Episode 1: The New Moment in Marxism
Our first episode attempts to justify the act of bringing another Marxist podcast into the world. This is an introduction to the project and ourselves, and we explain our shared orientation towards the contemporary left.
Episode 2: The Many Lives of Marx’s Capital
Despite its obvious centrality to the entire corpus of historical Marxism, Capital remains contested territory on the left. We examine its publication history and how we can understand what’s at stake in competing readings and approaches to the text.
Episode 3: The Invention of Marxism
The emergence of ‘Marxism’ as a ‘worldview’ and political tendency was not achieved during Marx’s lifetime, but remains the achievement of his epigones. This episode establishes what was meant by ‘Marxism’ when it forged its first orthodoxy by examining the popularizing works of Engels, Kautsky and Plekhanov.
Episode 4: The Revisionist Controversy
The battle over Marxist orthodoxy was not long in arriving. Almost as soon as it emerged, it was subjected to a sustained theoretical assault from within, most notably and thoroughly by Eduard Bernstein, the foremost protagonist (or antagonist) in what was called ‘the revisionist controversy.’ This episode examines the political motivations and theoretical repercussions of this period of debate.
Episode 5: Early Debates on Imperialism
From the moment Social Democracy was compelled by virtue of the maturity of its institutions to formulate policy and strategy, Marxists have feared for the timeliness of their theoretical commitments. Efforts to bring Marxism up to date most often manifested themselves as theories of ‘imperialism.’ In this episode, we do our best to unpack this capacious concept with an eye to learning what we can from its use by Second International social democrats. And since this terrain contains an unusual number of sacred cows, we’ve come armed.
Episode 6: The National Question
Despite the simplicity and strong appeal of the slogan “Proletarians of all countries unite,” the early Social Democratic movement would find themselves bitterly divided on how to carry out this great task. Downstream of The Revisionism Controversy and the Early Debates On Imperialism, the issue of the National Question would be hotly contested across the Second International.
Episode 7: The Woman Question
The most popular book produced by a Second International figure was August Bebel’s “Women Under Socialism.” It introduced scientific socialism to a question prominent on the political scene, namely, that of women’s oppression and emancipation. For decades, Marxists would argue, both amongst themselves and with their opponents, on the relationship of the so-called “woman question” to class struggle and the social revolution.
Episode 8: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Questions of the bourgeois state, democracy, and the proletariat’s conquest of state power were the subject of a number of debates and attempts at theoretical formulation in the Second International. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the dissolving of the Constituent Assembly, the stakes of the debate became even more pronounced, with figures such as Lenin, Kautsky, and Luxemburg focusing especially on the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat.