Marxism, Socialism, and Communism: Marx

The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast

Hillsdale College

Courses, Society & Culture, Education, History, Government

4.6 • 621 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan introduce the course "Marxism, Socialism, and Communism."

In “Marxism, Socialism, and Communism,” professors of history, politics, and economics look at Marx’s life and writings, the misery and brutality in the Soviet Union, the atrocities of communist China, and the proliferation of Cultural Marxism in America. They explore how many ideas animating American politics today are rooted in Marxism, and yet how they differ from Marx’s thought. By taking Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Frankfurt School seriously, we can see the injustice and evil inherent in all strands of Marxism. We also better understand the critiques of communism made by Mises, Hayek, and Solzhenitsyn. We are, therefore, better equipped to defeat it.

Marx made legitimate critiques of the profanity of the liberal societies he witnessed. But his communist vision denied human nature, misunderstood politics and economics, and encouraged worse profanities. In particular, Marx sought the destruction of private property, the abolition of the church and family, and accepted countless atrocities in the name of revolution.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast.
0:12.7	I'm Jeremiah Regan, and I'm Juan Dabalos.
0:15.3	We are back today with a new course, Marxism, Socialism, and Communism.
0:20.3	Yeah, this is our first purpose-built documentary course.
0:23.7	We feature six scholars who tell us the history, the politics, and the economic consequences
0:29.6	of Marxism from beginning with Marx up till current day.
0:34.5	Yeah, I think you're really going to like that it's something, it's different
0:39.1	than our typical courses. We actually, we even don't call these lectures, but more like
0:44.9	episodes, because they are like a documentary. We had a few professors, politics professors
0:50.2	and a professor from Bard College, who joined us. So we interviewed them. We talk about Marxism,
0:57.5	socialism and communism, and the ideas of Marx. It goes a little bit through the philosophy,
1:04.9	the ideology, but also the history, how it goes into the Soviet Union and China and Venezuela, and essentially what has
1:12.4	happened to those societies. We even have an economist who was from Eastern Europe and he is
1:17.2	able to tell us about Yugoslavia, partially from personal experience. What we were trying to do
1:23.5	with this course, because I would imagine that most of our listeners are going to reflexively think,
1:29.0	well, Marxism, communism, socialism, these things are bad. And they're right. They're right to think that.
1:34.9	But why are these ideologies so pernicious and so durable? Why do we still have to deal with the ideas of Marxism,
1:43.2	communism, and socialism after decades, centuries of horror and failure and atrocity?
1:49.3	So what we're trying to do is give a fair presentation to the ideas of Marx and Lenin and Stalin and see what was attractive.
1:59.5	Why are these ideas so enduring? And when we have that proper
2:03.1	understanding, we'll be able to make arguments that are all the stronger for why they are
2:07.1	unjust, why they're inefficient, wasteful, and bad. And how you can see them today, right,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Hillsdale College, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Hillsdale College and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.