While we’re told by politicians that the ideas of Karl Marx are foreign and have no place in this country, history proves otherwise. In Karl Marx in America (2025), Andrew Hartman shows that Marx and Marxism have had a significant influence on the United States, from Marx’s journalistic writings for the New York Daily Tribune, on the mass politics of the Socialist and Communist Parties and the Wobblies, on the most radical edge of the New Deal and the New Left, and finally with the return to Marx’s ideas since the Global Financial Crisis.
Jon Nelson hosts this interview with Hartman by Sasha Lilley, originally broadcast on KPFA, from Against the Grain, an award-winning radio and web media project that provides in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
Image: Cover of Karl Marx in America by Andrew Hartman, with blue background and white and red lettering and small black and white pictures of Marx. Fair use. Logo of Old Mole Variety Hour, KBOO Community Radio, Portland, Oregon.