Episode #077 - Transcript

Hello, everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!

How’s it going, guys and gals? Welcome to the first show of the new year. It’s nice to see you back.

So, a long, long time ago, so long ago I can hardly remember it, when I was a wee lad, I used to read a lot of fiction books. I don’t really read much fiction anymore these days, but it used to be like 100% of what I read. I learned a lot of lessons from those books. Started out with the Goosebumps books. And I remember when I was like seven years old and they made a Goosebumps TV show, and I hated it. I wrote R.L. Stine an angry letter in crayon—true story—about how the artistic integrity of the books is not upheld in the TV show. He actually wrote me back. Good guy, R.L. Stine. Anyway, I used to read Goosebumps, graduated to the Hardy Boys franchise. And after that I started reading Mark Twain pretty heavily. Read all of the classics. I sort of made him my hero. I exalted Mark Twain in my head as this quasi-deity that wrote books. I remember reading tons of quotes by him. I remember deeply contemplating what I thought he meant by this quote. I saw him in short as this beacon of wit that was unparalleled by any other human being.

And that magic existed in my head up until about 3 years ago when I was surfing the YouTubes and I came across this video of him—yeah, a video of Mark Twain. Apparently, Thomas Edison had a camera. And they took that camera, and they made this horrible-quality, black-and-white video of Mark Twain just standing on his front porch smoking a cigar and looking at the camera like he’d never seen a camera before. Maybe he hadn’t. But it’s a very simple video. We get this long suspense-building shot of him waddling along the side of his house. And it’s weird because the moment I saw that video something changed in me. I mean, this person that for years I had exalted in my head as this god of wit in my own personal pantheon of gods, all of a sudden that same god just became a person to me, just became some old dude smoking a cigar on his front porch. Mark Twain became more real to me in that moment.

Well, over the years on this show we’ve talked about a lot of different philosophers from a lot of different kinds of backgrounds, right? We’ve talked about reclusive philosophers, aggressive philosophers. We’ve talked about slaves turned philosopher, philosopher kings. But something happens right around the mid to late 1800s. The invention of the camera starts to become more prevalent in people’s lives. It starts to become commonplace that if you’re somebody that’s a notable figure making waves in the world, chances are somebody’s going to want to take a picture of you. What I’m saying is, something changes when you can look directly into the eyes of these philosophers—not a sculpture of them, not a likeness painted over a fireplace, but an actual moment frozen in time. This was them. This is who they were at one point in time. And what happens, I think, is these philosophers become people to us, not enigmas.

See, Socrates was an enigma, right? It seems sometimes like Socrates is more of an idea than a person. Like, he stood for a clear cause. He died for that cause. His reputation lives on throughout history. And because of that, there’s something magical about Socrates. There’s something magical about other people throughout history that are similar to Socrates in that way. And I think it’s a magic that’s only made possible when there’s no objective proof that this person even existed. I mean, maybe it’s because I live in an age where everyone has a camera in their back pocket. But for me, seeing a real picture of Karl Marx, on one hand it instantly takes that magic away from me, but on the other hand, it makes something else possible that Socrates could never give me. When you look into the eyes of Karl Marx, when you look at the photographs of the very people living alongside him that he looked into the eyes of, people that he saw as in pain and oppressed, if you look at how he dedicated his entire life to trying to find a system that might bring an end to that pain, what happens to Karl Marx in that moment is, you can start to relate to him not as this enigma that embodies communist thinking like many people do, but as a person.

Now, this episode isn’t about communism. Look, we got many more episodes on Karl Marx to come. We’re going to get to it eventually. This episode is about those people that we were just talking about—those people living during Marx’s time that he looked into the eyes of and why he thought that they were being oppressed. It’s not straightforward. See, this is part one of a two-part episode on Marx and Kierkegaard’s views on religion and how very differently they both looked at it. Now, you may be asking, why do an episode on religion specifically? Why not cover their views on religion as a part of the rest of the episodes you’re going to dedicate to them? Well, I think these episodes are going to be very helpful to have before we delve into that. See, if we can understand how these guys viewed the plight of the average person living during their time period, it gives us some really invaluable context at understanding the more nuanced points of their thinking.

Now, to understand Marx, to understand how he views the purpose of religion, I think it’s important to start with a little bit of background on where Marx is coming from. See, Marx is living in a world where the full effects of the Industrial Revolution are being felt. All of the thinking that we’ve talked about the last 30 or so episodes, all the thinking from just a few generations before he lived—you know, the economics of Adam Smith; the improvements in government; Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau—all of these things have now been in effect long enough to start paying dividends. And these dividends include economic prosperity.

Now, during this time if you’re living in Europe, you’re not just limited to trading with your immediate neighboring countries like you were in the past. Now brand-new, unprecedented economic opportunities are starting to become available to you. Now you have this unprecedented ability to cross the Atlantic Ocean and trade with the United States. Now you have this unprecedented ability of these expanding markets into India and many parts of Asia. Marx talks about how what happened as a result of this is that because you have more people that you’re able to trade with, well, the demand for whatever you produce becomes greater and greater, and you have to find a way of making even more of what you’re already making.

So, in that sort of economic climate—in this climate of ever-increasing demand—if you’re just an individual artisan or craftsman, you can’t survive in that world. Think about it. Whatever it is you’re making—let’s say you’re whittling figurines out of a piece of driftwood—you can only whittle so fast. Now instead of whittling for 8 countries, you’re whittling for 20 countries or 30 countries. It becomes impossible for you to keep up. You can’t sprout new arms out of the side of your body just because more people want your whittled figurines. You’re not Goro.

Anyway, Marx says that the people that do survive in that environment are not the craftsmen or the artisans but the manufacturers, the people that have the means to mass-produce stuff. The problem with this, Marx says, is that instead of trade and the economy being in the hands of thousands of craftsmen, now it’s in the hands of a very small handful of manufacturers that in turn have an inordinate amount of control over the lives of the average citizen. Now, this in itself would be enough of a problem to deal with, but Marx sees this as particularly horrible, and it’s a thing that needs to be stopped immediately, because he’s looking at various points throughout history. And he says, man, we’ve seen this before, haven’t we?

Real quick, Marx is the most famous follower of Hegel’s thinking that we have. And one of the things Marx centers his philosophy around the most is Hegel’s dialectic. Remember, Hegel thought that understanding the world is not understanding something that is fixed and static. No, the world is constantly changing, constantly shifting. And that in the same way if you’re trying to understand a moving target you would try to understand the rate in nature of the way that it’s moving, maybe a better strategy for people trying to understand this world that we live in is to understand that underlying process of change. Hegel arrives, as we know, at what he calls the dialectic, the three-part process of conflicting interests butting heads that leads to any change that we see in the world. The first step is the thesis: that’s the way that things are. Second step is the anti-thesis—antithesis: the conflicting interest. And the synthesis: the result of that conflict between the other two and the new order of things. But then that synthesis inevitably becomes the thesis, and this process repeats itself so on and so forth practically ad infinitum.

Marx loved this idea. So what he does is he takes Hegel’s dialectic, and he applies it to one area that he loves thinking about, the economic history of the world. When he does this, when he makes all the calculations and arrives at a conclusion, his conclusion is one of the most famous conclusions ever. He says, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Now, what does he mean by that? What he means is that if you look back at history from an economic perspective, it’s all pretty much been the same to Marx. See, as far as he can tell, there’s always been—no matter what society you look at—two major classes of people. One, there’s always been a ruling class of people: these are the people that have control over the economy. The second class is the exploited class of people: people that are exploited by that ruling class economically.

What Marx would want us to do here is try to apply Hegel’s dialectic to that process of economic change in the world. He says, think of the ruling class of people as the thesis and the exploited class of people as the antithesis. Well, eventually what always happens, he says, is the exploited class of people get tired of being exploited. There’s some sort of revolution that occurs. The ruling class is overthrown, and a new world emerges. That’s the synthesis. But then that synthesis becomes the thesis. There’s always a new ruling class that’s, in turn, exploiting a class of people who eventually revolt. And this process, this dialectical process of change, just repeats itself over and over again.

Marx gives all kinds of examples from history about what he’s talking about here. We can think of some. If you’re living in colonial America in the 16-, 17-, 1800s, you are either a slave—a member of an exploited class of people, no freedom—or you are a slave master, or at least a free person with the potential to be a slave master. Well, what eventually happened there? Enough people got tired of there being this exploited class of people, and a revolution occurred. Go back to the middle ages, the feudal system, right? In that world you’re either a landowner—you’re a member of this ruling class: a king, aristocrat, or guild—or you’re part of the peasantry—you’re someone working the land, a member of that exploited class. Well, what eventually happened there? The peasantry got tired of being exploited, and peasant revolts started happening everywhere.

What Marx is saying is that in this new economic climate that’s emerging during his time—you know, of trade being controlled by a handful of manufacturers, what he calls the bourgeoisie—that worsens the dynamic between them—the ruling class—and what he called the proletariat, or the people now beholden to the bourgeoisie. By the way, it should be said, we’re not just talking about Marx here, alright? Marx would no doubt look at our lives as modern workers in a capitalist, Western society, and he would no doubt see us as the exploited class of this time period.

Now, this raises the question, well, if we’re the exploited class, who are the ruling class? Not exactly an easy question for me to answer living in the middle of it. I can imagine what Marx might say. He might say that the ruling class is the people behind all the money, the big financial institutions that control most of the capital in the world. Maybe he’d say big companies that control most of the production. But whatever you, I, or Marx would think the answer to this question is, one thing is certain to Marx: we—meaning the people listening to this show right now and yours truly—definitely are all members of the exploited class of this particular age.

Now, you may hear that and say, “Dang, that’s funny. I don’t feel exploited. I wake up; I go to work; I love my job; I get paid well. I have a family. I never go without food, water, shelter, anything like that. Man, I even have two vacations a year. Where’s the exploitation, Karl Marx?” See, we hear the word “exploitation” and there’s resistance to that, right? Exploitation just sounds like such a dirty word, doesn’t it? I mean, when you think exploitation, you think of somebody holding you down and punching you in the face or something. You think of them treating you like you’re their pack mule where your life is abject misery or something.

But what Marx would say is, just because you don’t feel like you’re being exploited, that doesn’t mean you’re not being exploited. Just because you’ve grown fond of the chains that you’ve had around your leg since birth, that doesn’t mean that they’re not there. You may love your job. You may get $50,000 a year to do something that’s incredibly rewarding for you. But one thing is entirely clear if that’s the case: you are making that company that you work for a lot more than $50,000 to do the stuff that you do for them every year. If you didn’t it wouldn’t be very profitable for them to pay you $50,000 to do it, right? The company would go out of business.

So, in the sense that they’re paying you not what you’re actually worth but what you expect, in that sense you are being exploited for your labor. Now, you may think it’s in your self-interest for you to work for them. That job may help you realize every dream that you have throughout your life. You may feel like you’re never going without anything at any point in your life. The point that Marx is making here is a broader one. Why does the system need to be this way? Why does the system need to have this dynamic of one party getting rich off of other parties being paid less than they’re producing? And, he would continue, if we realize that this is the case, why would we ever be satisfied with that arrangement?

Like, forget human rights or anything like that. Marx points out, think about it, look at history. What always happens when that dynamic exists? There’s a revolution. The exploited class time after time rises up and overthrows the ruling class, oftentimes with a lot of bloodshed, oftentimes with a lot of political strife that comes along with it, and a period of time where the country is vulnerable to attacks from other countries. Why should we just accept that that’s a natural part of this world that we live in? In other words, is it at least in theory possible to devise a system where there is no ruling class and exploited class?

Now, if you’re one of these people that’s perfectly happy with your lot in life, you know, you don’t feel exploited on a day-to-day basis, Marx would say, well, that’s exactly how the ruling class wants you to feel. And those feelings probably have been conditioned into you by an elaborate propaganda campaign to make you satisfied or distracted from the way that things actually are. Think about it. Put yourself in the shoes of somebody in this ruling class that Marx is talking about. If you recognize that you are a member of this ruling class and you saw this pattern throughout history of the inevitability of this exploited class causing a revolution, what does your strategy become at that point? Well, obviously to prolong the amount of time in between these revolutions as long as possible. You got to maximize the amount of time you can profit off of exploiting these people.

Marx thinks this is clear and that, historically speaking, there’s been a lot of different tactics the ruling class would use to make this happen. Think of Rome, you know, bread and circuses, gladiatorial games meant to appease and distract an underserved population from political turmoil and deception. This stuff has happened in the past. The interesting thing to think about is, is it happening today all around us? Well, we may not have gladiators getting eaten by lions in today’s world, but we can definitely see some potential parallels, right? All the food at everyone’s disposal all the time. We got video games, movies, sports games, the Academy Awards, celebrities, tabloids. There’s practically an endless sea of methods to distract yourself away from what’s going on in the world politically and economically. Now, this may not be orchestrated by an evil cabal up at the top that designed the media this way for this specific purpose, but it certainly gives people that option, right? When you look at the numbers of people showing up to vote and the general aura of political apathy in the United States—and you start to wonder if this is what’s happening.

But regardless of what people have done in the past, Marx thinks that all these methods are child’s play. No, if you really want to distract people from what’s going on, the ultimate method—by far the most successful, effective, and nefarious version of these methods of controlling behavior is religion. I’m sure you’ve heard his famous quote: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” But what does he mean by that? He’s not just saying religion is a drug that people take. Think of specifically what an opiate is. When you’re up on your roof, you’re putting up Christmas lights, and you fall off; and you break your leg in four places, and they rush you to the hospital, what does the doctor give you? They give you morphine or some sort of opiate so that you’re not in excruciating pain and they can continue fixing it. Opiates mitigate and help you forget about pain—the pain of being exploited.

Marx thinks that religion is really good at taking you out of this world, and it carries you off into a different world the same way a video game or a movie or a TV show might carry you off into a different world, right? But this is the ultimate fantasy world to Marx. It tells you that in this world that you currently live in, no matter how bad you have it, this is only a temporary existence. You’re just on the moral proving ground right now. Your real focus should be on otherworldly things, on heaven and eternity and paradise, you know, the sweet by and by if you’re a slave in colonial America. Take no thought for the morrow. Don’t worry about this mortal realm. God’s got your back.

I mean, the reason religion is such an effective tool at making people happier is the level of acceptance that it breeds about everything, right? No matter how bad things seem, no matter how many horrible things might happen to you in succession, ultimately, it was God’s will. You got to accept it. Who are you to question God’s will? God is just making you a better person by throwing adversity your way. Again, a terrific recipe for personal happiness; not a very good recipe if you’re Marx and you’re trying to improve the world and do away with this ruling class for good. This is how Marx saw religion. Some guy or girl a long, long time ago that was a little bit smarter than the people around them realized that if they just wrote down this story and got people to believe it, they could control them. Now, this became such an effective tool of controlling human behavior that they started making revisions and additions, improving upon it: religion 2.1, religion version 2.2. And eventually we arrived at a widely accepted story of prophecy and miracles and hope. And as Marx thinks that the ruling class has been using this story to economically oppress the exploited class all throughout human history.

Let’s take this one step further. Marx would definitely hammer home in the notion that, hey, isn’t it so convenient when you look back at history that the religion that’s popular during a certain time period always mirrors and justifies the economic structure of that time period? Really interesting point to consider. Let’s talk about a few examples of what he’s saying here. For example, what is the economic and political structure during the feudal system, during that thousand-year period during the middle ages? Well, again, it’s hierarchical, right? At the very top of the pyramid, you have the king. Underneath him you have the aristocrats. Underneath them you have the guild. These three groups combined make up a very small percentage of the population. And then underneath them you have the peasantry. That’s everyone else.

Well, what’s the prominent form of religion in Western Europe during this time? Well, it’s a specific type of Christianity that has evolved and shifted into what we now know as Catholicism. Now, what’s the structure of Catholicism during that time? Oh, well, you have the Pope at the top of the pyramid. Underneath him you have the cardinals and bishops. Underneath them you have the priests. These three classes make up a very small percentage of Catholics. And then underneath them you have the laity. Again, that’s everyone else.

Marx would say that not only is this transparently a mirror image of the feudal economic system that’s designed to control people and keep them in the peasantry. The two appear to justify each other and seem to be working together—hence his claim that the ruling class is using it as an opiate. I mean, after all, if you’re a peasant living at that time, if this hierarchical structure that I see in religion in church every Sunday—if that is God’s will, no matter how much I don’t like it, it’s got to be the best way for society to be run too. Not to mention the fact that whenever a new king comes to power, it’s always the Pope acting on God’s behalf that puts the crown on his head. To a peasant, God must endorse what’s going on here.

Point is, to Marx, the structure of the religion of a time period always mirrors the current economic tactic for coercion by the ruling class. Marx would say that if you even doubt this fact, well, just look at what happens next in history. As we move away from the thousand years of the feudal system, as the peasants revolt and put an end to it, here comes capitalism replacing the feudal system. Now here’s a brand-new economic system that we notice has a very different way that people are organized, right? See, under feudalism it was a hierarchy. Things were class based. You are chained to that class for your entire life. Well, in capitalism it’s different. In capitalism people should be equal as opposed to being a member of a class. In capitalism liberty is a virtue, not being bound to a class your whole life.

Marx would say, how convenient that right when the world started shifting into a more capitalist model, that’s precisely when the protestants start giving Catholics trouble and religion begins to reform itself into something that, one, allows for a level of liberty in interpreting the Bible and, two, largely abandons the typical hierarchical structure of the clergy. Marx sees this as nothing more than just religion adapting to its environment so that it can mirror and, therefore, morally justify the capitalist system of economic exploitation. He sees this, and he thinks it’s very clear. Religion is nothing more than a calculated political and economic tactic of keeping people passive, meek, and poor as a virtue.

Matthew 19:24, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Think of the message that that sends. Yeah, you’re overworked. You’re exploited. You’re barely scraping by. And you look at other people profiting off of your labor, and eventually it’s not unreasonable to think you might start to resent some of these people. Enough of this resentment builds up and you might do something about it. But then Marx would point out that you bring that resentment to church with you on Sunday, and you’re told to turn the other cheek. You’re told to be grateful for what God has given you, to accept the way that things are; it’s God’s will. You’re told that rich people go to hell. Don’t envy that guy over there rolling around in the money. Feel bad for him. He’s not going to get into God’s kingdom.

Well, at the end of the church service, all that pain that you initially felt when you entered that church hall, it’s got to be lifted from you, right? God’s got my back. This existence is not important. This is temporary. I don’t feel so bad anymore. The same way, Marx would point out, that you might be writhing in pain in a hospital bed, the doctor starts an IV of morphine, and it brings you the same kind of relief.

But, look, this is Karl Marx. It’s not like everyone in the world was this cynical about religion during his time. Another brilliant thinker that thought very differently about all these things was a guy named Søren Kierkegaard. And we’ll hear what he has to say about Marx and religion on part two of this episode next time on Philosophize This!

Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next time.