Why Marx Was Right is a 2011 non-fiction book by the British academic Terry Eagleton about the 19th-century philosopher Karl Marx and the schools of thought, collectively known as Marxism, that arose from his work. Written for laypeople, Why Marx Was Right outlines ten objections to Marxism that they may hold and aims to refute each one in turn. These include arguments that Marxism is irrelevant owing to changing social classes in the modern world, that it is deterministic and utopian, and that Marxists oppose all reforms and believe in an authoritarian state.
In his counterarguments, Eagleton explains how class struggle is central to Marxism, and that history is seen as a progression of modes of production, like feudalism and capitalism, involving the materials, technology and social relations required to produce goods and services within the society. Under a capitalist economy, the working class, known as the proletariat, are those lacking significant autonomy over their labour conditions, and have no control over the means of production. Eagleton describes how revolutions could lead to a new mode of production—socialism—in which the working class have control, and an eventual communist society could make the state obsolete. He explores the failures of the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist countries.
As an author of both specialist and general books in the areas of literary theory, Marxism and Catholicism, Eagleton saw the historical moment as appropriate for Why Marx Was Right; critics said that the book was part of a resurgence in Marxist thought after the 2008 financial crisis. It was first published in 2011 and reprinted in 2018 to mark 200 years since Marx's birth. In Canada, it entered Maclean's bestseller list for two weeks in 2011.
Critics disagreed on whether the book succeeds in showing the relevance of Marxism. Its prose style garnered praise as witty and accessible from some reviewers, as well as criticism by others as lacking humour and using assertions rather than arguments. Experts, disagreeing about whether Eagleton's chosen objections were straw-men, suggested that the book would have benefited from coverage of the labour theory of value, the 2008 financial crisis, and modern Marxist thought. However, Eagleton's commentary on historical materialism was praised. Why Marx Was Right was criticised by some reviewers for its defence of the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union and other Marxist states. Some also argued that it contains economic mistakes and misrepresents Marx's views on human nature, reform and other subjects.
Background
Terry Eagleton is an academic in the fields of literary theory, Marxism and Catholicism. He turned to leftism while an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in the 1960s, finding himself at the intersection of the New Left and Catholic progressivism in the Second Vatican Council reforms. Eagleton joined the UK branch of the International Socialists and then the Workers' Socialist League. His book Criticism and Ideology (1976) showcased a Marxist approach to literary theory. He rose to prominence with the text Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), his best-known work. Alan Jacobs of First Things said that his style of writing "wittily and even elegantly" was unusual in literary theory at the time. After professorships in English literature at the University of Oxford (1992–2001) and cultural theory at the University of Manchester (2001–2008), Eagleton took visiting appointments at universities worldwide.
In the book, Eagleton uses a number of terms from Marxist philosophy, which arose from the ideas of the 19th-century German philosopher Karl Marx. In describing a society's use of labour, he employs the phrase means of production to describe the raw materials and tools needed to produce goods and services; the productive forces refer collectively to the means of production, human knowledge, and division of labour within the society. A society also has relations of production: roles like wage labour, where a person sells their labour to a boss in exchange for money. The productive forces and relations of production—together called the mode of production—are seen by Marx as describing the fundamental structure of a society; example modes of production include capitalism and feudalism.
In Marxian class theory, a person belongs to a specific social class (e.g. working class) based on the role they play in the mode of production. In capitalism, for example, the bourgeoisie are a class of property owners who control the means of production. Marx identified a pattern of one social class developing the productive forces until the relations of production are a barrier to further advancement. Class struggle—a proposed fundamental tension between different classes—is central to Marxists's understanding of how a new mode of production is established. Because he viewed societal development as rooted in physical conditions rather than abstract ideas, Marx was a historical materialist, rather than an idealist. Base and superstructure is a materialist model for describing society, wherein the mode of production ("base") is seen to shape the other aspects of the community: art, culture, science, etc. ("superstructure").
Synopsis Eagleton's chapters outline ten theoretical objections to Marxism, each followed by his counterargument. He begins with the objection that social class plays a lesser role in post-industrial societies, making Marxian class theory inapplicable. Eagleton's counterargument is that Marx anticipated phenomena such as globalisation and societal changes since Marx's era have not fundamentally changed the nature of capitalism. Eagleton finds that suppression of the labour movement was the predominant cause of declining popular support for Marxism from the mid-1970s onwards.
The second objection is that Marxist governance results in mass murder, infringements on freedom, and other hardships. In the chapter, Eagleton describes approaches to socialism that differ from those of failed communist states and compares communist failures to capitalist ones. Regarding Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, Eagleton outlines conditions he believes are required for successful socialism: an educated population, existing prosperity, and international support after an initial revolution. He says that socialism with inadequate material resources results in regimes like Stalinist Russia, which was criticised by Trotskyist Marxists and libertarian socialists. An alternative mode of production is market socialism, in which the means of production would be collectively owned, but democratic worker cooperatives would compete in marketplace conditions.
Third, Eagleton argues against the position that Marxism requires belief that societal change is predetermined. Marx's view was that societies can develop in different directions—for instance, capitalism could stagnate, or lead to socialism or fascism. Thus it is not deterministic.
Fourth is the claim that Marxism is utopian, erasing human nature to depict a perfect world. Marx, however, was sceptical of utopian socialists and did not aim to describe an ideal future. He was a materialist who eschewed idealism, in opposition to liberal, Enlightenment thought. Marx likely thought that human nature exists, according to Eagleton, who writes that socialism would not require altruism from each citizen, only a structural change to social institutions. Marx, an individualist, viewed uniformity as a feature of capitalism, and communism as a realisation of individual freedom. He rejected a bourgeois view of equality as too abstract and obscuring capitalism's inherent inequalities.
The fifth chapter analyses whether Marxism is a form of economic determinism, presenting all of life through a narrow framework of economics. Though Marxists view history as the study of progressing modes of production, so did Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith. Marx's base and superstructure model is not deterministic, according to Eagleton, as the superstructure is not fully determined by the base, and can also cause the base to change. In Marxism, the class struggle may determine the progression of society, but a class is not just an economic status: it is associated with traditions, values and culture.
Sixth is the assertion that Marxist materialism rejects spirituality and sees consciousness as merely a physical phenomenon. Though past materialists saw humans as just matter, Marx's form of materialism started with the fundamental concept that people are active beings with agency. In Eagleton's reading of Marx, the human mind is not something different from the human body, and spirituality and consciousness are matters of bodily experiences. Eagleton lists structures, like American born again churches, that can be part of both base and superstructure, and facets of life, like love, that cannot be categorised as either.
The seventh chapter is framed by an anti-Marxist argument that social mobility is increasing and social classes have changed since Marx's day, rendering the ideology outdated; however, Eagleton sees modern capitalism as disguising class inequalities that still exist. In Marxism, class is about a person's role in production rather than their outlook. The proletariat (working class) includes everybody who has little control over their labour, which they are compelled to sell to advance a boss's capital. Eagleton argues that Marx's ideas are resilient to changes since his lifetime. In Marx's era, female domestic servants were the largest group of proletarians, but Marx identified a growing middle class of administrators and managers. White-collar workers can be working class, and culture, ethnicity, identity and sexuality are linked to social class.
The eighth objection is that Marxists advocate a violent revolution by a minority of people who will instate a new society, making them anti-democracy and anti-reform. Eagleton says that some revolutions such as the October Revolution were less violent than, for instance, the American civil rights movement reforms; he sees revolution as a lengthy process with long-term causes. Though conceding that Marxism has led to much bloodshed, Eagleton argues that capitalism has too, and few modern Marxists defend Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong. Socialist revolution would require the working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie—a democratic action, as most people are working class. Though some communists, deemed "ultra-leftists", reject all parliamentary democracy and reform attempts, others use these to work towards revolution. Marx participated in reformist groups like trade unions and may have believed that socialism could be achieved peacefully in some countries.
Ninth is the argument that Marxism will install an authoritarian state led by a dictator. Though Marx spoke of a "dictatorship of the proletariat", in his era dictatorship meant "rule by the majority". Rather than authoritarianism, he wanted a withering away of the state—a communist society would have no violent state to defend the status quo, though central administrative bodies would remain. Contemporary Marxists do not wish to lead an authoritarian state as they believe that power held by private financial institutions would make socialism via state control impossible.