Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here one quick glance at Karl Marx's curriculum
Speaker 1: vitae says a lot economist, philosopher, journalist, sociologist, political theorist, historian.
Speaker 1: Add to that socialist, communist in the original meaning of
Speaker 1: the word, and revolutionary, and that's just a start. Karl
Speaker 1: Heinrich Marks was one of the most respected minds of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. His meditations on how societies work and
Speaker 1: how they should work have informed and challenged humans for
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and fifty years. Yet to the uninitiated,
Speaker 1: Marks maybe only a bushy, mugged symbol of revolution, the
Speaker 1: father of communism, the hater of capitalism. He's considered by many,
Speaker 1: especially in the West, as the man whose ideas spurred
Speaker 1: authoritarian communist regimes in Russia, China and beyond. That again
Speaker 1: is selling the man short, because it's not entirely right.
Speaker 1: In his book Karl Marks, a nineteenth Century Life, author
Speaker 1: Jonathan Sperber wrote, viewed positively, Marx is a far seeing
Speaker 1: profit of social and economic developments and an advocate of
Speaker 1: the emanspiratory transformation of state and society. From a negative viewpoint,
Speaker 1: Marx is one of those most responsible for the pernicious
Speaker 1: and evil features of the modern world. If nothing else,
Speaker 1: Marx was a keen observer of the human condition. He
Speaker 1: was a deep thinker with bold ideas about how to
Speaker 1: make life better. We spoke with Lawrence Dollman, who teaches
Speaker 1: a course on mars and philosophy at the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago and is the co author of a chapter on
Speaker 1: Marx and Marxism in the Rootledge Handbook of Philosophy and Relativism.
Speaker 1: Dolman said Marx himself was first and foremost a kind
Speaker 1: of scientist. He was a student of reality, but he
Speaker 1: himself struggled throughout the course of his career how exactly
Speaker 1: to put his ideas to politics. It's important to note
Speaker 1: that despite his one time lofty standing what was then
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. Marx was born in Treer in the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Prussia in eighteen eighteen. That's what's now known
Speaker 1: as the Rhineland area of western Germany. After the failed
Speaker 1: German Revolution of eighteen forty eight, Marx fled to London,
Speaker 1: where he eventually died in eighteen eighty three. He's buried
Speaker 1: beneath a large tomb in London's Highgate Cemetery inscribed with
Speaker 1: the words Workers of All Lands Unite. But Mars grew
Speaker 1: up privileged, the son of well off and liberal parents
Speaker 1: in an ancient town that had been wrapped for decades
Speaker 1: before his birth by war and revolution. That upheaval, cultural, religious,
Speaker 1: and political shaped his parents and was a big part
Speaker 1: of young Marx's upbringing. Later, Mars attended universities studying law
Speaker 1: and philosophy, where he became engaged to and later married,
Speaker 1: a Prussian baroness. It was while studying philosophy in law
Speaker 1: that Marx was introduced to the works of German philosopher
Speaker 1: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose ideas he used to later
Speaker 1: form his take on communism. Marx began a career as
Speaker 1: a journalist in his early twenties, writing for radical newspapers
Speaker 1: in Cologne and Paris. Throughout he consorted with other liberal
Speaker 1: minded philosophers, and by his mid twenties met and collaborated
Speaker 1: with one of the major influences in his life, freed
Speaker 1: Rich Angles. It was Angles who convinced Marx that society's
Speaker 1: working class would be the instrument to fuel revolutions and
Speaker 1: bring about a more fair and just society. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight, the two published a pamphlet that would be
Speaker 1: the basis for a new political movement, the Communist Manifesto.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty three, after Marx's death, Angles summed up
Speaker 1: the main idea in the Communist Manifesto like this quote,
Speaker 1: that economic production and the structure of society of every
Speaker 1: historical epoch, necessarily arising therefrom constitute the foundation for the
Speaker 1: political and intellectual history of that epoch. That consequently, ever
Speaker 1: since the dissolution of the primeval communal ownership of land,
Speaker 1: all history has been a history of class struggles, of
Speaker 1: struggles between exploited and exploiting between dominated and dominating classes
Speaker 1: at various stages of social evolution. That this struggle, however,
Speaker 1: has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class,
Speaker 1: the proletariat, can no longer emancipate itself from the class
Speaker 1: which exploits and oppresses it, the bourgeoisie, without at the
Speaker 1: same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation,
Speaker 1: oppression class struggles. Dolman explained, Marx was always concerned to
Speaker 1: understand the real underlying causes of social phenomenon, the events
Speaker 1: and institutions that kind of shape the social world. Marx
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of dig down beneath the appearances and
Speaker 1: see what was really going on. Early on in his
Speaker 1: career he thought that the best arena to do that
Speaker 1: in was philosophy, and then as time went on he
Speaker 1: transitioned more into the social sciences. What's most important about
Speaker 1: Mars is that he very much had a kind of
Speaker 1: engineering mentality about society. He wanted to know what makes
Speaker 1: it work, and how if we want to change it,
Speaker 1: do we change it? What are the levers that we
Speaker 1: have to pull. Marx's eighty seven economics work capital a
Speaker 1: critique of political economy, a takedown of capitalism that decried
Speaker 1: the exploitation of the working class, crystallized a debate one
Speaker 1: that continues today between the West's ruling social and economic
Speaker 1: theory capitalism and Marx's idea of communism. Too many. It's
Speaker 1: a fight that hits rich versus poor, bourgeois e versus proletariat,
Speaker 1: ruling class versus workers. And it's even more than that.
Speaker 1: To those who debate it, it's right versus wrong, an
Speaker 1: argument about the best path to a perfect society. But that,
Speaker 1: of course is very simplistic and doesn't get Marx's thinking right.
Speaker 1: Dallman said, above all else, the association that people have
Speaker 1: with Marx is that he's some utopian pie in the
Speaker 1: sky dreaming of a perfect world that is free of
Speaker 1: all the nastiness we live in now. Really, that couldn't
Speaker 1: be further from the truth. Marx had a kind of
Speaker 1: engineering mindset. He was probably, of all the major figures
Speaker 1: in the history of political thought, the most practical, the
Speaker 1: most realistic. He was the most concerned with what is
Speaker 1: really possible in the real world. What marks to find
Speaker 1: as communism but boiled down. A society that produces goods
Speaker 1: only for human need, not for profit, and in which
Speaker 1: there is no master slave, royalty, peasants, owner worker relationship
Speaker 1: and therefore no need to overthrow anybody certainly clashes with
Speaker 1: the materialism of capitalism, but it's a long way from
Speaker 1: what many today see as communism too. After the Russian
Speaker 1: Revolution of nineteen seventeen and later under Joseph Stalin's reign,
Speaker 1: some of Marx's ideas, along with those of Vladimir Lenin,
Speaker 1: were used to build a New Empire. Millions were killed
Speaker 1: along the way. Similarly, millions died in China under the
Speaker 1: rule of Malzadom's Communist Party. Dolman acknowledged it's hard to
Speaker 1: even talk about what Marks thought of communism without dragging
Speaker 1: in all the weight from Soviet Russia and communist China,
Speaker 1: and obviously a lot of people hold Marks responsible for that.
Speaker 1: Authoritarian rules like Stalins and Maus were not what Marx
Speaker 1: had in mind. It's important to note, too, that Marx
Speaker 1: did not hate capitalism. He actually saw some virtue in
Speaker 1: the system. He saw it as a necessary precursor to communism,
Speaker 1: and he envisioned some of the technological challenges automation unseating workers,
Speaker 1: for example, that are true today. Doloman explained, Mars was
Speaker 1: very impressed with the kind of progressive character of capitalism.
Speaker 1: By forcing people from all different walks of life into
Speaker 1: the same workplaces, capitalism kind of breaks down the old
Speaker 1: divides between communities, and so things like race and gender
Speaker 1: and religion divide people less. The more people are forced
Speaker 1: to see each other as equals in the workplace. Marks
Speaker 1: recognized and marveled the economical and technological growth the capitalism
Speaker 1: begets and saw it as an improvement from previous societies.
Speaker 1: Later in life, Dolman says Mark suggested that a growth
Speaker 1: in capitalism might be a way to move toward communism
Speaker 1: instead of all out revolution, but he still saw communism
Speaker 1: with no master slave dynamic as the end goal. In
Speaker 1: that way and in others, Marx's idea of communism was
Speaker 1: far from the atrocities that have been committed in the
Speaker 1: name of communism elsewhere, and his ideas are still, perhaps
Speaker 1: strangely too many a beacon in a search for a
Speaker 1: better way of life, in that this practical and deep
Speaker 1: thinker of the nineteenth century still has relevance in today's world.
Speaker 1: Dolman said, Mars was so committed to giving a kind
Speaker 1: of rational criticism of everything, not just the enemy, but
Speaker 1: to himself and everything. He was willing to criticize the
Speaker 1: old modes of life and show how capitalism kind of
Speaker 1: improved on them. But he was also willing to criticize
Speaker 1: capitalism and show how we could foresee the improvement coming
Speaker 1: in the future. That is still a hopeful vision. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this, lots of other curious topics, is it,
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