I Get Schooled on Marx
About this episode
The episode discusses Karl Marx's influence on the American left with historians Andrew Hartman and James Livingston.
My guests on today’s episode are historians Andrew Hartman and James Livingston . Andrew is a professor of history at Illinois State University and the author, most recently, of Karl Marx in America . Jim is professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University and the author, most recently, of No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea . I asked Andrew and Jim on the show to talk to me about Karl Marx and his continued influence on the American left. Really, if I’m being honest, I asked them on to help me solve a problem that I’ve been feeling increasingly compelled to solve, which is that I have a very strong intuition that Marxism is a profound drag on the capacity of the American left to achieve what I would like it to achieve, which is to exert meaningful power in opposition to big money in all its forms, but I am embarrassingly vague on the why or how Marx continues to exert such pull. The bosses have so, so much power in America, and I fear it’s slowly killing us, and we desperately to find a way to rebalance the scales. But precisely the kinds of people and groups to whom we’ve looked, historically, to organize fundamental resistance to the evils of big money are the…
People in this episode
Host: Daniel Oppenheimer
Guests: Andrew Hartman, James Livingston
Topics covered
- Marxism
- American left
- historical influence
- political power
- big money
- resistance
Keywords
- Marxism
- American left
- politics
- big money
- historical influence
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Karl Marx in America, No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea
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