Slander is Always Sufficient for Marx and his Defenders

From a blog post by the British Spectator by Alex Massie on Terry Eagleton's new book Why Marx Was Right:

"I should note that Tyler says Eagleton does a fine job in debunking or correcting some mistaken interpretations of Marx and his work but, really, when you wish away the deaths of millions - to say nothing of the apparatus of the totalitarian state - as a mere detail that, however unfortunate it may have been, is, implicitly anyway, a price worth paying for the socialist system's 'achievements' and when you do this in 2011 then your moral compass is, um, malfunctioning.
I suppose one will have to read the book to discover quite how deliciously paradoxical* it is that Stalinism 'bears witness' to the validity of Marx's work.
Revolting, really."

I suppose that slander and straw man arguments are always sufficient for Marx and his defenders. The book is available in the U.S. and I have just read the chapter in question with the quote provided here.

The argument is that the process of industrialization is a nasty one, and that Marx's concept of socialism can only emerge from a revolution lead by a mature working class in a developed capitalist society.

Thus, 20th century Russia was underdeveloped, socialism was not possible, and Stalin seized the opportunity to build a totalitarian dictatorship that was NOT socialist.

I have actually been waiting for a book such as Eagleton's that has an answer for the boilerplate slander of Marx and Marxism(s), and hopefully will be blogging on the book more in the future. (But I am pretty damn busy with a move to a new job and location).