DOC TAYROC'S [UNSOLICITED] BOOK REVIEW - WHY MARX WAS RIGHT by Terry Eagleton

For years, when teaching different economic epistemological methodologies, I would try to divide everyone (problematically, as discrete variables tend to be) into three categories: neoclassical/neo-liberal, Keynesian, and Marxist. Before anyone hops down to the comment section, I know that this isn't a perfect grouping, and yes I've had debates with people for years over whether or not it's fair to group neo-classicalists and neo-liberals together. I maintain it is, because neo-liberalism is the natural conclusion and progression of neoclassical thought, the political consequences of allowing a single class to accrue so much power through capital, and the idea that you could possible make capital 'apolitical' and divorced from power is entirely wishful thinking, as naive as any utopian vision could ever be. That is, as naive as they accuse the Marxists as being, as this is another instance of projection being confession.

That said, when teaching these, students correctly ask for additional reading, to gain more insights into the differences from the three major divisions, and not just from a jaded Marxist who used to self-identify as a neo-classicalist. In future book reviews, I'll circle back to the best readings available for neoclassicism/neo-liberalism and Keynesianism, but for now, because it's my column dammit, let's stick with the Marxism, and a book I briefly referenced in last week's Marx and the Death of the Author entry, Why Marx was Right by Terry Eagleton.

Eagleton is a cranky old British socialist, and so already we know he's in friendly territory with yours truly, after all, I'm a cranky British socialist, and if I'm lucky someday I'll be a cranky old socialist. As I've discussed in some of my Marx and Death of the Author entries, as well as in other book reviews, it could be argued that Britain sort of, maybe, cautiously tried its hand at socialism a few times. There is, of course, stories of pre-modern proto-socialism in medieval Britain and Europe, but since I've never cared for medieval history, I'm not going to touch those with a barge pole. I will, however, acknowledge the original Manchester Co-op society and similar co-operatives that emerged across northern England and Scotland in the late 19th century, and would eventually be consumed and killed by the rather corporate Co-Op grocers/bankers/funeral homes that modern Britons think of when they think of 'the Co-Op'. No, the attempt at an attempt at socialism I'm referring to is the so-called 'golden age of capitalism', between 1945 and the early 1970s, terminating officially in 1977 with the election of Margaret Thatcher. Of course, this era of relative socialism didn't come from out of the blue, and pre-Second World War welfare programmes did exist in Britain, some dating back to the 'Great Reform Era (mid-19th century, for all intents and purposes), some dating back to Elizabeth I of all people, and of course, more than a few dating to the first (proper) Labour governments of the 1930s, themselves possible thanks to the horror of the First World War.

No, I'd say that British socialism was most marked by the birth of the NHS in 1946, and died with the election of Thatcher in 1977. Hallmarks of British socialism include the nationalisation of coal, the formation of British Railways, the initial universalisation of up-to-undergraduate or equivalent degree education across Britain, and ambitious hopes to build futuristic housing for all, which resulted in the Barbican Centre and because of period tastes has left us with a lot of Brutalism which wasn't desirable, but oh well. It also left us with Milton Keynes, because 'the future' in the 1940s and 50s meant cars for everyone, which thankfully didn't pan out, but that's a different discussion for a different day. Whilst Britain of the 1940s, 50s, and 60 wasn't perfect, for a variety of reasons I've covered in this post, and more, it was the largest quality of life improvement the average Briton had ever seen. A whole host of feats that were previously deemed impossible by the British bourgeois were suddenly being achieved at pace by the governments of Attlee and Wilson. Much of this progress was only possible due to the fact that national effort was necessary to rebuild Britain after the considerable damage done to infrastructure and housing alike by the Second World War. Further, quite a few of the returning soldiers felt that they were owed by their government, rightly so. As such, it was not unreasonable to expect the government to build Britain back better. (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Of course, as discussed previously, racism and imperialism bring an end to any optimism that this period built pretty quickly, with the OPEC embargo and subsequent energy crisis leading to economic disaster in petroleum thirsty nations like Britain in the 1970s. Instead of doing any soul searching about treating Nigeria like an equal in order to buy their oil at fair price and help them development as we rebuild, we tore up all the socialism and prayed that the free market capitalism that had led to the miserable living conditions present for the majority of Britons over the majority of the 18th and 19th century would somehow be better now and gave Britain back to the capitalist class, in no small part thanks to the efforts of noted Australian racist Rupert Murdoch, who owned a considerable chunk of British media, and was rather fond of Margaret Thatcher and the racial norms of the British Empire both in Britain and Australia. The racial norms, of course, being genocide, theft, appropriation, and exploitation of everyone who wasn't a straight white 'middle class' person within the Commonwealth. (And also, eventually the Middle Class, as they also constitute the proletariat, but have tricked themselves into thinking otherwise).

The result has been 40 years of British corporations looting the British state in a way previously reserved for British colonies. Of course, the colonies were also looted, as well as countless other countries that were never formally colonised as modern Free Trade doctrine allowed rapid British exploitation of areas never even visited by the British state in a way that the 'lads' behind the South Sea Bubble could only have dreamed. For the average Briton, the result has been a series of 'cost of living crises', a rise in 'rough sleeping' as the BBC has taken to calling it, consistent un and underemployment, degrading health, a hollowed out NHS, a less reliable Royal Mail (they privatised a government entity that has been government owned since the damned 1500s), declining education results, increasingly unaffordable tertiary education, an entire generation economically worse off than their parents, the death of the 'local pub', the death of the North, Scotland, and Wales feeling politically ostracised from England, and an overall decline in the quality of life for the average Briton. The Victorians would've been astounded by the 'own goal' that Britain has scored against itself, even hollowing out sources of 'soft power' like the BBC and the internationally renowned universities, whilst also burning bridges with countless allies. Thatcherism has done more to destroy Britain than countless enemies who have fought Britain over the centuries could ever have dreamed. Napoleon and Hitler must be kicking themselves in the afterlife, neither had ever considered the key to destroying Britain was selling them on the virtues of capitalism and quaint uninformed racist nostalgia, not amphibious invasion.

Britain's return to capitalist misery, complete with raw sewage now being dumped in our water ways, nothing more nostalgic than preventable 18th century diseases like cholera after all, was predicted by Marx, Eagleton argues, as the logic of capital that Marx and Engels had written about in the mid 19th century hasn't changed at all in the nearly two centuries since the original publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848. As such, it is little surprise that when Attlee's reforms gave the bourgeois class a proverbial inch to dominate the press, for example, they took the mile and pushed for the complete deregulation of press ownership, which allowed the bourgeois to sway the British public to vote against their best interests, and vote for candidates that favoured the destruction of regulations that had benefited everyone at the cost of giving the bourgeois free reign to exploit everyone and chase 'infinite profit'. Eagleton argues that many of the neo-liberal reforms of the Thatcher era have brought about predictable results, and people who today cry, 'we couldn't have known' are being dishonest, as even in the 1980s prominent economist like Minsky were already pointing out the inevitable consequences of the deregulations, and further, Marx had pointed all these out in the 19th century, a century before Thatcher came to Westminster.

Recently, I was talking to someone about AI, as I am wont to do. He was an older fellow, and he said, 'if only someone had done research on the effects of AI monopolisation and how it impacts wealth distribution'. I tried not to take it personally, as that is literally what I do, a fact he should have known, as I had said it maybe forty minutes earlier, but frankly AI is just another face of automation (except the power-looms of Lancashire indisputably did what they said they would, I'm not convinced AI exists as sold), and Marx had already written extensively about the ownership of the means of production over a century before I first put pen to paper. I told this old man, 'someone has, his name was Marx', an answer he seemed unsatisfied with, likely because it would mean that many assumptions he'd been making over his life were not only wrong, but he had a chance to not make them back then, he just chose to ignore the 'nay sayers' back in the 1980s, since they were inconvenient. At least that's the 'shower thoughts' version of his thoughts that live in my head.

Eagleton takes a similar track to that in his work, also arguing that much of the hubbub around computers and their impacts on the economy aren't surprising to students of Marx, as the computer represents capital's latest push to abstract the value of labour in order to increase extraction of surplus value. Whilst there are some subtle differences between a computer and a power-loom, the usage of capital to justify the diminished value of labour and withhold wages remains constant. Further, just like with the power-looms of Lancashire, all the computers in the world still can't actually produce value on their own, labour is still required to do that, labour's 'free hidden gift' to the capitalist class, as discussed in a book that I'll be reviewing next week.

One of the frustrating things of teaching economic history, of late especially, is apologists for the actions of 19th and 20th century politicians and capitalists making claims like, 'oh we have the benefit of hindsight, but back then they couldn't have known what they were doing was evil and/or would be bad for everyone'. It's frustrating because of the sheer amount of classic writings by various artists and academics from the 19th and 20th century that prove that people did indeed know these things were evil and would have disastrous consequences even back then, but in the name of the twin devils of convenience and profit the 'nay sayers', perhaps even the 'disruptophobes' were ignored or hand-waved away. A frustrating fact that modern AI sceptics have to contend with today. (He says, speaking from personal experience of the last decade).