Support for WPR comes from St. Luke's Burthing Center, providing expectant mom's low intervention options with labor tubs, remote telemetry, and nitrous oxide.

More information is at slh Duluth.com slash baby.

It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strain Champs. Today, we're asking the question, was Karl Marx right?

You know, not that long ago, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, everyone thought Marxist ideology had bitten the dust,

and that history had proved the great critic of capitalism, Karl Marx, wrong. But today, believe it

or not, Marxism is back. And Steve Paulson, who has put together today's show, is here to tell us why.

Steve, what's going on? Well, this new interest in Marxism is really a critique of capitalism,

more than a blueprint for any kind of socialist or communist future. And it goes back to the economic crisis of 2008.

And there are a lot of people now who believe there is a basic structural problem with capitalism itself,

that the people who have really benefited from any kind of economic comeback that we've had are the very rich, the so-called 1%.

And this has spawned all kinds of protest movements. Occupy Wall Street,

the mass protests against the new austerity measures in Europe. Are you saying we're seeing a whole

new Marxist movement on the rise? I don't think we should kid ourselves. This is not a mass movement,

but it's become intellectually respectable, once again, to talk about Marxism and to talk about

Karl Marx himself, because he made arguably the most systematic and trenchant critique of capitalism we've ever seen.

And what's really interesting is we're seeing a lot of this among young people right now who came of age after the Cold War.

I mean, they don't feel like they have to contend with the baggage of the gulags and the Soviet show trial so they can look

at Marxism with fresh eyes. So I take it we're going to hear from some of the people who are

rethinking Marx's legacy. What have you got for us? Well, actually, we're going to start with an old

time British Marxist, Terry Eagleton, who's been around for decades. And he recently wrote a book called Why Marx Was Right. First of all, I don't believe, of course, that Marx was right in everything.

Far from it.

He made a lot of important blunders and errors, had a lot of blind spots.

...