Why Marx Was Right

Terry Eagleton. Why Marx Was Right. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2012. 272 pp.

In Criticism and Ideology (1978), which was one of Eagleton's first books, he expounds the scientific Marxism of the French philosopher Louis Althusser. In his new book, Why Marx Was Right, he has come full circle, defending a polemical faith in Marxism, or, rather, in Karl Marx.

It is not that Eagleton defends everything that Marx said. On the contrary, he grants that Marx got some things wrong. Unlike Nietzsche and Freud, Marx did not, for instance, recognize that power imposes domination for its own sake (209). It is that, in explaining Marx's views, Eagleton adopts a highly polemical tone. For example, speaking of how western manufacturing was outsourced to "cheap wage locations" in the third or "underdeveloped" world, he denounces the treatment of the "'peripheral' countries, which were, he says, "subjected to sweated labor, privatized facilities, slashed welfare, and surreally inequitable terms of trade" (4). One would expect him to provide the statistics or information supporting this claim, but that is not the point. Rather, Eagleton means to contrast the miseries of these countries with the well-being of western elites, so he adds that, while these countries suffered such miseries, "the bestubbled executives of the metropolitan nations tore off their ties, threw open their shirt necks, and worried about their employees' spiritual well-being" (4). The third world miseries are appropriately denounced, while the first world executives' well-being is appropriately and amusingly ridiculed. Such...