What Marx Got Right And Why Marx Got History Wrong

The island example is not a side joke. Source trail 0:001:13 Good morning. So today we are doing Karl Marx. And Karl Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in human history. His contribution to intellectual thought cannot be overstated. So what I'm going to do first is I'm...And you have to work together in order to just get by, okay? You're not eating well, you're not living well. Every day is a struggle. You're not really sure if you'll get to the second day, all right? So those are the t... It is the anthropology Marx needs. Comfort without purpose can be spiritually thin; hardship with common work can feel like life. The lecture begins by making Marx psychologically plausible before it makes him historically wrong.

Kant makes reality subjective: the world we see is shaped by mind, space, and time. But Kant leaves three problems: whether objective reality exists, where reason comes from, and why people seem to share the same world. Hegel answers with the Geist, a world spirit, almost like an Internet of collective consciousness Source trail 4:28 Why aren't we seeing a different reality, okay? And then Immanuel Kant says, well, we don't know either, okay? So these are the three major problems created by Immanuel Kant's philosophy of the world. So Frederick Hegel... , becoming reality through thought.

Hegel's dialectic is a drama of opposition: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Source trail 5:306:477:41 Okay? So these are the, so what, this is Hegel. What Karl Marx will do is build on Hegel to create something called dialectical materialism, which is the idea of class struggle, okay? And he will create his philosophy b...Okay? And it's the idea of a debate, where you might have a viewpoint and you engage with someone where another viewpoint that's opposite of yours, you debate, and through this debate, you create a synthesis of your dif... The master depends on the slave and is inverted by that dependence. Marx takes this structure and changes its engine. Spirit becomes economics. Dialectic becomes class struggle.

The Young Hegelians misread Hegel as an atheist and invert him. Source trail 8:389:40 said god is dead but when hegel said god is dead what he really meant is i am now going to reinterpret god not as this separate entity from us but as part of us in the form of the guys okay um so the young hegelians wil...idea of the uh material world in struggle with itself creates the idea of dialectical materialism and we call this class struggle okay the rich and the poor funny each other and the poor are looking for liberation right... Ideas no longer create material reality. Material reality, economics, and wealth create culture and ideas. That inversion becomes dialectical materialism: history is the struggle of rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed.

Then Marx gives the struggle a destiny. Hunter-gatherers become farmers. Agriculture produces surplus. Surplus creates priests and civilization. War produces feudalism. Technology produces industrial capitalism. Industrial capitalism must produce communism. The claim is not merely that communism would be good. It is that communism has to happen because history itself has necessity Source trail 11:57 resources and so this gives rise to the master slave relationship which then gives us feudalism okay which then allows for the rise of industrial capitalism and this is a stage marx finds himself at and what mark says i... .

This is why Jiang calls Marx's history theological. History is God, God is history Source trail 11:57 resources and so this gives rise to the master slave relationship which then gives us feudalism okay which then allows for the rise of industrial capitalism and this is a stage marx finds himself at and what mark says i... . Capitalism carries the seeds of its own demise: imperial expansion creates a global proletariat, technology makes old labor unnecessary, and crisis arrives through overproduction, financialization, and monopoly. Marx, Piketty, and Carroll Quigley all appear here as different crisis readers of capital.

This is the part Jiang does not dismiss. Source trail 17:3518:43 Alright, so what I'm going to explain now is, why would this be popular? Why would this history be popular for people? Because communism was one of the most popular movements throughout the 20th century. And the problem...And the idea here is this. Capitalism can only lead to extreme inequality. Why? Because the point of capitalism is to generate as much wealth as possible. So to do that, we want to consolidate our wealth. So maybe there... Marx explains why communism became one of the great movements of the twentieth century: capitalism makes people miserable. It expands across the world, starts wars for markets and cheap labor, consolidates wealth, and destroys the middle class. The small owner is swallowed by the large one.

Alienation is the deeper wound. In human production, I create something, give it to you, and your gratitude confirms my individuality and my connection to the species. Capitalism replaces use value with exchange value. The apple pie Source trail 20:42 The problem with capitalism is it takes use value, what this thing is used for, and replaces it for exchange value, which is how much this thing is worth. And these are two different concepts. So use value is, I cook an... no longer connects maker and eater. It becomes five dollars.

The injury spreads. Specialization turns a whole person into a hand, a finger, an eye, an ear Source trail 21:43 Before, we were doing things in order to support our community, in order to please other people, in order to affirm our humanity. Now we're just making stuff because of wage labor, right? Wages to get paid. So that's al... , a cog. Nature becomes something to exploit. Classmates become competitors because grades make solidarity irrational. Marx's diagnosis of capitalism is brilliant because it sees how money can make ordinary life spiritually unintelligible.

The first correction is the oldest transition. Source trail 26:0626:59 Okay? The first thing is, let's go back to the hunter -gatherer agriculture transition. The first class I ever taught, like, a long, long time ago is, the transition from hunter -gatherer to agriculture didn't make any...practice a cult, to practice a religion, because maybe one place was considered divine for whatever reason. And as a result, we develop agriculture, which led to civilization. So the Marx formulation that religion comes... Hunter-gatherers were not starving into agriculture. They worked less and ate better than farmers. The economic story does not explain why people settled down. Religion does. A place becomes divine, people gather around a cult, agriculture follows, and civilization grows from that.

The same correction applies to capitalism. Feudalism does not become capitalism because technology says so. Catholic bureaucracy gives way to Protestant anxiety. If salvation is predestined, the terrifying question is how to know whether you are elect. Wealth becomes the sign. You work hard, save, and do not spend because money quiets the religious panic Source trail 28:5729:49 Right? So what the Protestants said is no. Access to heaven is predestination. In other words, at the beginning of time, God has already decided who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. He's already decided, so it...So how do you compensate for OCD? Well, you make a lot of money. But not only do you make a lot of money, but you don't spend it because that wealth now, is an indicator to you and to others that you are truly one of th... .

The summary is blunt: people care about religion, not economics; God, not heaven Source trail 30:50 Do you understand? Okay? How do you know you believe in God? Because you worked hard and God made you wealthy. And that's the logic driving capitalism. So Marx missed this. Okay? So let's summarize and say, look, Marx m... ; status, not class. This is why communism does not abolish religion. It recreates it. Stalin, Mao, and North Korea become bureaucratic hierarchies with divine leaders because the human demand for sacred status did not disappear.

Student questions sharpen the point. Why did people miss religion and believe economics? Because capitalism and communism are the same materialist religion Lens point atlas-relation Reason becomes a replacement religion when a society claims to move beyond church and priest while preserving religion's truth-making, civil dogma, sacrifice, salvation, and mythic-action functions through reason, debate, progress, utility, revolution, nation, economics, science, materialism, or technocratic systems. Source trail 34:0635:47 And because he got the history wrong, the consequences were huge. Okay? Because communism created a lot of wars and it led to a lot of disasters like famines and stuff. Any questions before I move on? Okay. Yeah. So tha...Communism is the same way. Communism believes that as long as there's equality, as long as there's no property, everyone will be happy. So it's ironic that these two ideas, capitalism and communism, even though they wer... , training newspapers and citizens to ask about GDP, employment, inflation, and eggs instead of spiritual condition. Why did revolution happen in Russia and China instead of Germany? Because those were peasant rebellions wearing communist ideology, not the advanced proletarian revolutions Marx expected.

Marx comes from Jewish intellectual aristocracy, like generations of professors and rabbis behind him. Jiang calls him a poet-prophet Source trail 41:09 So, Marx comes from a, he's basically an aristocrat. Okay? So, he's almost like a prophet. I mean, he is a prophet. He's a poet prophet who's preaching of a new world to come. And he's very certain, he's very clear, and... : brilliant, optimistic, certain, preaching a new world. Industrial capitalism supplies the misery. Slums, child labor, polluted cities, famine, and the 1848 revolutions make paradise feel historically close.

The Communist Manifesto works because it is not dry policy. It is poetry. The specter haunting Europe Source trail 44:34 And it is an amazing document. It's beautifully written. I don't think they get enough credit for how wonderful this is written. Okay? But let's read the beginning. A specter is haunting Europe. The specter of communism... is the Geist renamed communism. The bourgeoisie tears apart feudal, patriarchal, familial ties and leaves naked self-interest and cash payment. The writing has power because it sees that capitalism makes a new economic man.

But Marx is still extending Christianity without admitting it. Christianity offers heaven with God. Marx offers a universal worker paradise without God. The problem is that no one wants utopia without God Source trail 48:36 You don't have to do anything. Just don't commit any sins and then you go to heaven. Okay? But for Marx what's important is that we participate in the revolution that we are responsible for our lives. Okay? Second diffe... . A five-star hotel heaven is not heaven. This is why secular communism cannot prevent Stalin or Mao from becoming sacred figures.

Then the lecture returns to Marx at his most beautiful. In human production, I cook for you and you recognize my humanity. Add money and the relation is damaged. A thousand dollars for a meal prepared in love is disgusting because payment replaces recognition Source trail 51:32 So this is complicated but all he's saying is this I cook you a meal I spent days preparing this meal. Okay? I put it's a labor of love. I cook the best food in the world. Okay? I give it to you you have you are blown a... . Marx is right that capitalism makes slaves by turning inner necessity into external compulsion.

Marx also wins indirectly. Capitalist societies adopted many communist demands because communism threatened ruling elites. But Marx still missed the actual forces of destabilization: elite overproduction, older elites refusing to yield status to the young, and financialization. Revolutions are powerful because they reset the game Source trail 57:47 All right? Clear? Great. All right. So let's look at three examples. All right? You look at Soviet Union. You look at China. You look at France. How was it possible for the Soviet Union to defeat Germany? And Germany wa... , not because they obey a communist law.

Industrial capitalism itself is more complicated than Marx allowed. It needs the monotheistic abstraction of the Trinity, gunpowder nation-states forced into competition, Reformation anxiety, and exploration bringing markets and crops back into Europe. History is random, layered, and religious before it is economic. Source trail 58:4459:421:00:41 Same thing with the Cultural Revolution where the Cultural Revolution removed the old elite, the bureaucrats. So in the 1980s when China opened up, you had these young people with entrepreneurial drive to start companie...Okay? The Holy Trinity is the weirdest idea in human history. The Holy Trinity is this. God is nothing and everything. Okay? And what this means is that, God is both real and not real. God is a symbol and reality itself...

Communist societies then prove the religious point again. Source trail 1:00:411:01:461:02:45 And they needed to force themselves to believe they are the elect. Okay? And then, the age of exploration where the old world, Europe could go and create new markets and steal new, steal gold and bring the potato, corn,...Okay? They were not common societies. They were theocracies. They were religious. They were no different in many ways than Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages. Okay? The Soviet Union fell apart because the party elit... The Soviet Union and China become theocracies of personality. North Korea, in this provocative reading, may have more fertility and future than South Korea because people need purpose more than wealth. That is not a GDP argument. It is an argument about meaning.

Bakunin supplies the anti-vanguard warning. If intellectual elites are allowed to guide society scientifically, life withers into a servile herd Source trail 1:04:57 On the contrary it is confirmation realization and human dignity of all persons to see and feel my freedom confirmed sanctioned and expended by universal agreement is happiness. It is human paradise on earth. So, for fr... . Jiang draws the line straight to technocracy and AI: engineers and bureaucrats, trained to see only systems, will make technology a new religion Lens point atlas-relation Reason becomes a replacement religion when a society claims to move beyond church and priest while preserving religion's truth-making, civil dogma, sacrifice, salvation, and mythic-action functions through reason, debate, progress, utility, revolution, nation, economics, science, materialism, or technocratic systems. Source trail 1:06:01 The domination of life by science can have no other result than the brutalization of mankind. Okay. This is a very important passage. All this saying is this. Before we were intellectuals. We were curious about the worl... and use it to reinforce their power.

China becomes the final case because Chinese communism and American capitalism now reinforce one another. Chinese people want to become American; in that sense America has conquered China Source trail 1:07:53 Chinese want to become American. So in many ways America has conquered China. And so why is that the case? And the answer and I mentioned this before is it's because communism and capitalism reinforce each other. They s... . Children sit in school for ten hours a day, lose childhood, and are offered the religion of education-for-money as salvation. Communism plus capitalism becomes the worst possible society Source trail 1:10:10 It's just unconscionable and evil what we're doing to our children in China. Right? And why we're doing this is because in China we've combined communism and capitalism to create the worst possible society. All right. A... .

The final student questions let Jiang push the argument to its edge. North Korea is poor because wealth measures exploitation and global trade, while self-reliance protects unity. Marx was not too idealistic in his own mind; he thought he was scientific. But if Marx saw the world now, he would not celebrate. Humanity has enslaved itself as consumers Source trail 1:14:34 He wouldn't be like that. He'd be like what have we done to humanity? This is far worse than the industrial revolution what's happening where everyone now is a slave as a consumer. Right? In your mind all that matters i... .

That sets up Freud. Marx and Bakunin still believed happiness had to be collective Source trail 1:15:38 So we come to believe that for our own eternal struggle we can be happy. Others don't matter. We ourselves if we're happy we're good. And what Buchanan and Marx have taught us is if if everyone is unhappy you must be un... : if everyone is unhappy, you cannot privately be happy. Modern psychology shifts the focus inward, from community to the self. The next question is how that happened.