Topic: Madison vs. Marx: The Slippery Slope of Socialism to Authoritarian Rule
When: Tuesday 9/29/2026 at 2:00 pm ET
James Madison and Karl Marx lived in different worlds, but their ideas continue to collide in the political debates of today. Madison believed concentrated government power posed a fundamental threat to liberty and designed a constitutional system intended to restrain that power. Marx, by contrast, argued that capitalism and private ownership created fundamental inequalities that required a revolutionary transformation of society. In this episode, we examine Marx’s vision of communism alongside Madison’s philosophy of limited government and individual rights. Did Madison’s concerns about concentrated power anticipate problems later experienced by the practice of socialism? Explore the competing visions of Madison and Marx—and the enduring debate over whether equality and liberty can coexist without sacrificing one for the other.
Constitutional Chats are hosted by Janine Turner, Cathy Gillespie, student ambassadors, and experts who join us weekly to discuss hot-topic issues! The audience is not on camera, but you may ask questions!
Meet the Guest
Dan Mahoney
Daniel J. Mahoney is Senior Research Fellow at the Simon Center at the Heritage Foundation, professor emeritus at Assumption University (where he taught from 1986 until 2021), Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, Senior Writer at Law and Liberty, and executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science.
He is also the author of The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now, Encounter Books (2025). as well as a dozen other books and over 500 articles, essays, and reviews) on statesmanship, French political thought, the art and political thought of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, conservatism, religion and politics, and various themes in political philosophy.
His book, The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation was awarded the Palouci Prize for Conservative Book of the Year by ISI in 2023.
Mahoney has written for a wide range of academic and public journals from The Political Science Reviewer and Perspectives on Political Science to the Public Interest, the National Interest, First Things, National Review, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, Modern Age, Commentaire, La Nef, The European Conservative, and the Hungarian Review, among others. He has also edited and introduced the writings of Raymond Aron, Aurel Kolnai, Pierre Manent, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty, and the Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (see the acclaimed The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, published in 2006).
His writings have been translated into thirteen languages including French, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Korean. In his scholarship and public writings, Mahoney vigorously defends a conservative-minded liberalism informed by classical and Christian wisdom and the best currents of moderate modernity, as well as the practical wisdom of the American Founders and public-spirited statesman such as Burke, Lincoln, Churchill, and de Gaulle.
His public writings have taken eloquent and pointed aim at the totalitarian temptation in its various forms.