Since I spent last week’s episode detailing the thrilling ins and outs of making your own 2026 financial plan for wealth-maxxing, today I’m taking a hard left turn and interviewing Andrew Hartman, a history professor and the author of Karl Marx in America, a 500-page tome about which he says, and here I quote directly, “My father-in-law told me that he likes the book even though he still doesn’t like Marx.” We talked about:
- The limitations of theories from the founding Enlightenment thinkbois like Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, which mostly pre-dated industrial capitalism
- The "gospel of success" as an anesthetic for an uproarious working class who did not go gently from their farms into factories
- A surprising role for corporations, which have—ironically—done more to "socialize production" than any other modern entity
- The trap of thinking about class as an "identity," rather than a relationship
- How wealth inequality creates speculative markets and bubbles
Sign up for the December 3 D.I.Y. class and see the Wealth Planner System's new features: https://www.moneywithkatie.myflodesk.com/mwk-2026-planning-party
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: https://moneywithkatie.com/newsletter
Get your copy of Rich Girl Nation, one of Barnes & Noble's Best Business Books of 2025: https://www.moneywithkatie.com/rich-girl-nation
Transcripts, show notes, resources, and credits at: https://www.moneywithkatie.com/the_mwk_show/freedom-capitalism-missing-revolution.
—
Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
