I am an avid listener of Why Theory, so I had incredibly high expectations for this book which it only partly met. in general it was a very interesting read of hegel that I thought was well-sourced (although it shouldn't be mistaken for an academic treatise; the book is very informal) but my problems lie with the last chapter (of ten) that guns after marx in a way that seems absurd. up to that chapter mcgowan was more laying the groundwork for his reading of a freedom-loving hegel, often through arguing against opposing glosses. this chapter, though, seeks to supersede marx by claiming that he was, in fact, a conservative thinker in light of hegel, which I think is absurd. the best thinker in the world would need at least a book to do something like that, not a paltry twenty pages. and, the argument isn't even that great, relying upon fallacious ideas of marxism, such as that it was the engine that killed millions under stalin. I think his main objection, that marx seeks to overcome contradiction through communism, is ontologically correct but can easily be sidestepped by maintaining that there will be contradiction under communism but not class struggle or smth. even then, one is measuring the radicality of thinkers in terms of how much freedom they want to attain, which is a completely liberal standard that marx wasn't even writing for.