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Marx Neden Haklıydı? (2011)

by Terry Eagleton(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Yordam Kitap

review 1: A well-reasoned (if rather boring) reminder of the ways in which Marx's actual beliefs have been abused by capitalists and communists alike. Eagleton is realistic about socialism's failures, but equally realistic about those of capitalism. "[Marx] was even more hostile to the state than right-wing conservatives are, and saw socialism as a deepening of democracy, not as the enemy of it. His model of the good life was based on the idea of artistic self-expression . . . His materialism was fully compatible with deeply held moral and spiritual ocnvictions. He lavished praise on the middle class, and saw socialism as the inheritor of its great legacies of liberty, civil rights and material prosperity."
review 2: The title might lead you to believe that this would be... more a summary of Marx’s views, which is not quite correct. Instead, it is a polemic against those who have prematurely dismissed Marx — after Stalin, after the fall of the Soviet Union, after the “end of history.” History, it turns out, is not quite over yet. In turn, Eagleton takes up ten myths about Marxism: (1) that Marxism is finished; (2) that everywhere it has been implemented, it has produced terror, tyranny, and mass murder; (3) that it is a form of determinism; (4) that it is a utopian fantasy of human nature; (5) that it reduces everything to economics; (6) that Marx is a materialist, rejecting religion and reducing all human emotion and creativity to a reflex of the material world; (7) that Marxism reduces everything to the class struggle; (8) that it is violent; (9) that Marxists advocated an all-powerful state; and (10) that the most interesting radical movements of the past 50 years have all fallen outside of Marxism.Eagleton makes a good case that Marx still has insights to give about our current condition. Inequality is increasing by leaps and bounds, the rich are indeed getting richer at the expense of everyone else, and environmental devastation threatens the viability of life on earth. Marxism does have insights into the class struggle and the insight that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class. Wouldn’t it be logical to expect that all the pundits would be proclaiming the death of Marxism just as its prophecies are coming true? In the process of refuting those who have gloated a bit too soon over the demise of Marxism, Eagleton does give quite a bit of exposition of Marx’s ideas. This is not a summary of Marx’s ideas, but more of a way of shaking us awake to look at the social realities around us. As Marx said, the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it. less

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