A useful review of the core of War Against Marxism, but the result still makes little sense. We have spent two centuries rehashing Hegel versus Marx and the results are totally confusing and unproductive. Marxism has failed to produce socialism and the result should be ‘you’re fired’, so we can start over with something more productive. Neither Hegel nor Marx had the data for a study of history and/or evolution even as the ideology of Darwinism ended up snaring the whole Marx legacy. The references here to Hegel’s method are ludicrous. What was that? Maybe a Sparks notes version might help.
I recommend a complete break with this jargon ridden universe and a simple escape route of socialism into a new and simpler approach to history, philosophy, religion and economics. The idea for a science of history and/or a philosophy of history has failed and a new approach such as simple chronologies can be a useful substitute. The whole base superstructure distinction is a pack of nonsense. It is very hard to resolve the dynamic of history but it is clear that that is not economic. Economic determination is secondary in historical realization and it is not clear just how history works. A close study of the eonic model can suggest a new perspective with a warning that historical and organismic evolution remain unsolved problems for human knowledge. The realm of Marx and Hegel in this direction are obsolete realms of fiction. Marx was an ambitious theorist who ended up in twenty years of writers block unable to complete Capital because its core was incoherent and incapable of scientific completion. Marx finally gave up and handed the whole mess of Capital to Engels who managed to rescue something from the mess of pottage. The generations studying Capital have produced a sophistical and incoherent cult that is a de facto religion and a dangerous stance toward heretics still in the realm of common sense. Marx was a predator who took over the idea of socialism and made it a kind of personal property as an ism in his name, Marxism. Time to just let go and and start over.
PDF | Bloomsbury Academic: London and New York, 2021. 280 pp., $29.95 pb ISBN 9781350201415 About the reviewer Fouad Mami is a literature scholar from… | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
Source: (PDF) Review of Tony McKenna The War Against Marxism: Reification and Revolution
1848+: The End(s) of History 