Ezra Klein

When does it move from a theory outside power as a political philosophy, not as a virtue, into something that is being wielded by those with authority?

Let's stay on Marx for a minute.

What is his critique of liberalism?

In Marx's view.

Where does liberalism begin to become interested in or associated with?

the actual redistribution of resources in society from the rich to the poor?

Where does it become connected to social welfare states?

When you talk about FDR and that later liberalism, and a lot happens between what we've been discussing in there.

At some point, this moves away from just being a set of approaches to a marketplace of ideas or individual virtue, and it becomes connected to a view that power needs to be redistributed and

Money and security need to be redistributed.

When does that begin to happen?

There is an interesting dimension there that I think you hear less of today, which is a connection of a social welfare state, everything from education to health care and on and on, as being not just a matter of justice, maybe not even at all a matter of justice, but instead a matter of uplift.

You're trying to create the conditions for

a capable, educated, productive citizenry.

And something you see in a lot of the early arguments about it is that you see less of the argument, at least in my reading, that society is unfair.

That's more sort of how I would argue for a lot of these policies today, and more of the argument that

this needs to be done because it is the only way to have a citizenry capable of participating in liberal democracy, you know, able to fight in your wars, right?

Like it's a question of building the capacity of the citizenry.

It's very, very concerned with like the uplift of the individual.

Germany is very early to have a state-run health care program.