Episode 01: The Facts About Marxism and Collectivism

About This Episode

In the introductory episode of College Unbound!: The MRC's Liberty Learning Program, we will look at the profound danger of our current battle, and dive into the troubling life of Karl Marx – a life that saw many of his personal troubles translated into the Marxist philosophy that has harmed hundreds of millions, the predatory philosophy which contemporary leftists aggressively follow, today.

Afterward, be sure to take the short quiz and use the suggested talking points for sharing with others.

The Facts About Marxism and Collectivism
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • Thank goodness for things like this so my brain doesn’t rot!! Check out The MRC's Liberty Learning Program. First episode = cliffs notes on Marxism and Collectivism. Stuff that’s happening in America now. Lotta stuff I didn’t know before - kinda wow
    • OR
    • Watching the news makes me feel like there’s so much I don’t fully understand. Like… what is a ‘trained Marxist’ exactly?? Just started the MRC’s College Unbound learning program and learned a whole lot I didn’t know before about Marxism and Collectivism
    • OR
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Lot of stuff I didn’t know about the history of Marxism and Collectivism, and how it’s affecting us all now. Includes teaching text and videos. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Ask a question, or a few. For example:
      • "What can you tell me about Karl Marx? I keep hearing about Marxism in the news."
      • "What IS Marxism? I keep hearing about it in the news."
      • "I did read something really interesting about Marx recently. Like, have you ever heard about Karl Marx's explicit embrace of The Patriarchy? Did you know that Marx told others that the government should confiscate all inheritances, but he fought with his family to get his own from his dead father?"
      • "Hey, you know in the news those groups that claim to be Marxists ridicule factory and business owners (?) well, guess how Marx got the money he demanded to write his attacks on factory owners…?"
    • Does your family own property? Own a business? Aspire to grow old and wealthy?
      • Chat about the video series and get them thinking about how Marxism doesn't jibe with those goals. Our contemporary battle to respect and praise individual liberty, free will, market exchange, and private property has never been more important.
      • In order to make new friends and allies in this noble effort, it is incumbent on us to understand this ages-old collectivist enemy so that we can retain this knowledge, share it, and teach it to others.
    • Did your family start talking about news coverage of ANTIFA or BLM? Here's how one can thoughtfully add to the conversation:
      • ANTIFA and the founders of Black Lives Matter (BLM) have verifiable Marxist roots. It's no wonder they attack private property and work to undermine free markets and Christian principles. I've been learning the deeper history, philosophy, and economic errors of that collectivist philosophy, so we can live better than that and pass it on to the next generation.

Episode 02: The Intellectual Tactics of Marx

About This Episode

Marx's predatory philosophy remains popular because it is founded on envy, on an erroneous economic idea called "The Labor Theory of Value" that feeds "class" envy, and on the notion that theft through government is not only ethically acceptable, it's morally virtuous and will produce better societies. Find out how off-base and dangerous those ideas are, and why they are so attractive to many people, generation after generation...

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz and use the suggested talking points for sharing with others.

The Intellectual Tactics of Marx
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • The MRC has created a POWERFUL new video series and website to give you the history, knowledge, and tools to better understand what all the talk of Marxism is in the media... Turns out envy is a big part of it!
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Lot of stuff I didn’t know about the history of Marxism and Collectivism, and how it’s affecting us all now. Includes teaching text and videos. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

  • Ask a question, or a few. For example:

    • Why was envy so essential as a weapon to promote Marxism and collectivism?
    • See if you can chat with a collectivist to ask, in a general way, how envy can be seen as leading to more goods and better living for more people, if envy is used merely to TAKE, and where does that process end?
    • Ask your friends and family about what a “resource” is and what human connection it requires to make it a “resource?”
    • Gather a few people to see if they can shed light on the connection between contemporary “minimum wage” statutes, and Marx’s embrace of the so-called “Labor Theory of Value.”
    • Who was Carl Menger?
    • What did Menger explain about valuation that demolished the “Labor Theory of Value?”
    • What determines the value of a product or service?

Episode 03: On Morals, Materialism, and Dialectical Materialism

About This Episode

Sympathy for the Devil? Not necessarily. But perhaps one can pity Marx and collectivists. After all, Marx was a fallible human soul, and by making the choices he did, he led many others to follow his disastrous path. In Episode 03, we look at Marxism’s spiritual emptiness, and at historical changes in Europe that lent his “class envy” argument a false patina of validity among poorer folks of his era. Find out where Marx was ALMOST right, but where he misplaced his criticism, as we look at cronyism — better understood by 18th Century economist Adam Smith as “mercantilism,” and by contemporary economists and political philosophers as “rent-seeking.” This isn’t capitalism, but often is called capitalism by the enemies of free trade.

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz and use the suggested talking points for sharing with others.

On Morals, Materialism, and Dialectical Materialism
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • I’m glad I discovered the MRC’s awesome new video series delivering the history, knowledge and TOOLS to understand the detrimental effect of Marxist thinking for America! In Pt 3, we’re studying the moral, spiritual emptiness of Marx’s ideas, and we’re noting that on ONE historical claim, he came CLOSE to a valid point! Def check it out if you haven’t yet
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Lot of stuff I didn’t know about the history of Marxism and Collectivism, and how it’s affecting us all now. Includes teaching text and videos. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Can you tell me what "Dialectical Materialism" is, and with which German philosopher it is connected?
      • Can you tell me what “Dialectical Materialism” is, and with which German philosopher it is connected?
      • Why is the term antagonistic to Christianity?
      • Why is it often connected to the term “false dichotomy?”
    • Ask friends or family members if they can tell you the difference between “crony capitalism” and “free markets,” and see if they can tell you what “mercantilism” means? Which famous 18th Century economist helped popularize the term “mercantilism”… and in what way was Marx close to having a valid point?
    • Can you ask a friend what “rent-seeking” is, and how many of the old “landed gentry” got politicians to pass “Private Acts” of Parliament in Marx’s time to help them in this corrupt “rent-seeking” process?
    • And how does Marx’s answer — increasing the power of the government, make the potential danger of “rent-seeking” much higher?

Episode 04: The KEY Economic Errors of Marxism/Collectivism

About This Episode

In Part Four, we get the chance to see why phenomena such as “the incentive problem,” the “knowledge problem,” the “calculation problem,” and even the challenge of discovering “resources” are all difficult or impossible for Marxism and collectivism to overcome. And we discuss the principle known as “spheres of control,” seeing that the larger the sphere of control, the more problematic and dangerous it can be.

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

The KEY Economic Errors of Marxism/Collectivism
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • I needed solid, REAL economic arguments to wield against collectivists, and I just got them in pt 4 of the MRC’s new video series! Check it out
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Lot of stuff I didn’t know about the history of Marxism and Collectivism, and how it’s affecting us all now. Includes teaching text and videos. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Here's a puzzler to ask a collectivist, or to ask anyone, just to offer your friends some grist for the mental mill: inquire as to how a collectivist can claim that the state can establish an "equitable distribution of goods", not only because "equitable" is subjective and is a value judgment that falls upon individual thought and the voluntary exchange of opinions, but because the very definition of "good" applied to a thing is also subjective!

      • Inquire as to how a collectivist can claim that the state can establish an “equitable distribution of goods,” not only because “equitable” is subjective and is a value judgment that falls upon individual thought and the voluntary exchange of opinions, but because the very definition of “good” applied to a thing is also subjective!
      • Then ask someone how a society where private property is verboten can:
        A. determine what resources actually are
        B. fix proper prices to those resources
        C. have them supplied to where people value them most, and
        D. coordinate the use of that “resource” with others that might be needed to improve items that require the mixing of them?
      • And, finally, ask someone to tell you how they feel about bigger “spheres of control” and whether the Founders envisioned many smaller spheres or one centralized sphere...

Episode 05: The First Five Planks of The Communist Manifesto

About This Episode

What is in the first five planks of Marx’s infamous credo? Why are these planks immoral, unethical, anti-economic, and anti-human? And how have they — or variations of them — been implemented or mimicked in the United States? Find out about so-called “progressive” income taxation, central banking, the “death tax,” government control of lending for homes, and what’s called “moral hazard.” Fair warning! Some of this is disturbing.

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

The First Five Planks of The Communist Manifesto
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • Wow - just learned how much of the Communist Manifesto has been implemented or mimicked in the U.S. thru income tax, central banking, the “death tax,” government lending for homes, Antifa/BLM, and what’s called “moral hazard.” Fair warning! Some of this is disturbing!
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Lot of stuff I didn’t know about the history of Marxism and Collectivism, and how it’s affecting us all now. Includes teaching text and videos. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • What do you think are the practical effects of increasing taxes on inheritances?
    • Would this tend to shift high earners to save or spend before they die?
    • On an ethical level, is it right to threaten someone based on what he or she wants to do with his or her money?
    • What’s the meaning of the term “moral hazard” and can you offer an example of a moral hazard in the US that became a serious problem?
    • If the economic definition of “fascism” is the nominal — in name only — ownership of a business that is taxed and told by government what to do, then is AntiFa, which wants government to tell private business what to do and wants far higher confiscatory taxation — is AntiFa really “anti-fascist” or actually pro-fascist?
    • Hey, did you know that in 2019, the top 25 percent of wage earners paid over 86 percent of all US income taxes?
    • What banking entity in the US represents one of the key planks of Marx’s Communist Manifesto?

The Last Five Planks of The Communist Manifesto

About This Episode

What are the final five planks of Marx’s Manifesto? How have they — or variations of them — been implemented or mimicked in the United States? How is the Federal Communications Commission very close to a Marxist agency? How do the Transportation Safety Administration, and the Federal Aviation Administration have thematic family in The Communist Manifesto? Yes, some of this is disturbing as well!

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

The Last Five Planks of The Communist Manifesto
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • Thanks to the MRC for their College Unbound series! Just watched Part 6 of their lessons on the history and dangers of collectivism, and now I know how many of those bad ideas have been mimicked in the U.S.! Check it out!
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Did you know that, if he could see the United States today, Karl Marx probably would approve of the FCC, Amtrak, federal highway funding, and the public education systems in virtually every city of the nation, as well as the federal Department of Education?
    • And if you believe in stopping exploitative use of child labor, did you know that in his Communist Manifesto — the document so many Antifa and Black Lives Matter members adore — Karl Marx explicitly states that he wants all children to be put to labor for the state?

The Forerunner of Marx: Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Socialism

About This Episode

Collectivism did not begin with Karl Marx. Other major historical and philosophical figures preceded Marx, and laid the stepping stones to collectivist hell. In this, Lesson Seven, we look at one of those troubling intellectual engineers, Jean Jacques Rousseau. We look at his life in the 18th Century, at his early use of envy to seduce supporters and demonize private property, his promotion of collectivism to force people into equal misery, rather than economic growth, and his personal hypocrisy – which was stunning and profoundly troubling…

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

The Last Five Planks of The Communist Manifesto
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • I’ve been fascinated by the new MRC series College Unbound. In ep 7, I learned about early socialist Jean Jacques Rousseau, his personal hypocrisy, and how his use of envy pervades modern leftism! Pretty interesting.
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Highly rec’d!

Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • One of the most prominent characteristics of collectivists always seems to be the vast number who are hypocritical. For example, in his “Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx railed against inherited wealth, yet he thirsted for his inheritance from his deceased father.
      • Did you know that, seventy years earlier, Marx’s French forerunner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, also behaved hypocritically? He had five children, handed them off to the Foundlings Home, then BLAMED SOCIETY for his inability to feel the pleasures of fatherhood!
    • Have you noticed how many U.S. politicians want to simply pass statutes without paying any heed to the limits the Constitution puts on the federal government?
      • This isn’t new. In fact, French 18th Century socialist Jean Jacques Rousseau beat that path with his deadly pamphlet, “The Social Contract,” in which, get this, he claimed that the French Assembly would express the “General Will”, and would be infallible. It seems he’d fit right in around DC.
    • The French Revolution is recognized as one of the most tragic and madness-filled periods in European history.
      • Did you know that it was driven by hardcore collectivists whose attitudes now pervade contemporary American leftist politicians, teachers, and so-called “reporters” on dinosaur networks?

Cultural Marxism, The Frankfurt School, and Postmodernism

About This Episode

Some contemporary leftists criticize liberty-minded philosophers and economists when the latter cite the immorality and Marxist origins of what’s known as “Cultural Marxism.” The members of the “new left” claim that Marx only was focused on economics. This is false. To understand the many vectors collectivism will take in order to undermine private property, attack free markets, and crush individual will, it’s ESSENTIAL to understand Cultural Marxism, and those who injected it into Western universities and culture itself.

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

Cultural Marxism, The Frankfurt School, and Postmodernism
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • Made accepted by the media, I think many Americans aren’t aware of how deeply Cultural Marxism has used envy and lies to attack private property. This series explains it all and is really cool:
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Highly rec’d!

      • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

      Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • The roots of “identity politics” – a tactic that categorizes people into racial, religious, gender, or other disparate groups – goes back to Karl Marx. It’s a form of Cultural Marxism, eliminating the individual, and pitting “victim groups'' against those depicted as the exploiters, just as Marx did with his “proletariat versus the bourgeoisie” campaign that led to over a hundred million people dead across the globe.
    • What is “Cultural Marxism,” and how do things like “Cancel Culture,” “Identity Politics,” and “Postmodernism,” find their roots in Marxist ideology as it was picked up by collectivists of the early 20th Century in order to inject it into U.S. universities and public schools?
    • In Canada, people can be fined for using a pronoun incorrectly. In the U.S. and Canada, many tax-funded and subsidized universities practice “identity politics” to push for more political control over private industry, using the government to crush free will. These problems seem modern and isolated to our time, but did you know they have their roots in Marxism? Early Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School, a group of European intellectuals, intentionally sought to spread the seeds of their envy-based philosophy in Western universities.

Fascism, Crony-Capitalism, and Mercantilism

About This Episode

Fascism, Crony-capitalism, or, as it SHOULD be titled, and as Adam Smith called it in 1776, "Mercantilism" – the private ownership of business that is pushed around or given special favors by the state. It's one of the major reasons leftists never see the "Big Business" people they hate ever brought to "their knees", because the left is appealing to the biggest monopoly of all: the state. What is "rent-seeking", and how does it give contemporary collectivists illegitimate fuel for their fires of anti-free-market hatred?

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

Fascism, Crony-Capitalism, and Mercantilism
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • When leftist media chatterboxes call conservatives “fascists” and “Nazis” do they understand that “fascists” and “Nazis” actually embraced socialism? Do they understand that the regulations and taxation and redistribution of wealth they support is all part of fascism? I’ve learned so much by watching this free video series from The MRC! Highly’ rec’d
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Highly rec’d!

      • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

      Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Did you know that our old school teachers were wrong when they told us fascism and communism were diametrical opposites? In fact, Hitler and Mussolini both admired Marx, and current Antifa members are closer to fascists than the people they attack.
    • Our forebears fought the horrors of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, and they won. But did you know that the very U.S. government that sent them to Europe and the Pacific in World War Two was embracing fascism and socialism while our parents and grandparents fought?
    • When leftist media chatterboxes call conservatives “fascists” and “Nazis” do they understand that “fascists” and “Nazis” actually embraced socialism? Do they understand that the regulations and taxation and redistribution of wealth they support is all part of fascism? They’d do themselves a service by learning, by watching Episode 9 of the MRC’s College Unbound!, the FREE online learning series unraveling the secrets of Marxism-collectivism, and seeing how much of the collectivist plans have been incorporated into U.S. policy.
    • The soldiers returning from World War Two came back victorious against the foreign collectivist enemies. But the United States government already was on a path towards fascism and socialism. What has happened here, and how do they all link back to Marx and Rousseau?

The Deadly Legacy of Marxism, Socialism, and Collectivism...

About This Episode

Why is Marxism – as a named philosophy – only part of the deadly problem of collectivism through history?

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

The Deadly Legacy of Marxism, Socialism, and Collectivism...
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • Did you know that decades ago, leftist so-called “news media” lobbed the “it’s all fake news” narrative at conservatives who tried to report the truth about Marxism-collectivism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere? I learned a lot from this video series from the Media Research Center… sharing a link here.
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Highly rec’d!

      • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

      Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Did you know that, decades ago, leftist so-called “news media” lobbed the “it’s all fake news” narrative at conservatives who tried to report the truth about Marxism-collectivism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere? And, did you know that even as millions were slaughtered and imprisoned, even as the Soviet economy stalled and the communists had to steal Western tech and invade other nations to acquire resources, U.S. liberals hid or excused the horrors?
    • Did you know that in the last one-hundred years, over 100 million people have perished at the hands of the Marxist state, be it in the form of communism, socialism, democratic socialism, or fascism?
    • Did you know that George Orwell based many aspects of his dystopian nightmare “1984” society on the Soviet Union of the mid-1940s?
    • Did you know that even as Orwell and others tried to sound the alarm of what Soviet collectivists were doing, Western “intellectuals” in universities and the media were working to hide or justify the terror and economic decline? Why would universities and the media choose to do that? Millions perished. Generations were destroyed. Religion and family were deemed enemies. In collectivist nations of the Twentieth Century, normal human interaction, especially the worship of God and the simple act of buying and selling, went underground.
    • Do you think it’s time to stand up against left-wing media propagandists in America who overlook or excuse the dark history of collectivism around the world? From Russia, to China, to Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and on and on, economies have been ravaged, religion attacked, speech destroyed, and over 100 million people have died at the hands of the soul-crushing state.

Don’t Let Anyone Tell You “Communism” or “Socialism” Haven’t Been Tried

About This Episode

The Pilgrims, and their hard wake-up call to back away from collectivism in 1620. This is a powerful story that allows parents and children alike to always, always remember that socialism was tried here in North America. The test was conducted four-hundred years ago, and we can share the results to help others see the truth.

Watch this episode now and afterward, be sure to take the short quiz after:

Don’t Let Anyone Tell You “Communism”
or “Socialism” Haven’t Been Tried
Test Your Knowledge!

  • Start thoughtful conversation on social media:

    • Do you think that American “trained Marxists”/collectivists realize they are hypocrites if they celebrate Thanksgiving? Here’s why...
    • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year? I just discovered MRC’s new ‘College Unbound’ Liberty Learning Program. Highly rec’d!

      • Are you a parent, teacher, or professor looking for quality material to add to your distance learning curriculum this year?

      Click Here to Download Our Teaching Text!

  • Start thoughtful conversation in person or over video chat:

    • Do you think that American collectivists realize they are hypocrites if they celebrate Thanksgiving? Do you think they know that Thanksgiving isn’t a way to “thank the American Indians' for helping the Pilgrims thrive? In the words of Plymouth Plantation Governor William Bradford, Thanksgiving is a celebration of the settlers turning away from political collectivism and embracing real private property and freedom!
    • Why did the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation suffer over a year of starvation in 1620? How is this a key lesson to remember when contemporary collectivists claim, “real socialism has never been tried?” If your public school teachers told you that Thanksgiving is a celebration thanking American Indians for their help, they were wrong.