How Marxism went from philosophy to cudgel
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Republican politicians like to use the term ‘Marxist’ to criticize Democrats. Lately, they’ve dubbed New York City mayoral candidate a ‘Marxist’ despite him identifying himself as a democratic socialist. Today on the show, we dig into what ‘Marxism, as an economic term,’ actually means.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Patty Hirsch. And I'm Adrian Ma. There's a word that Republican |
| 0:17.4 | politicians have been tossing around recently that we want to talk about. Oh, hold on a second there, Adrian. Politics? We don't do politics here. This is an economic show. Yeah, but, but this word is actually an economics term. And the term is Marxism. Oh, okay, right. Yeah. This is our latest episode in an ongoing series, economics terms corrupted by politics. |
| 0:39.6 | This is not your father's Democratic Party. They are now full on to Marxism and socialism. |
| 0:46.5 | Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist. |
| 0:50.2 | You know, part of me wants to say, let's take back Marxism, except, you know, I really don't want to do that. |
| 0:55.2 | But I do want to set the record straight. |
| 0:57.6 | So on today's show, we're going to find out exactly what this key economic term Marxism actually means. |
| 1:03.8 | And my lot of politicians are batting it about the place right now. |
| 1:06.8 | That's coming up after the break. |
| 1:10.8 | I want it that way was a Backstreet Boys banger, but was it also a secret economics lesson? |
| 1:16.3 | If you watch the music video, you can really see an illustration of the concept of comparative advantage. |
| 1:21.9 | All right. |
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| 1:40.6 | So what is Marxism? Well, it's the political and economic theory of Karl Marx, |
| 1:45.2 | German philosopher, big beard, wild hair, heavy drinker, even heavier smoker, |
| 1:49.8 | died of bronchitis and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London in the atheist's corner. |
| 1:55.3 | Jennifer Nicol Victor is a professor of political science at George Mason University. |
| 1:59.1 | Carl Marx was a 19th century philosopher who wrote a couple of very influential titles |
| 2:07.1 | that a lot of political science students wind up reading sections of at least. |
| 2:12.2 | The two biggies she's talking about are Das Capital, which is a critique of capitalism, |
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