I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast. The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand the test of scrutiny. As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people in the right direction.

For episodes 7 and 8, I wanted to spend some time and talk about Karl Marx and Marxism. I initially tried to make this one episode, but once I put the episode together, I realized it was way too big of a beast, so I cut it up into two different episodes.

If possible, the best thing to do will be listen to the episodes back to back only because these ideas are so dense and they're so interlinked. On to Marxism. Marxism has been thrown around quite a bit recently. In conservative circles, it's become a scarlet letter of sorts and my perception is that many people who throw the term might not have the tightest grasp of what it is.

There are others who immediately upon hearing the word decry it as some kind of scapegoat only used to defend ruthless capitalism. With respect to social justice issues, Patrice Collors, one of the co-founders of the organization called BLM, described herself as a "trained Marxist." So what exactly is it? Is it merely an economic philosophy that's either harmful, benign, or neutral?

If it is an economic philosophy, what's the danger in embracing it? Shouldn't good-hearted people such as Christians be compassionate and isn't one way to be compassionate and embrace of Marxism? Moreover, the dialectic that is typically framed is Marxism versus capitalism. So as Christians, we need not be worried since we are above this dialectic, or so the narrative seems to be.

Then there are others who will be quick to assail you even if you attempt to levy some type of critique of Marxism because somehow that just seems to be the morally superior thing to do while somehow displaying their own cognitive dissonance of their own attitude. Whatever the case, Marxism, once thought to be completely dormant by the majority, has found renewed interest for differing motivations while evoking differing sentiments.

For that reason alone, it might be wise to see for ourselves what this is and go to the source. My plan this episode is to lay out for you exactly what it is by going to the source. But in order for the source to make more sense, I want to take a little bit of time talking about the Industrial Revolution.

It was during the Industrial Revolution that the Communist Manifesto, aka Marxism, was birthed. It was during the Industrial Revolution that goods that were outside the reach of the masses started to become much more affordable. Modern labor was able to be allocated much more efficiently because of the inventions of the time of various different machinery like the telegraph and the spindle.

Importing and exporting around the globe began to abound for the first time. Modern medicine was able to make leaps. It created a diversified panel of jobs, allowing for greater opportunity. It just created more economic opportunities for more people, vastly more people. At the very same time, it led to massive overcrowding in urban cities since that's where the epicenters of the revolution was, massive amounts of pollution in those areas, and extremely poor working conditions for these masses.

In order to meet the demand for labor, it was typical to have very poorly constructed housing for these workers right next to the epicenters. Let's not even talk about child labor laws since they just didn't exist back then. The prevailing ideology during this explosion, during the Industrial Revolution, was laissez-faire capitalism which could be defined as an economic system in which transactions between private parties are absent of any form of economic interventionism such as regulation and subsidies.

To put the Industrial Revolution in one sentence, it would not be unfair to say it was the best of times and it was the worst of times, just like most of history. That was the Industrial Revolution. Karl Marx himself was born in 1818 in Prussia. Marx grew to love philosophy with a passion, particularly the works of George Hegel.

It would be accurate to say that his entire worldview was shaped by his thought. George Hegel was a recently deceased philosopher and his works were widely discussed in Europe at the time and he was the father of the Hegelian dialectic. Marx himself had somewhat of an up-and-down life. He eventually ended up penniless, dying from illness with about 13 people attending his funeral.

Interestingly, being a lifelong atheist, he was buried in East London in Highgate Cemetery in an area reserved for atheists and agnostics. It was in between this time he befriended Friedrich Engels and wrote Das Kapital, which was a critique of capitalism, and The Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto begins with the proposition that the entirety of human history is one group exploiting another.

This building block is axiomatic for Karl Marx. Let me quote to you from the Communist Manifesto. The history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

So again, we have two classes here. You are either oppressor or the oppressed. In other words, and he's going to state this in The Communist Manifesto, you are either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is not some fancy name for the 1%. The bourgeoisie is just the middle class.

The proletariat is the working class. The working class, don't think of a contemporary blue collar worker. The working class during that time will be something more akin to someone working, let's say, in a sweatshop in some part of Southeast Asia. The proletariat, according to Karl Marx, is at the mercy of the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie has and continues to oppress the proletariat, and the continuity of oppression is easy to see, according to Karl Marx. Again, the bourgeoisie is not the king. The bourgeoisie is just what we would think of as the middle class. So according to Karl Marx, because of the rise of global imports and exports, we just talked about the Industrial Revolution, because of the rise of global imports, exports, the bourgeoisie will always continue to maintain their dominance over the proletariat.

Less civilized nations will eventually be subsumed within the civilized nations, resulting in only an increase of power to the bourgeoisie. Despite all this, Marx predicts that the bourgeoisie will eventually be overthrown by the proletariat. Because of overproduction and overconsumption, resentment between the two classes will spill over into a new revolution.

What Marx misses in the Communist Manifesto is that in reality, people typically move from the proletariat class to the bourgeoisie class. That's how freedom works. According to Marx though, a person is stagnant, meaning once you're in the proletariat class, you stay there. Once you're in the bourgeoisie class, you stay there.

But in reality, even back then, what he missed was that people will typically start in the proletariat class, and in a free society, you have the room and you have the ability to move into the bourgeoisie class. This phenomenon is documented and proven heavily by the economist Thomas Sowell.

Because of Marx's own philosophy, one of his goals is the abolition of private property. And I quote, "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence, "Abolition of private property." We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity, and independence.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so. That is just what we intend." So Marx understood the accusation levied at him was that he wanted to abolish private property. And he says, "You are exactly right. That is exactly what I want to do." For Marx, private property is inherently linked with power.

Marx then goes on to define what he perceives to be the bourgeoisie definition of individuality and freedom. He goes on to define it because he does not like individuality or freedom. So he is going to assign some exclusive meanings, "And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeoisie abolition of individuality and freedom, and rightly so.

The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying. But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other brave words of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the unfettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production and the bourgeoisie itself." According to Marx, the bourgeoisie definition of individuality is inextricably linked to free trade which is in turn inextricably linked to bourgeoisie power.

Only the bourgeoisie have individuality since the laborer to him is nameless and faceless. According to Marx, freedom is the ability to buy, sell, and trade and only the bourgeoisie have that, so that must be dissolved too. So in order to abolish private property, the proletariat must use the vehicle of democracy since there are more in the proletariat class than there are in the bourgeoisie class.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production by means of measure therefore which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. Abolition of property and land, and application of all rents of land to public purposes. A heavy, progressive, or graduated income tax. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. Confiscation of the property of all immigrants and rebels.

Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank, with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state. The bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. Equal abolition of all the distinction between the town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace over the country. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.

Combination of education with industrial production." According to Marx, once property is abolished, everything, everything will belong to the state and be centralized. There will be heavy taxation, and former property owners who fled because of the rise of this centralized government will have their property taken from them and now owned by the state.

Every aspect of life is going to be centralized and belongs to the state, including the banking system and transportation. In order to keep continuity, the state will have close guards on education and the nuclear family as well. Since the current status of the family by the bourgeoisie has relegated it to nothing more than economics, according to Marx, the family must be abolished.

According to Marx, the family must be abolished. Abolition of the family. Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital. On private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.

But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians and in public prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital." According to Marx, any fault of fractured familial relations within the proletariat are due to the current capitalistic system held onto by the bourgeoisie.

Let me say it a different way. Any issue within the nuclear family, if you're part of the proletariat class, is completely the fault of the other class of people. Based on that reasoning, we need to do completely with the nuclear family. We need to completely do away with it.

And I quote, "But," you say, "we destroy the most hallowed of relations when we replace home education by social. But your education is not that also social and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society by means of schools. The communists have not invented the intervention of society and education, and they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeoisie claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more by the action of modern industry." According to Marx, the state will indoctrinate the children since there will be no more nuclear family and we need to keep communism going so the state needs to be in charge of raising children.

In fact, this abolition of the nuclear family goes deep into the bonds of marriage itself. According to Marx, marriage itself is an impediment to the communist revolution. Marx ends with exactly that in the Communist Manifesto, a call to revolution. He bemoans how there have been softer versions of communism and that these softer versions only end up supporting the bourgeoisie.

He then goes on to expand on this notion of the softer versions actually doing a disservice to the movement making it explicitly clear that nothing short of a revolution will do. According to Marx, nothing short of a revolution will do. The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.

They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite! The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.

They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite! The 1963 US Communist Party's Goals, this is verbatim, just put this into a search engine.

There are 45, I'm going to read you a handful. Number 12 to number 23, these are their goals, 1960 US Communist Party's Goals. Number 12 to number 23. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. Do away with all loyalty oaths. Continue giving Russia access to the US Patent Office.

Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations.

Put the party line in textbooks. Gain control of all student newspapers. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under communist attack. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

Continue discrediting the American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American communist cell was told to eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward, and meaningless forms. Control art critics and directors of art museums. Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art. I quote it to you verbatim, 12 to 23 of the 45.

Let me quote to you 27 to 31. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a religious crutch. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state.

Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the common man. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the big picture.

Give more emphasis to Russian history since the communists took over. Number 39 to 43. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose communist goals. Discredit the family as an institution and encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.

Attribute prejudices, mental blocks, and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition that students and special interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political, or social problems. Overthrow all colonial governments before Native populations are ready for self-government.

Wow. Maybe you're thinking, "Well, that's from 1963, right?" Does the listed communist goals from 1963 have any relevance to us today? I'm going to end this episode here, but I'll cover the rest in the next episode. So if possible, try to, again, as I stated in the beginning, try to listen to these episodes back to back because it is a little dense, just to whet your appetite a bit.

I'll leave you with this question, along with the relevance of the U.S. Communist Party's goals from 1963, along with that, which I'll cover in the next episode. Did C.H. Spurgeon, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, did he ever speak out on Marxism? Did he ever speak out on Marxism?

Thanks for making it to the end. I'll continue to try to make the journey worth it. To him, the honor, glory, and eternal dominion, James Honga. (upbeat music)