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Fred Inglis looks for some contemporary comment in a robust defence against the critics of Marxism.
Why Marx Was Right
By Terry Eagleton
Yale University Press, 272pp, Pounds 16.99
ISBN 9780300169430
Published 26 May 2011
Is it possible to be a roaring boy and a sage old pedagogue at one and the same time? It is indeed, for this is Terry Eagleton. Exasperated, as well he might be, by the repeated claims that socialism in general and Marxism in particular have nothing whatever to contribute to political argument after the Cold War, after Chinese Communism has so abruptly mutated into 10 per cent growth capitalism, and after New Labour's old apostasy, Eagleton trundles his massive mentor on his Highgate plinth back to confront the most recent debacle of Western capitalism.
He does so by summarising, with his infallible dash, his unnerving hyperbole and explosive jokes, as well as his unwavering allegiance to the best the Left has thought and said, the 10 most familiar canards with which Karl Marx is now nonchalantly dismissed.
Thus and thus: Marxism is over, relevant only to 19th-century smokestack industry; Marxist theory and...