I’m all in favour of this series and make sure to do Darwin, Nietzsche, frued and Voltaire

For those interested in economics, Dr. Cooper hinted at the fundamental error in Marx's reasoning: he ignores the time element inherent in industrial production. Think about miners as an example: it might be years before the metals they mine are turned into finished consumption goods, but they are paid today. The capitalist pays his workers today, but sells the finished goods years in the future. Interest is the compensation he receives for delaying his consumption until the future. So when you include the time of payments in your economics analysis, it is not true that workers are paid less than the full value of the products the produce. They are just paid early. Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk is a good source for a technical discussion.

I can't express how much I value your channel and your work. Thank you.

Fascinating, and made my brain feel like it was cracking open. Connected so many dots which I never thought were related.

I live in South-East Europe and my country used to be under the communist regime of USSR until 1989. I'm 39 and have no memories of what the communist life was, so I've been researching this topic for awhile. As a Christian, I tend to not subscribe myself to any communist idea but it's interesting to learn about it. I like this new themed videos, Dr. Cooper! I also appreciate the work you did to make the ideas of Karl Marx in a presentation. To me, this format is better because I can easily track what you're talking about during the video. God bless 😇

As a student of masters in art theory in a post modern tought University I can’t express enough how much I appreciate your work and this series.

5:21 Marx 18:56 Idealism. 26:26 Misconceptions. 34:08 Materialism. 50:52 Maslow's pyramid. 1:03:22 Private property. 1:04:20 Polylogism. 1:12:23 Marx on religion.

I love this new series and think Soren Kierkegaard would be an excellent candidate for a video, although I know you probably have no shortage of video topic ideas.

I like how unbiased and histrorically acurate your vids are.

I get a little smarter every time I watch/listen to you. So glad I happened upon your channel. I’ve been binging ever since and value your gift to the body of Christ. Thank you.

I've been watching a bunch of James Lindsay and New Discourses. I'm very happy to have found you.

I have discovered your channel a few days ago and already consumed lots of your classes(these are real classes). thank you for sharing your knowledge

I love this series. Thank you so much for making it.

This is probably a better question for the Hegel video but since you mentioned him I might as well ask here: Was Hegel at all an influence on the way John Henry Newman approached the topic of doctrinal development? Also, one area that might be worth looking into is the Counter-Enlightenment thinkers. German Lutherans (Hamann, Herder, Jacobi, etc.) were some of the earliest and most vocal critics of the French Philosophes.

I had forgotten that you were a punk rock kid until you had mentioned “The Exploited” 😂 thank you for the good laugh and lecture. God Bless

I very much appreciate this video and the idea of a series along these lines. Two comments: 1) The Austrian economists (von Mises, as a key one of note) offer the best examination of the role of the entrepreneur - and, therefore, the best rebuttal to the Marxist view of this role. In addition to other points made by Austrian economists, there is the idea of risk: labor gets paid, capital not only has to wait, but also takes risk - of loss, even bankruptcy. 2) Antonio Gramsci must be examined - a non-Marxian communist. It is Gramsci that is most relevant today. He knew that the West would not come to communism via economics; in other words, Marxism would never make headway in the West. Instead, the culture had to be destroyed - with Christianity as the ultimate target. From Gramsci, we get the Frankfurt School and critical theory, of which today critical race theory has taken the lead role.

Jordan Cooper being a straight up savage 1:07:34

Also, love the PowerPoint style. Very useful

This video was awesome! Definitely looking forward to more I don’t know how influential he was on today’s culture But you should do a video on Soren Kierkegaard !

This was very helpful! Thank you for this video. God bless you. Greetings from Brazil.

Dr. Cooper, I know you're aware that I'm a high school social studies teacher, but did you know the primary content area I teach is Government & Economics? That being said, I found your commentary on this topic fascinating, especially in how Marxist ideology becomes contradictory toward the Christian faith. Looking at the current social landscape of our country it makes even more sense to me why Marxism is becoming popular again. I am very much looking forward to your future videos in this series. Thank you for your work on this.

Fantastic stuff, keep it going and I really am looking forward to the Liturgy Series as well!

I'm reading Authentic Christianity by Vieth and Sutton. This video help a lot in wrapping my head around philosophy and Modern thought. Not something I have given thought to before. Thank you. I would appreciate more videos like this of how we got here from Classic thought.

I think this is an excellent topic to explore. Thank you.

Outstanding depth and content.

You are a great teacher.

Thank you for an excellent overview. I appreciate it and look forward to your series.

I admit I was working on other things while having this on in the background but I loved it. I've never interacted with Marxist thought outside of the caricatures in media. I'm in favor of this series continuing and will probably listen to this a few more times.

I would love to see more of what you enjoy researching Dr. Cooper!

As someone who is LCMS but also has a lot of interest in Austrian Econ, I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on Mises (and maybe Rothbard too). What’s interesting is there are a lot of Christians at the Mises Institute. Pastor Larry Beane is LCMS and I met him there.

Congratulations on the 30k Subscibers!

The fundamental flaw with his economic theory is his continued use of the labor theory of value. Value is not an inherent quality added by work, rather its a subjective thing that is determined by the relative supply and demand for a product. So the idea of exploitation had to be pretty seriously reworked by later Marxist economists, who, to my knowledge, all reject the labor theory of value.

The Exploited!! ❤😂

And yes, I did like the video.

@30:15 The scientific method also is from the start a materialist approach to the world, but Christians still find it useful to study the natural world. Marx's historical dialectic is also useful for studying the conflicts in society.

I would take exception with the claim that Mises was a Materialists. He was certainly a Utilitarian at least as far as he was an economist but he rejected Materialism in his own writings. From his book "Liberalism": "Liberalism has often been reproached for this purely external and materialistic attitude…There are higher and more important needs than food and drink, shelter and clothing. Even the greatest earthly riches cannot give man happiness; they leave his inner self, his soul, unsatisfied and empty. The most serious error of liberalism has been that it has had nothing to offer man’s deeper and nobler aspirations. [T]he critics who speak in this vein show only that they have a very imperfect and materialistic conception of these higher and nobler needs. Social policy, with the means that are at its disposal, can make men rich or poor, but it can never succeed in making them happy or in satisfying their inmost yearnings. Here all external expedients fail. All that social policy can do is to remove the outer causes of pain and suffering…It is not from a disdain of spiritual goods that liberalism concerns itself exclusively with man’s material well-being, but from a conviction that what is highest and deepest in man cannot be touched by any outward regulation. It seeks to produce only outer well-being because it knows that inner, spiritual riches cannot come to man from without, but only from within his own heart. It does not aim at creating anything but the outward preconditions for the development of the inner life." I wonder if you have read his protege Murray Rothbard's book "The Ethics of Liberty". Rothbard is very concerned with reclaiming the Natural Law tradition of Aquinas that was lost when the late enlightenment turned its back on the Church and embraced a utilitarian ethic.

Would you please do a video on socialism. Tyvm

I loved this thank you! Please make more

At 54:30 Yes, having the capital and taking the risk does add value, but you’re forgetting the most important things the owners and entrepreneurs and managers bring to the endeavor: their skills, such as technical and organizational! THEY KNOW HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE! Or conceive and design a product and bring it to reality! Entrepreneurs and managers play a crucial role in production, and marx totally and deliberately omitted that, because, as you noted, was brutally poor his whole life and hated the rich. He was the first hatefully resentful marxist. Thats what his whole doctrine was based on.

Such a brilliant video (: !!

Very helpful, thank you.

Great video keep it up!

If anyone wants to read a refutation of The Capital you need to read Capital and Interest by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. Is a direct response to the book. I didn't read Mises that much (yet) but is more like an agnostic. The austrian economic school is not that hostile to christians because they care about questions about ultimate fundations. There is a really good book if anyone care , Foundations of Economics: A Christian View by Shawn Ritenour. He is in the austrian camp.

So, could fine a good way to DM, but this is my follow-up question if you have time to address it. Follow up question: So, what we see today on TV and in popular discourse and politics, all of the ideas you discussed in the Marx segment (and their progeny) get portioned out into these small, palatable mini-ideas. Ie "Love is Love," "the family you choose," "people are born with racial privilege/disadvantage," and so on. At this very limited exposure (which is then repeated ad nauseum with little to no depth of discussion), many of these ideas sound good, or even align with what we feel is "justice". The other side then meets these ideas in kind. We see knee-jerk accusations of Marxism and "socialism," when it is clear the speakers often aren't informed as to what those terms even mean. I've read some Marx, and majored in Political Science, but have essentially 0 philosophical background. Until your explanation I'd never been able to connect Marx or communism to attacks on the family, LGBTQ+ agenda, BLM, etc. Indeed, I found (and still do, to a certain extent) some positives or truths in some of the issues (primarily BLM). But, as you were breaking down the philosophical foundations of Marx' thoughts I saw time and again the ideas the "newer" hyper-specific issues propounded. It, honestly, has me questioning my current political identity (which happens to me from time to time 🤷‍♂️) So the question: If, in a world of sound bites and simple ideas, evil and false doctrine present justice and freedom; and righteousness presents as incompetence....how do the righteous a) maintain any level of education or knowledge enough to pass in discourse with their neighbors, b) proselytize what is good without wearing the facade of evil?

Would be cool to see you do an interview with Per Ewert, who wrote about how the Marxist Socialdemocrats made Sweden the worlds most secular and individualistic country.

Interesting sidenote: based upon what I’ve read about Marx, some of his earliest critics were not capitalists, but other professed socialists.

Engels' argument on capitalism and the family is ironic, due to the fact that consumerist individualism has done as much (if not more) damage to the nuclear family than Marxist deconstructionism.

before i spend too much time on this video, is it an informative good faith video that takes Marx as he is? or is it a polemical video that just dismisses marx altogether?

If folks would like to understand Marx from a Marxist perspective, including his view of political economy, the following videos are helpful: kzfaq.info/sun/PLuzqoNvqVKydyRAMjDAHDikbVY9BDLC7V From primary sources, "The Communist Manifesto" and "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific" are the standard introductory texts, and Critique of the Gotha Program is my favorite for explaining how Marx differed from other socialists. The little known Erfurt Program was considered in its time to be a good distillation of a Marxist program by the foremost Marxist prior to Lenin, Karl Kautsky. It is very explanatory and contains none of the hyperbole and trolling Marx was fond of indulging in.

More Mises, less Marx

marx was right. if you don't mischaracterize his arguments you will deductively come to this conclusion

I like Marx's beard, tbh.

I don't like this series. I *LOVE* this series!!!

This is so sad that Christians will watch this and think they have a grasp on Marxism. Read him for yourself. No one I know agrees with everything he says, and he deserves critique, for sure, but this video just takes the most obvious critiques of him without actually interrogating what they mean. Marx's labour theory of value, for instance, was very misrepresented here. If you want to understand Marx, read Capital. If you want to just write him off without understanding him, watch this video, I guess.

Marx's bifurcation into oppressed and oppressor was an opportunistic exageration. First, workers were not exploited, as I mentioned in my other comment. They could go elsewhere. Entrepreneurs were 'exploited' by each other, if we want that term. Marx's bifurcation was tendentious at best. He used it to develop his own 'fetishism' of a fake 'working class' being oppressed by a person who was tottering at the edge of bankruptcy most of the time and probably worked way more hours than the worker (and they still do). He would have been better to work with Engels to improve the efficiency of factories so they could be more productive and pay higher wages. OTOH, the crony capitalism we see today is a curse and needs to be stopped. It destroys markets, distorts public policy, and undermines the free market system...which is the name of our system...not 'capitalism' which is another tendentious Marxist smear word.

Marx's economic analysis is nonsense. First, the workers in his day were not forced to take any particular job; they chose to take jobs because the job was better than no job. Factories were bad places then...and remember...EVERYTHING was a bad, dangerous, unpleasant place for we 21st century folk. Life was terribly hard, brutal and short in the early industrial era...for everyone! The factory owner did lots of things that an individual craftsman could not do profitably (that is have created value for others): obtain raw materials at bulk prices, organize whole supply chains, organize distribution, marketing, finance, build factories and equip them, administer the accounts, pay the workers, chase bad account, endless negotiations to increase sales and reduce input costs, endless negotiations and inventiveness to find better machinery at lower prices. Had the idea of the product in the first place? Don't like it? Go back to your hand loom and the rough rubbish you used to make that wasn't even good for sacks, pal. No one is making you work here.

All I see is one man with a beard in colour talking about two other men with beards in black and white 😂

"then u have the exploited not the punk band" lol 😆

Your "fair reading" becomes rapidly dominated by showing how wrong Marx was and make many errors about his views on human "essence". Marx did believe in a human essence in that humans make themselves as that remake their world. It is a basically artistic view of human nature. That is part, as well, of the emphasis on labour an the labour theory of value. You also downplay the entire humanistic motivation for Marx's work, rooted in the brutal world of 19th century capitalism. You fail to show the revolutionary fervour of that time is grounded in those brutal conditions. Your attempt to evade the exploitative nature of capitalism by showing how owners also add value ignores the gigantic overcompensation owners receive in comparison to workers. In many ways, Marx's view does have much in common with Christian ideas but your overemphasis on his materialism and your binary way of understanding things makes you incapable of seeing this. Your brand of Christianity is clearly not much much more than an apology for capitalism. You are focussed on showing just how wrong he was instead of what he gets right and why his views caught on. You forget that a true scholar provides a sympathetic reading before launching on critique.

I find it unfortunate that this ended up being a just a polemic against Marx (based on his anti-religious philosophy, and not any of his actual political economy). I feel like you could have done a much fairer job here. This is frankly, unfortunately, at the level of a Sam Harris attack on Christianity. When you do touch on it, you unfortunately completely botch the theory of exploitation, it's not just that workers aren't paid enough, nor is it that Capitalists don't do anything useful, it's the extraction of surplus value by the Capitalist through the control of the means of production ... you mention the employer provides the money upfront and that's the value added ... exactly, that's the entire point. Also, Marx DID believe in human nature, species being, especially the early Marx. And no Capitalism was not the big enemy, he praised Capitalism quite a bit, in fact Christian Socialists like John Ruskin and others were much more harsh (being not progressive in the Hegelian sense). Also, the theory of alienation is more about the alienation from the production process, not the type of production but that the worker is just a commodity, rather than being able to fulfill his human essence in creativity. His actual analysis, and the valuable parts of it; such as the relationship between exchange value and use value, the contradictions of production, realization, and investment (the classical idea of cutting labor costs undercuts the market, and the idea that Capitalism requires constant growth), and how Capitalism overrides use value through exchange value, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and the value of class analysis in sociological study; has been proven correct over the last 100 or so years. The fact that he was a naive atheist, anti-Christian, and materialist (his historical materialism has nothing to do with metaphysics; btw, one can use historical materialism to analyze history and economics, not not be a metaphysical materialist, this should be obvious), doesn't change that. "Do not steal" has literally nothing to do with the establishment of private property, do not steal means do not violate property arrangements, it doesn't determine what those are. Usury would be considered stealing taking the Hebrew bible seriously (usury btw, is the main basis of Capitalism), just as much as taking someone's private property (private property IS a social relation established in Capitalism by the state, it's not some premordial reality). Mises's economics depends on the inherent nature of property (which is obviously false), the atomization of man, and the denial of any non-contractural obligations, along with the idea that market outcomes are self-justifying. All clearly false. Mises's neoliberalism turns literally everything into a commodity, if you think Marx's philosophy was anti-Christian, it's nothing compared to Mises. BTW, neoliberalism, of which Mises is a major figure, is MUCH closer to post-modernity than "Marxism," Marx never said there was no truth outside the class system, he said that the class system shapes the ruling ideology ... which is obviosuly true. As far as Marx's critique of the family, more contemporary Marxists have used Marxist analysis to argue against Marx, i.e. that Capitalism gets rid of the family and the family is actually a bulwark against the commodification of all of life. That being said, one should read Marx alongside Karl Polyani, David Graeber, John Ruskin, and others.

47:09 Hey, I'm Lutheran leftist (and a Marxist in many ways). Marxist economics, in particular, can be useful for the orthodox Christian.

You are begging for money Mr. Cooper - and yet you have the gall to describe Marx as a 'moocher'. What a hypocrite.

If Marx had to work in a "job" to provide for his family than he couldn't possibly produce one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Your arguments are primitive and miss the whole point of his sacrifice. You are not getting a cent from me Mr. Cooper and you need to re-examine your own moral compass.