Episode #077 Marx on Religion 

I listen to your videos every night before sleeping, your thoughts are profound and relatable. Thank you for making these kinds of thought-provoking topics. I hope more people will come across your channel and see the undeniable value it has in modern day.

As a philosophy major now enlisted the intro made me laugh. Love this podcast

My life has been different ever since I discovered this channel.

Marx was a scientist who showed the development of monopoly capitalism and he’s unmatched in his craft

For viewers who may not know much about Marx, I think it would've been helpful for you to further explain exploitation from Marx's point of view. Exploitation is not an emotional term, but a technical one. It means that a laborer is adding value to a business by producing something, but they're not being compensated that amount of value. Typically, they'll get paid a wage, which is a fraction of that wealth while the capitalist receives most of the profit.

I’m a (n adjunct instructor) fan of your podcast. You make me a better instructor of world religions. Thank you.

Just found this channel and love it ... will share !!

It is interesting that we can detect abuse when a laborer makes a lot of money for the employer when they laborer is struggling to survive, but it is perceptive of marx to see how higher paid laborers could still be experiencing some type of abuse when they're used to make crap ton of money for employer and yet the employer could provide better labor safety nets to give the laborer the impression that their labor is not taken of advantaged of. For example, I have a parent who's a quantum chemist and makes a lot of money as an employee. From my immediate perspective, he lives fairly comfortably and doesn't struggle with hunger, has a savings with decent amount of money for backup on things. This money gives him access to more resources than the lower paid laborer, because he has more money to pay for higher services. One is required to have a certain amount of money for these kinds of services, and because my dad has that money, he then appears to have this paradoxical privilege: higher quality resources for being used to make Gaussian shit ton of money. First off, The lower paid laborer doesn't have access to these quality services; second, the resource consumption of my dad and the lower paid laborer reveals not just an consumption and wealth inequality between my dad and the lower paid laborer, but a clever take-advantage-of-both-laborers scheme where the employers in the 2 laborers' lives use the chemist and the lower paid laborer to get wealthy beyond the two laborers. Marx was so perceptive to see how our labor system a) depended on labor to make capital, b) inequality between laborers exists depending on the labor from the laborers, c) that exploited laborers can live good relative to other laborers, d) money is made and mostly acquired by the capital consuming class (bourgeois). It's eye opening that white collar workers, not just pink or blue collar workers are proletariat classes themselves, thus reconceptualizing the proletariat classes in a hiearachical structure, with higher level proletariat classes more inclined to support the capitalist structures, because of the immediate myopic lenses of the more well off employees. Marx was unquestionably very smart, and I think people who don't see this will just have to realize that this thinking is quite abstract yet a compelling case that we've created a system where Capitalism itself uses labor to make a small population really wealthy while giving crumbs to most people, yet some proletariat classes will get more relative to the lower classes of proletariat classes.

Ah, I hear this quote very often when talking about religion with my grandma!

I was looking at all the changes that have taken place in the past seven years when you first produced this video (a very good one too!). We studied Marx as part of my Digital Media BA degree. These days, however, if I tell some people this, they will immediately attack me and call me a Marxist. Worst ... they'll call me a Marxist AND a Communist! Ignorance has lulled the population into this false security in the way things are as the grip of the upper 1% tightens around the throats of the workers without them paying attention to it. And Religion facilitates this. These philosophies have become threatening to the upper classes and the measures they've taken to correct this seems to be working. I hope you will continue your work here. It's now more important than ever!

Goosebumps I remember that!

this show is amazing man thank you and i will contribute as i can 100%

Your series is quality.

amazing, thank you

Could you make your videos a little louder! I try to listen to you during transit but I have to press my earphones against my ear.

I love the show

You are not just smart but clever. Thanks a lot.

Religion and Cosmic Horror often have the same elements to it. An individual who subscribes to religion or cosmic horror often arrive at either one because of curiosity. And both leaves either person with unanswered questions to fixate or imagine on. Its often uncanny on the thought that the majority of religious fanatics can subscribe to the same religion and yet have completely different interpretations, theories and beliefs.

10:49 Hegel’s dialectic was never categorized by Hegel as “thesis, antithesis, synthesis”. Hegel used _abstract, negative, concrete_ specifically. A concept when first formed is too abstract and is countered with negativity, which is absorbed (sublated) ultimately into what’s concrete. The textbook wording is Being/Nothing/Becoming. “Being is the positive moment or thesis, Nothing is the negative moment or antithesis, and Becoming is the moment of aufheben or synthesis-the concept that cancels and preserves, or unifies and combines, Being and Nothing.” plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/

Thank you 🥲

Where does the actual discussion start?

Im glad to help, but I won't enter Starbucks, bad coffee.

Just as i begun with. Mark Twain XD

As I understand it, the thesis-antithesis-synthesis understanding of Hegel's dialectic is flawed, and not something Hegel ever actually proposed, right?

I believe it

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I think you'd find that religious and philosophical systems preceed tge economic order that reflect their virtues

How about some philosophers who practiced what they preached? (I'm not being sarcastic ... have there been any?)

It turns me off when terms are interchangeably used to designate the two participants in the class struggle. Who are workers and capitalist, and use historically general categories, 'ruling class', and 'exploited masses' as substitutes. It takes away from the originality of Marx's thought. Whereas Marx was specific about the epoch of capitalism in which the class struggle in this epoch involves social classes inherited by modern society, as transmitted from the past, i.e., landlords, banks, church, merchants, military industrial complex can be added as an agency of the past, and these classes are dependent on the new social classes of workers and capitalist, the new mode of production. Going further, in the class struggle workers and capitalists are dependent on the productivity of labor as the engine of that struggle. From the general to the particular the economic structure is examined and from the particular to the general the social relations of that system are explained in a revolutionary theory. How can anyone not like a show that introduces Marx to a general audience except a reactionary anti-socialist like Mike Pence and Donald Trump? In surveying the character of world leaders today, detractors and protractors of socialism, I wonder how many them actually read the Bible of the Working Class, Capital? How many of the working class read Capital? A reading that demands a commitment, too much for the average world leader if they are for and against something they actually know nothing about.

Love the explanation and thanks for it. Gives a glimpse into the left's playbook. Can you refer to the section of the Phenomenology he discusses this or a paragraph number?

It's a bit of a misnomer to say that Marx thought religion was invented _in order_ to control people. Religion is part of the superstructure which supports the material base, but that doesn't mean it was created into order to support it. Like all culture, religion becomes co-opted in support of the interests of the ruling classes, and this takes different forms in different eras. Just compare how Christianity manifested in the feudal era, as compared to the capitalist one. It's not like someone said "let's make capitalism happen by altering how we teach Christianity." No, as is always the case in Marx, the material precedes the ideal. First you get some kind of capitalism, and then the religious ideology shifts in support of that new economic order.

15:15, Marx would likely consider us as working westerners to be part of a 2nd class with the even more underpaid global labor force as a 3rd class

Hhh how cynical, though not without reason: The owner provides a good life for his workers-but it’s secretly an underhanded manipulation of them to keep them working for him. So...does this go for all negotiated trades of value? What’s the alternative?

Capitalism doesn’t dictate how profit is used. Though it is often used to overly enrich the owners, it could be used instead to invest in the community in a holistic way that really raises all boats. Or the owners could make life literally worse than slavery did.

Coffee good, Starbucks bad. Not political, just don't like the coffee

There is a difference between truth and religion. You did not chose to be born but Karl Marx has the answers and also did not to be born. So how Mark 4:23 “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” King James Version (KJV)

You live zip code?----I use the postal-carrier

Marx was quite a cynical fellow; none of his interpretations were the sole possible interpretation. I wonder what his personal life was like; probably connected. Too bad. Nevertheless, his interpretations are, sadly, not without manifestation in the world. Capitalism and religion are powerful tools, useful for good or evil-but usually used for a mix of these.

Quite a narrow n oversimplified view of religion he had. But it manages to fit his narrative. And, again, as with maybe all his ideas, there is some truth to it, and should be a very real possibility to be conscious of.

My philosophy would be to get a 9 to 5 then record when you get home.

Marx K. was the worst thinker of last 200 yrs.

Marx philosophy is pretty dull and linear. I don't know why people believe his crap. He reminds me of a cult leader, who can easily influence and deceive people who don't have the capacity to do multi-dimensional analysis and critical thinking.