Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 8, 2022

Terry Eagleton, author

Why Marx Was Right is a 2011 book by the British academic Terry Eagleton (pictured) on the philosopher Karl Marx and Marxism. Eagleton outlines ten objections to Marxism that he attempts to refute. These include that it is irrelevant, determinist, utopian, authoritarian and opposed to reform. Eagleton says class struggle is central to Marxism and history is viewed as a series of modes of production that describe the nature and organisation of labour. He describes how revolution could lead to socialism in which the working class have control and make the state obsolete. He explores the failures of the Soviet Union and other communist countries. The book was published in 2011 and reprinted in 2018, 200 years after Marx's birth. Critics gave mixed feedback on the prose style, although the commentary on historical materialism was praised. The book was criticised for its defence of the Soviet Union and other Marxist states. (Full article...)