چه چیزی عدالت تقسیم حقوق را تعیین میکند؟!) قضایا حلوفص� میشون�.
گویا مشکل نویسنده با سرمایهداری� بیشترْ پولدارهای زالوصفت و شاهزادگان انگلیس است. در سوسیالیسم ایگلتونی، اخلاقْ همین اخلاق فعلیِ مبتنی بر خودخواهی خواهد ماند و در واقع، کارگران بخاطر منافع بیشتر خودشان (پول بیشتر، برای مصرف بیشتر؛ دقیقا خلاف حرفی که مارکس در دستنوشتهه� برای رهایی انسانه� میزن�)، باید انقلاب سوسیالیستی بکنند. هرچند این سوسیالیسم ظاهرا خیلی هم چیز انقلابیا� نیست و با یک تقسیم پول عادلانهت� --و نه برابر-- (چه چیزی عدالت تقسیم حقوق را تعیین میکند؟!) قضایا حلوفص� میشون�.
May 24, 2018
بین 4 و 5 ستاره مانده بودم و امتیاز دقیق ترش باالاتر از 4
تقریر ایگلتون از مارکس، اعاده حیثیتی است درخشان، و شاید برای کتابی در این ژانر و با این مدعا بتوان آن را اثری کم نظیر یافت. ایگلتون در ده فصل به بررسی رابطه مارکس و ایده های اساسی مرتبط با سوسیالیسم من جمله اقتصاد، انقلاب، طبقه، جنبش های اجتماعی و ... می پردازد و در این مسیر به روشنی از استدلال های ژرفی بهره می برد، از این منظر فصل مارکس و اقتصاد کتاب اهمیتی اساسی دارد.
فقط علی رغم ترجمه فارسیِ روان و خواندنیِ کتاب این سوال پیش می آید که چرا برگردان عنوان اصلیِ why marx was right?
به "پرسش هایی از مارکس" ترجمه شده است؟
اتفاقا کتاب ایگلتون دقیقا در پی پاسخ دادن به این سوال است که چرا حق با مارکس بود؟ و به نظرم در پاسخ ها و پیشنهاد های او بصیرت های تیزبینانه ای نهفته است که به سادگی نمی شود از کنارشان گذشت!
تقریر ایگلتون از مارکس، اعاده حیثیتی است درخشان، و شاید برای کتابی در این ژانر و با این مدعا بتوان آن را اثری کم نظیر یافت. ایگلتون در ده فصل به بررسی رابطه مارکس و ایده های اساسی مرتبط با سوسیالیسم من جمله اقتصاد، انقلاب، طبقه، جنبش های اجتماعی و ... می پردازد و در این مسیر به روشنی از استدلال های ژرفی بهره می برد، از این منظر فصل مارکس و اقتصاد کتاب اهمیتی اساسی دارد.
فقط علی رغم ترجمه فارسیِ روان و خواندنیِ کتاب این سوال پیش می آید که چرا برگردان عنوان اصلیِ why marx was right?
به "پرسش هایی از مارکس" ترجمه شده است؟
اتفاقا کتاب ایگلتون دقیقا در پی پاسخ دادن به این سوال است که چرا حق با مارکس بود؟ و به نظرم در پاسخ ها و پیشنهاد های او بصیرت های تیزبینانه ای نهفته است که به سادگی نمی شود از کنارشان گذشت!
July 27, 2011
The title grabbed me, and it was well-worth the read. Great writing, and surprisingly, not at all dogmatic or shrill. You didn't get an impassioned, furious defense of Marxism against our capitalist overlords. Instead, Eagleton simply talks you through how Marx himself is grossly misunderstood and misconstrued in most popular criticisms. And he doesn't place Marx above reproach; Eagleton is perfectly willing to disagree with him.
Interesting, readable, and balanced, at least for a book of this title.
Interesting, readable, and balanced, at least for a book of this title.
April 7, 2020
It has long been my policy that every once in a while, I confront myself with a book that I am almost certain I will disagree with. It is my firm belief that every conviction should be challenged and the other side of the debate heard, and afterwards, if your convictions are unshaken, or - better yet - shaken but then erected on a more solid foundation, you can go back to being smug. Or, you must admit you were wrong all along. That can also happen. Just ask all these blogposts on the merits of atheism that I never published.
While you can find plenty of debating opportunities online whether you try to or not, online debates are badly sourced, you rarely find experts in them, and even more rarely do people fire their best shots online. When you do stumble on a knowledgeable, intelligent opponent with impeccable arguments, chances are that person has published them somewhere before, in a more didactically and academically sound manner. That is one reason why I prefer to go with books if I need a devil's advocate, the other is that the dynamics of a debate incline both parties to try to win at any cost. Sophistry can earn you these nice points for your ego, openmindedness usually can't.
With Why Marx Was Right, I intended to challenge my libertarian convictions, something I haven't done in a while. Did this book succeed where , , , and the first few hundred pages of failed? The brief answer is, no. It didn't.
The longer answer is that Terry Eagleton is sometimes badly wrong, at other times he is right either on trivial points, or right only because he abandons a hundred years of Marxist tradition, and instead establishes what Marx "really" meant. Of course, this also implies that no one understood Marx until Eagleton came along, and not only did they not understand him, they misunderstood him so spectacularly that it caused around a hundred million deaths. That is not a flattering conclusion, either.
The bulk of the book consists of Eagletons attempts to debunk ten popular claims made about Marxism.
The first of these claims is this:
Marx, Eagleton says, was perfectly aware that capitalism was constantly changing, and in fact his theory assumes that capitalism is dynamic and not static. Eagleton does not quite put it this way, but he does basically say that what changed are merely accidents, whereas the essence of capitalism has remained ever the same, and thus, Marxism remains as relevant as it was at its conception. QED.
Now, first of all, Marxism was never a good or even a decent theory. Marx never defined the concept of class himself, and every definition of it that I have found could not be applied to real situations without creating a host of ambiguities. He never justified his use of the labor theory of value against the competing utility based theory of value. In fact, his argument against the latter was that it was not the labor theory of value; I have read the relevant passage in his magnum opus at least two or three times over to see if I was missing something, because I could not believe such a huge blunder could have happened, but no, I did not miss anything, his argument really was that unintelligent. (For that matter, did not do a much better job justifying it, which I will talk about in my upcoming review of his book.) As David Osterfeld has pointed out in , the stages of history, supposedly a clear-cut model, underwent constant revision by him and Engels. And do I have to say anything about this weirdest of life-forms, the alienation-theory? At least that one has some logical derivation, unlike the social necessity-criterion, which Marx created ex nihilo to make his labor theory of value operable.
This neatly brings me to my second argument against Eagleton, which is that if Marx' theory is so bad, then it's hard to make out the essentials. Personally, I regard Marxism as the intellectual superstructure of a mindset characterized by rampant envy and misguided, sentimental "compassion" (God, save us from the compassionate!). The marxist mythology of capitalism is much more important to this mindset than the precise details of Marx' theoretical framework, and this mythology is based on historical data. This data has not only changed - we don't see many british kids in steel factories, do we? - it was never accurate to begin with, as Terence Kealey has pointed out in : Engels, unaware of Eagletons pleading that Marxism understands capitalism as a dynamic system, at one point forgot to mention that the terrible workshops he described had been supplanted years ago by factories which offered safer and better working conditions. Creating a still-picture of a dynamic system from a wild array of data, some contemporary, some long outdated, is just one of several falsifications he engaged in.
The second claim begins thus:
The response to that is one part tu quoque, one part extolling the many achievements of socialism. On the first part, I'd really like to see the breakdown of Eagletons numbers. He claims that tens of millions died of preventable famine in the late nineteenth century, and that many of them were the result of "free market dogma", such as allowing grain prices to rise uncontrollably (which pretty clearly indicates there isn't enough grain to go around, as he'd know if he had ever learned about supply and demand). Whenever I looked at such a famine in detail, I found that the culprit was either a natural catastrophe or bad economics, but usually a mix of both. Quite often, war also played a role. Not a single famine I have ever looked into was caused by laissez-faire policies, however. Even if you disregard that, however, you will probably find that socialism has killed more people than any other ideology or than any religion: One hundred million, if I am not mistaken, although from the top of my hat, I don't know if Nazi Germany was counted among them. Supposing it isn't, I strongly doubt any other ideology or religion can compete with eighty million corpses. Not just that, the crimes of communism reached a cruelty and intensity that I have seldom heard of elsewhere. You have to look deep into the history of the witch hunts, or into the basements of serial killers, to find atrocities that rival the sheer inhumanity of Pitesti or Tuol Sleng.
Space does not permit me to talk in detail of the achievements of communism. Those seem to be chiefly a higher literacy rate, better healthcare, and an improved economy. The former is a little funny, in light of the abysmal record in communist countries at fostering open discourse. The price goes to Hoxhas Albania, . Not only does not everyone have to be able to read (not every worker is secretly crying over not being an academician, believe it or not), but if the only reading material are Hoxhas collected works, then being illiterate is probably a mercy. Healthcare is mostly a function of economic growth, and that communist countries are improving economically should not surprise us when the entire world does. A beggar in a rich city lives better than one in a poor village, because even the scraps he gets are superior to what a very poor villager might have for dinner. Likewise, a communist country surrounded by capitalist countries can get by, and even grow, on the scraps of capitalism. The real prices of goods (not the nominal prices!) are constantly decreasing when the economy improves, and that means a country may afford goods, including capital goods, that were previously unavailable, despite having abysmal economic policies that sound like a recipe for stagnation.
The third claim is that Marxism is deterministic. Eagletons rebuttal is uninteresting. He partially engages a strawman, and partially simply applies a common sense to Marxism that has simply not existed in it for a good hundred years. Yes, it obviously makes no sense that people would fight so hard to establish something that will arise of its own (although to me, it does make some sense, just not in the Marxist ethical framework). Still, didn't Marx' followers act as if his socialist dream would inevitably become reality whenever that was opportune? If the Marxist tradition is so poisonous, then I don't see why we should try so hard to revive it, even if Marx really was smarter than his followers. Whether he was is an academic question, it shouldn't be a political one.
The fourth claim is that Marx was a utopian, which Eagleton informs us is not the case. I don't find his arguments at all convincing. His main argument, from what I recall, is that Marx never painted a rosy, detailed picture of the communistic future. He did, however, paint a rosy picture, of mankind reaching ever new heights and finally overcoming the class conflict that has divided it since primordial times. He didn't promise an immediate end to disease and bad dreams and that we would all ride superlions, but his vague description combined with his entire theory could only impregnate his followers with the idea that he'd bring the end of history and the end of all strife and conflict. This utopianism doesn't come from nowhere, and I am not even convinced Marx himself didn't suffer from it.
The fifth claim is that Marxism reduces everything to economics. This, Eagleton informs us again, is not the case, because it would be silly if it were. So yes, more of the same: Him applying common sense to Marxism. If all Marxists before him lacked it, maybe Marx taught them wrong, after all? At the very least, we can charge him with not making himself understood very well. I'd excuse that if he was a more contemplative author, but he aimed to change the world by sparking a global revolution. A blueprint or a legal code is not the place for the kind of ambiguity that is at home in a train-of-thought essay.
So much about common sense and Marxism, and hopefully for the last time in this review. Now, Eagleton also counters the claim that Marxism is reductionist by saying that actually, capitalism reduces everything to economics, and Marxism will free us of that. Under capitalism, production serves itself, not the people. In other words, production is seen as a good in itself, not as a means to an end. Personally, I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. Aren't capitalists manufacturing precisely the goods we want? If they didn't, if they baked useless mudpies for the sake of producing mudpies, they'd quickly be out of business. Yes, I am aware you can tiptoe around that, or, less scientifically, that we don't really "need" all this useless stuff. The former is nonsense, but I can't address it in detail here, although I might have reviewed Galbraiths book by now. The latter is not nonsense, but it misses the point. If people demand useless consumer stuff, then you should take that up with them first, not with the capitalists. And if you do that, judge consumers for their bad taste, maybe start with yourself? If you cannot stop buying accessories and merchandise and lootboxes, then maybe you are part of the problem and should not judge others so harshly? And a judgement is all that is. It does not answer the question of how we differentiate what we need and what we want with the level of clarity that a legal framework for an economic order demands, or how we can do so without reducing individuals to templates. The law is based on generalization and categorization, so I would say the latter is impossible. One mans necessity is anothers luxury.
The sixth claim is quite closely related: Marxism is materialistic and atheistic. Eagletons thoughts on this are not terrible, but they miss the mark. If he manages to cram a vision of the soul and human dignity into his materialism, good for him. I am not even being sarcastic here, there is a reason why I rated this two stars and not one. This does not alleviate my fear that Marxists will burn my church down, as they historically did.
Besides that, Eagleton, while spiritually richer than other Marxists, still did not impress me.
I think contemplation of the eternal and divine and its relation to our temporal existence is a tad more spiritual than emotionalism and hooliganism. To admit this is not to view spirituality as "loftily remote" from our life on this earth. Personally, I see the unceasing prayer of 1 Thessalonians 5:17 as a life with God in mind, whatever we do. Even when you just booze it up with your friends, you can take a moment to thank God for having created alcohol for our pleasure (ask Psalm 104:14-15). The ascetic lifestyle is superior, but it is not for everyone. If it isn't for you, the alternative is to be joyful, not a miser. Besides, the Bible is full of calls to action, and Catholicism is more vibrant than Marxism ever was.
I am running out of characters, but have enough for a remark on Eagletons "humor": Snarky remarks about celebrities like Mel Gibson don't make you funny, they only make you sound bitter and slightly envious.
While you can find plenty of debating opportunities online whether you try to or not, online debates are badly sourced, you rarely find experts in them, and even more rarely do people fire their best shots online. When you do stumble on a knowledgeable, intelligent opponent with impeccable arguments, chances are that person has published them somewhere before, in a more didactically and academically sound manner. That is one reason why I prefer to go with books if I need a devil's advocate, the other is that the dynamics of a debate incline both parties to try to win at any cost. Sophistry can earn you these nice points for your ego, openmindedness usually can't.
With Why Marx Was Right, I intended to challenge my libertarian convictions, something I haven't done in a while. Did this book succeed where , , , and the first few hundred pages of failed? The brief answer is, no. It didn't.
The longer answer is that Terry Eagleton is sometimes badly wrong, at other times he is right either on trivial points, or right only because he abandons a hundred years of Marxist tradition, and instead establishes what Marx "really" meant. Of course, this also implies that no one understood Marx until Eagleton came along, and not only did they not understand him, they misunderstood him so spectacularly that it caused around a hundred million deaths. That is not a flattering conclusion, either.
The bulk of the book consists of Eagletons attempts to debunk ten popular claims made about Marxism.
The first of these claims is this:
Marxism is finished. It might conceivably have had some relevance to a world of factories and food riots, coal miners and chimney sweeps, widespread misery and massed working classes. But it certainly has no bearing on the increasingly classless, socially mobile, postindustrial Western societies of the present. It is the creed of those who are too stubborn, fearful or deluded to accept that the world has changed for good, in both senses of the term.
Marx, Eagleton says, was perfectly aware that capitalism was constantly changing, and in fact his theory assumes that capitalism is dynamic and not static. Eagleton does not quite put it this way, but he does basically say that what changed are merely accidents, whereas the essence of capitalism has remained ever the same, and thus, Marxism remains as relevant as it was at its conception. QED.
Now, first of all, Marxism was never a good or even a decent theory. Marx never defined the concept of class himself, and every definition of it that I have found could not be applied to real situations without creating a host of ambiguities. He never justified his use of the labor theory of value against the competing utility based theory of value. In fact, his argument against the latter was that it was not the labor theory of value; I have read the relevant passage in his magnum opus at least two or three times over to see if I was missing something, because I could not believe such a huge blunder could have happened, but no, I did not miss anything, his argument really was that unintelligent. (For that matter, did not do a much better job justifying it, which I will talk about in my upcoming review of his book.) As David Osterfeld has pointed out in , the stages of history, supposedly a clear-cut model, underwent constant revision by him and Engels. And do I have to say anything about this weirdest of life-forms, the alienation-theory? At least that one has some logical derivation, unlike the social necessity-criterion, which Marx created ex nihilo to make his labor theory of value operable.
This neatly brings me to my second argument against Eagleton, which is that if Marx' theory is so bad, then it's hard to make out the essentials. Personally, I regard Marxism as the intellectual superstructure of a mindset characterized by rampant envy and misguided, sentimental "compassion" (God, save us from the compassionate!). The marxist mythology of capitalism is much more important to this mindset than the precise details of Marx' theoretical framework, and this mythology is based on historical data. This data has not only changed - we don't see many british kids in steel factories, do we? - it was never accurate to begin with, as Terence Kealey has pointed out in : Engels, unaware of Eagletons pleading that Marxism understands capitalism as a dynamic system, at one point forgot to mention that the terrible workshops he described had been supplanted years ago by factories which offered safer and better working conditions. Creating a still-picture of a dynamic system from a wild array of data, some contemporary, some long outdated, is just one of several falsifications he engaged in.
The second claim begins thus:
Marxism may be all very well in theory. Whenever it has been put into practice, however, the result has been terror, tyranny and mass murder on an inconceivable scale.
The response to that is one part tu quoque, one part extolling the many achievements of socialism. On the first part, I'd really like to see the breakdown of Eagletons numbers. He claims that tens of millions died of preventable famine in the late nineteenth century, and that many of them were the result of "free market dogma", such as allowing grain prices to rise uncontrollably (which pretty clearly indicates there isn't enough grain to go around, as he'd know if he had ever learned about supply and demand). Whenever I looked at such a famine in detail, I found that the culprit was either a natural catastrophe or bad economics, but usually a mix of both. Quite often, war also played a role. Not a single famine I have ever looked into was caused by laissez-faire policies, however. Even if you disregard that, however, you will probably find that socialism has killed more people than any other ideology or than any religion: One hundred million, if I am not mistaken, although from the top of my hat, I don't know if Nazi Germany was counted among them. Supposing it isn't, I strongly doubt any other ideology or religion can compete with eighty million corpses. Not just that, the crimes of communism reached a cruelty and intensity that I have seldom heard of elsewhere. You have to look deep into the history of the witch hunts, or into the basements of serial killers, to find atrocities that rival the sheer inhumanity of Pitesti or Tuol Sleng.
Space does not permit me to talk in detail of the achievements of communism. Those seem to be chiefly a higher literacy rate, better healthcare, and an improved economy. The former is a little funny, in light of the abysmal record in communist countries at fostering open discourse. The price goes to Hoxhas Albania, . Not only does not everyone have to be able to read (not every worker is secretly crying over not being an academician, believe it or not), but if the only reading material are Hoxhas collected works, then being illiterate is probably a mercy. Healthcare is mostly a function of economic growth, and that communist countries are improving economically should not surprise us when the entire world does. A beggar in a rich city lives better than one in a poor village, because even the scraps he gets are superior to what a very poor villager might have for dinner. Likewise, a communist country surrounded by capitalist countries can get by, and even grow, on the scraps of capitalism. The real prices of goods (not the nominal prices!) are constantly decreasing when the economy improves, and that means a country may afford goods, including capital goods, that were previously unavailable, despite having abysmal economic policies that sound like a recipe for stagnation.
The third claim is that Marxism is deterministic. Eagletons rebuttal is uninteresting. He partially engages a strawman, and partially simply applies a common sense to Marxism that has simply not existed in it for a good hundred years. Yes, it obviously makes no sense that people would fight so hard to establish something that will arise of its own (although to me, it does make some sense, just not in the Marxist ethical framework). Still, didn't Marx' followers act as if his socialist dream would inevitably become reality whenever that was opportune? If the Marxist tradition is so poisonous, then I don't see why we should try so hard to revive it, even if Marx really was smarter than his followers. Whether he was is an academic question, it shouldn't be a political one.
The fourth claim is that Marx was a utopian, which Eagleton informs us is not the case. I don't find his arguments at all convincing. His main argument, from what I recall, is that Marx never painted a rosy, detailed picture of the communistic future. He did, however, paint a rosy picture, of mankind reaching ever new heights and finally overcoming the class conflict that has divided it since primordial times. He didn't promise an immediate end to disease and bad dreams and that we would all ride superlions, but his vague description combined with his entire theory could only impregnate his followers with the idea that he'd bring the end of history and the end of all strife and conflict. This utopianism doesn't come from nowhere, and I am not even convinced Marx himself didn't suffer from it.
The fifth claim is that Marxism reduces everything to economics. This, Eagleton informs us again, is not the case, because it would be silly if it were. So yes, more of the same: Him applying common sense to Marxism. If all Marxists before him lacked it, maybe Marx taught them wrong, after all? At the very least, we can charge him with not making himself understood very well. I'd excuse that if he was a more contemplative author, but he aimed to change the world by sparking a global revolution. A blueprint or a legal code is not the place for the kind of ambiguity that is at home in a train-of-thought essay.
So much about common sense and Marxism, and hopefully for the last time in this review. Now, Eagleton also counters the claim that Marxism is reductionist by saying that actually, capitalism reduces everything to economics, and Marxism will free us of that. Under capitalism, production serves itself, not the people. In other words, production is seen as a good in itself, not as a means to an end. Personally, I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. Aren't capitalists manufacturing precisely the goods we want? If they didn't, if they baked useless mudpies for the sake of producing mudpies, they'd quickly be out of business. Yes, I am aware you can tiptoe around that, or, less scientifically, that we don't really "need" all this useless stuff. The former is nonsense, but I can't address it in detail here, although I might have reviewed Galbraiths book by now. The latter is not nonsense, but it misses the point. If people demand useless consumer stuff, then you should take that up with them first, not with the capitalists. And if you do that, judge consumers for their bad taste, maybe start with yourself? If you cannot stop buying accessories and merchandise and lootboxes, then maybe you are part of the problem and should not judge others so harshly? And a judgement is all that is. It does not answer the question of how we differentiate what we need and what we want with the level of clarity that a legal framework for an economic order demands, or how we can do so without reducing individuals to templates. The law is based on generalization and categorization, so I would say the latter is impossible. One mans necessity is anothers luxury.
The sixth claim is quite closely related: Marxism is materialistic and atheistic. Eagletons thoughts on this are not terrible, but they miss the mark. If he manages to cram a vision of the soul and human dignity into his materialism, good for him. I am not even being sarcastic here, there is a reason why I rated this two stars and not one. This does not alleviate my fear that Marxists will burn my church down, as they historically did.
Besides that, Eagleton, while spiritually richer than other Marxists, still did not impress me.
Spiritual matters are not disembodied, otherworldly affairs. It is the prosperous bourgeois who tends to see spiritual questions as a realm loftily remote from everyday life, since he needs a hiding place from his own crass materialism. It comes as no surprise that material girls like Madonna should be so fascinated by Kabbala. For Marx, by contrast, ‘‘spirit’� is a question of art, friendship, fun, compassion, laughter, sexual love, rebellion, creativity, sensuous delight, righteous anger and abundance of life. (He did, however, sometimes take the fun a bit too far: he once went on a pub crawl from Oxford Street to Hampstead Road with a couple of friends, stopping at every pub en route, and was chased by the police for throwing paving stones at street lamps. His theory of the repressive nature of the state, so it would seem, was no mere abstract speculation).
I think contemplation of the eternal and divine and its relation to our temporal existence is a tad more spiritual than emotionalism and hooliganism. To admit this is not to view spirituality as "loftily remote" from our life on this earth. Personally, I see the unceasing prayer of 1 Thessalonians 5:17 as a life with God in mind, whatever we do. Even when you just booze it up with your friends, you can take a moment to thank God for having created alcohol for our pleasure (ask Psalm 104:14-15). The ascetic lifestyle is superior, but it is not for everyone. If it isn't for you, the alternative is to be joyful, not a miser. Besides, the Bible is full of calls to action, and Catholicism is more vibrant than Marxism ever was.
I am running out of characters, but have enough for a remark on Eagletons "humor": Snarky remarks about celebrities like Mel Gibson don't make you funny, they only make you sound bitter and slightly envious.
January 25, 2025
وضح الكتاب بعض المفاهيم المغلوطة المنتشرة عن ماركس من خلال عشرة فصول، كل فصل يتناول واحدة من تلك المفاهيم. شدد الكاتب على أن:
الإيمان بالفردي: كان لماركس إيمان شديد بما هو فردي، وحس من الكراهية للعقيدة المجردة. لم يكن لديه وقت لمفهوم مجتمع كامل، وكان حذرًا من فكرة المساواة المطلقة. لم يحلم بمستقبل نرتدي فيه جميعًا ثيابًا دافئة مع أرقام تأميننا الوطني مطبوعة على ظهورنا. بل أمل أن يرى تنوعًا لا تطابقًا.
الأدوات التاريخية: لم يعتقد ماركس أن الرجال والنساء هم أدوات مغلوب على أمرها في التاريخ. بل رأى أن البشر هم صانعو تاريخهم، وإن كانوا يفعلون ذلك في ظل ظروف ليست من اختيارهم.
العداء للدولة: كان ماركس أكثر عداءً للدولة من الجناح اليميني للمحافظين. نظر إلى الدولة كأداة للقمع الطبقي، وليس كحل لمشاكل المجتمع.
الاشتراكية والديمقراطية: لم ينظر ماركس إلى الاشتراكية على أنها تعيق الديمقراطية، بل كوسيلة لتعميقها. كان يعتقد أن الاشتراكية يجب أن تكون امتدادًا للحريات المدنية والحقوق التي ناضلت من أجلها الطبقة الوسطى.
الحياة الجيدة: كان مثاله لحياة جيدة قائمًا على فكرة التعبير الفني عن الذات، وليس على العمل المفرط أو الإنتاج المادي.
الثورات السلمية: اعتقد ماركس أن بعض الثورات قد تنجز بصورة سلمية، ولم يكن بأي معنى من المعاني معاديًا للإصلاح الاجتماعي التدريجي.
التركيز على الطبقة العاملة: لم يركز ماركس انتباهه بشكل ضيق على الطبقة العاملة اليدوية فقط، بل كان مهتمًا بتحرير جميع الطبقات المضطهدة، بما في ذلك الفلاحين والمثقفين.
الإنتاج المادي: لم يجعل ماركس من الإنتاج المادي معبودًا. على العكس، فقد اعتقد بأنه ينبغي إلغاؤه قدر الإمكان. كان مثاله الأعلى هو وقت الراحة وليس العمل.
المادية والأخلاق: كانت ماديته متوافقة مع قناعات أخلاقية وروحية عميقة. لم يكن ماركس ماديًا بالمعنى الضيق، بل كان يرى أن التحرر الاقتصادي هو شرط للتحرر الروحي والأخلاقي.
الطبقة الوسطى: كان ماركس يغدق الثناء على الطبقة الوسطى، ويرى الاشتراكية بمثابة الوريث لتركاتها المتعلقة بالحرية والحقوق المدنية والازدهار المادي.
September 24, 2011
by seems to me to be a good candidate for required reading for all high school students-as well as people my age looking for a good introduction to Marx. It doesn't hurt to be a little left of center but it's not a prereq. Well-written, well-reasoned, the book is a welcome introduction to an important figure by an excellent writer. Eagleton is not rabid on his subject and is able to see flaws in his subject. And while this book won't tell someone all they need to know about Marxism (could any one book?), I found it accessible and interesting (always a great combination of traits in a non-fiction book on a dense subject.
I personally think everyone should read it. And I would welcome any suggestions for other accessible books on the topic, not necessarily "pro" but not impassioned "anti" either.
I personally think everyone should read it. And I would welcome any suggestions for other accessible books on the topic, not necessarily "pro" but not impassioned "anti" either.
December 12, 2024
ایگلتون ده تا «شبهه» و کاریکاتوری که راجع به مارکس رایجه رو توضیح و بعد بهشون جواب مید�. میگ� اگر هم به مارکس انتقادی وارد باشه، که زیاد هم وارده، این ده تا به طور خاص زیادی ضعیف و احمقانه� و باید دقیقت� مارکس رو خوند. و تمام مدتی که این حرفها� علمی مهم رو میزن� ادایی و طناز و خوشنمک�. واقعاً خیلی جاهای کتاب بلندبلند خندیدم همزمان که یه عالمه هم چیز یاد گرفتم و همین امروز قراره شروع کنم به دوباره خوندن کتاب. مهمت� از همه خوشحالم که با ایگلتون آشنا شدم. امیدوارم خیلی بیشتر ازش بخونم، به خصوص کتابها� ادبیش رو، و میدون� اگر این کار رو بکنم قراره خیلی بهم خوش بگذره.
October 6, 2016
كنا هناك مقولة شائعة "أن ماركس ليس ماركسياً" بمعنى أن هناك الكثير من التقاطعات بين كارل ماركس والماركسية الحزبية المتأثرة بستالين وماو تسي تونغ..
في هذا الكتاب يستعرض المؤلف عشرة اشكاليات أو مفاهيم مغلوطة حول ماركس محاولاً توضح وجهة نظر ماركس من خلال كتاباته..
هل نجح؟ حسب فهمي المتواضع للماركسية أعتقد انه قدم توضيحات لا بئس بها..
يستحق الكتاب ربما أربع نجوم وسأقلل نجمة لسوء الترجمة..
في هذا الكتاب يستعرض المؤلف عشرة اشكاليات أو مفاهيم مغلوطة حول ماركس محاولاً توضح وجهة نظر ماركس من خلال كتاباته..
هل نجح؟ حسب فهمي المتواضع للماركسية أعتقد انه قدم توضيحات لا بئس بها..
يستحق الكتاب ربما أربع نجوم وسأقلل نجمة لسوء الترجمة..
April 25, 2021
3 y mucho que redondeo a 4.
Es una especie de "grandes éxitos" anti-marxistas que el autor se dedica a desmontar, con mayor o menor éxito.
En general me parece un libro excelente para empezar a leer sobre las teorías "marxianas", incluso para alguien como yo que ya ha leído cosas previamente.
Un muy buen resumen, super ligero de leer (el único capítulo más durillo es el que se acerca a la parte más filosófica de Marx, pero es a su vez uno de los más interesantes), y con toques pop, que recorre desde la economía al estado, las libertades individuales, la ecología, etc.
Muy buen libro introductorio, por tanto, muy recomendable.
Hasta aqui la reseña, ahora una pequeña reflexión:
No siendo yo, como ya digo, ni siquiera un principiante en marxismo hay una tesis que me ha dejado descolocado: la de que el socialismo pleno necesitaría o se aprovecharía de la riqueza creada previamente -justa o injustamente- por el capitalismo para triunfar y liberarnos. Algo que no habia visto hasta ahora y que me genera un torrente de argumentos propios, y que tego que estudiar si es interpretación de Eagleton o de verdad subyace a lo escrito por Marx.
En cualquier caso, se esté o no de acuerdo con sus ideas, Marx es un gigante. Hay que seguir estudiándolo.
Es una especie de "grandes éxitos" anti-marxistas que el autor se dedica a desmontar, con mayor o menor éxito.
En general me parece un libro excelente para empezar a leer sobre las teorías "marxianas", incluso para alguien como yo que ya ha leído cosas previamente.
Un muy buen resumen, super ligero de leer (el único capítulo más durillo es el que se acerca a la parte más filosófica de Marx, pero es a su vez uno de los más interesantes), y con toques pop, que recorre desde la economía al estado, las libertades individuales, la ecología, etc.
Muy buen libro introductorio, por tanto, muy recomendable.
Hasta aqui la reseña, ahora una pequeña reflexión:
No siendo yo, como ya digo, ni siquiera un principiante en marxismo hay una tesis que me ha dejado descolocado: la de que el socialismo pleno necesitaría o se aprovecharía de la riqueza creada previamente -justa o injustamente- por el capitalismo para triunfar y liberarnos. Algo que no habia visto hasta ahora y que me genera un torrente de argumentos propios, y que tego que estudiar si es interpretación de Eagleton o de verdad subyace a lo escrito por Marx.
En cualquier caso, se esté o no de acuerdo con sus ideas, Marx es un gigante. Hay que seguir estudiándolo.
January 6, 2023
Hyvä tiivistelmä ja kommentaari, tykkäsin erityisesti muodosta, jossa kappaleet alkavat väitteellä marxismista (tyyliin ”luokkajako ei ole enää relevantti�) ja teksti jatkuu vastaamalla väitteeseen. Loppua kohti kirja vähän toistaa itseään ja varsinkin feminismiä ja luonnonsuojelua käsittelevä kappale oli musta turhan suopea Marxia itseään kohtaan. Tuomas Nevanlinnan kommentti lopussa tuntui sekin aika ylimääräiseltä: tarvitsiko tähän tosiaan kommentaarin kommentaarin?
September 22, 2022
Funcional para una charleta de bar con personas poco afines al marxismo y prejuiciosas al respecto. Sencillo. Puntos interesantes pero también numerosos deslices. De lectura muy rápida.
January 4, 2021
"Kapitalisme telah merampas kemanusiaan kita, kenapa Marxisme malah diposisikan juga sebagai perampas kebebasan individu? Jadi, ‘metanarasi� utama yang sebetulnya patut dipetik dari sini adalah tidak terlepasnya Marxisme dari kontestasi pemaknaan. Jangan-jangan yang selama ini dibela mati-matian itu bukanlah Marxisme, melainkan cara berpikir kapitalisme. Ironis sekali, bukan?"
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