For Marx and for Marxists, class is not an identity. It's a relationship. It's how you as a person relate to the means of production. Do you own the means of production? Then you're not working class. But do you have to sell your labor in order to survive? Do you have to

sell your labor and work for somebody who owns the means of production? Then you're working

class. And it's kind of as simple as that. To my perspective, what the advantage of that

conception of the working class is that it doesn't have this sort of like coded thing

that we do in America and that is, oh, the working class, well, that's white people who used to

work in factories or mines who are like disgruntled and conservative now. Or as Obama said,

these are the people who cling to their guns and religion, right?

So it doesn't have that sort of like coded cultural terminology or baggage.

It's not a victim ideology because almost all of us are the working class.

And it actually gives us agency as a group of people, as most people, to overcome our situation.

Yeah. group of people as most people to overcome our situation. Welcome back to The Money with Katie Show.

I'm Katie Gaddy Tossan and today I'm doing a solid for my college self, who did not take

advantage of her access to history classes because she was too drunk to see straight for

approximately all four years.

And I'm going to interview a history professor.

Andrew Hartman is a professor of history at Illinois State University.

He is the author of a few different books, including one called A War for the Soul of America,

a History of the Culture Wars, which hit my to be read list so fast it left skid marks,

and education and the Cold War, the Battle for the American School.

But he's here with me today because of a third book, published just this year,

about how the philosopher Karl Marx has influenced the development of the United States

and the country's self-concept for the last 150 years.

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