I look at blueprints all the time, and I have never seen one, ever, which specified in detail what it DIDN’T want: no use of structural steel, not too many doors, no red paint, no blue in the carpet.
Eagleton, as some may know, is a Marx-biased fascist, and thus when he bemoans the lack of critical studies, what he is really complaining about is insufficient government funding for incompetent dilettantes to occupy all their time taking strong stands on issues–like economics–they really don’t understand. If English teachers confined themselves to teaching English literature, that may be one thing, but he himself invokes Foucault, and implicitly many others, going back to Plato through Marx. This has nothing to do with English, and everything to do with cultural subversion through English. One could even argue that most English professors in fact view their own field–the underlying assumption that English, per se, is worth studying–with contempt, outside of the aesthetic merits they take in well crafted prose, which is not different in its nature or ultimate usefulness from the same appreciation applied to fine wine.
Personally, I took advantage of state underwritten education, majored in the humanities, and STILL have learned vastly more since I graduated than I ever did in college. As I have likely mentioned, I often listen to Teaching Company lecture series.
To return to the topic, though, Marx was a critic. He was not an architect.
Let us think as architects, though.
We want a political system which allows groups of differing visions of life to resolve their differences peacefully.
We want a society which values creativity, expressed both in the artistic domain, as well as the economic domain.
We want a society which protects individual rights, both in the freedom from (the violence of others or the government) and freedom to (to do anything which harms no one) senses.
We want a high general standard of living, and a close correspondence between an individuals willingness to work hard, and their following income. We want to be free of those who can take from others without contributing anything. We want all wealth to be earned, at some point. (it is worth noting that Oxbridge could easily be seen as having been purchased on the backs of peasants; and attended in large measure by the descendants of successful thieves).
We want everyone to be equal before the law.
These are a few desiderata. None of these are valued in Communo-fascist regimes. In all such states, violence of the government against the people is the norm; oligarchs earn rich livings at the expense of the populace as a whole; creativity is only valued when it enriches the elite; and diversity of opinion is squelched. This is the condition in Cuba. It is the condition in North Korea. It is the condition in China, which in my understanding STILL operates labor camps of the sort Hitler used.
The way that imbeciles like Eagleton rationalize their bad ideas is–and I’m going to guess, talking out loud here:
1) They are divorced from consequence. He does not think a Communist coup is likely, so he will not have to explain to the suffering masses why he supported it.
2) They surround themselves with the ideologically like-minded, making their horrific ideas, filled with death as they are, seem palatable.
3) Being divorced from consequence, they are divorced from the necessity of planning. It is one the ironies of this whole thing that those who most value central planning are themselves incapable of planning at all. They aren’t interested in it. It comes dressed in overalls and looks like work, and even though he pokes fun at himself, it seems likely Eagleton really is as effete as he appears. He is not going to take on the cares of someone concerned with making important things happen correctly and harmoniously.
Marx himself, in my understanding–I have his biography on my shelf, but like many other such books, have not made the time to read it–was a slob. He didn’t work regularly or at all. Like Rousseau, he was a chronic debtor, and unreliable in nearly everything.
I do not think it would be taking things too far to view the entirety of his economic and philosophical views as extended rationalizations of his personal failings. When you fuck up, what is the first thing you do, if you are intelligent? You do abstract. This is a great way to avoid emotions that are unpleasant. You fuck up a lot, and you spend all your life thinking. Once you are thinking, what do you think about? Why it ISN’T YOUR FAULT. Make it large enough and complicated enough, and nobody will see that you felt unloved at age 3.
The world runs on ideas. If you feed it bad ideas, it gets ugly. Feed it good ideas, it brightens up. Eagleton is complaining that his campaign to paint England grey (and call it a rainbow) is underfunded. To that, I say: marvelous.