Neofeudalism All Over Again: The World According to Jodi Dean
Send us a text We discuss Jodi Dean's new book Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle.
May 12, 2025•34 min
The Measures Taken
The Measures Taken is a project to survey and reconstruct the history of Marxism from the development of mass Social Democracy to our own moment.
Recognizing that Bolshevism has lapsed as a living political tendency, those of us who remain committed to revolutionary communist politics and convinced by the Marxist critique of political economy are left searching for a past capable of orienting us in the present. Mindful of the threat of eclecticism and all too cognizant of the infelicities of sectarianism, the hosts of this podcast embrace a non-denominational Marxism.
Our purpose is self-education, never the display of expertise. We hope that our listeners extend to us the same principled courtesy we do our forebears: not to judge too harshly.
Last refreshed: ⓘ
Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.
Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
Episodes
The World According to Jane McAlevey
Send us a text We discuss Jane McAlevey's contributions to the labor movement and two of her books: 'No Shortcuts' and 'Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell).'
Aug 29, 2024•42 min
Beach Reads #2: Alexandra Kollontai's "Morality and the New Society"
Send us a text We discuss a selection of Kollontai's writings and speeches on women's oppression, the family structure, and new ways to conceive of sex and love in a liberated society.
Jul 30, 2024•32 min
'Technofeudalism': The World According to Yanis Varoufakis
Send us a text We discuss Yanis Varoufakis' new book 'Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism,’ in which he argues that capitalism is dead and has been "replaced by something fundamentally different."
Jun 20, 2024•50 min
2.03: The Hungarian Soviet Republic
Send us a text Not unlike the Paris Commune, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which held power in that country for 133 heroic days in 1919, exerted influence through example in greater measure than its brief lease on life would suggest. Not only did it raise the profile and recast the soul of Georg Lukács, but in its own time, it was recognized as a failed example of communist revolution worth learning from. Soviet communism came to Hungary in the golden hour between the Bolshevik success, and tha...
May 28, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Beach Read #1: Bukharin's 'Historical Materialism'
Send us a text We kick off our new 'beach reads' series with a discussion of Bukharin's 1921 text, Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology.
May 01, 2024•43 min
'The World According to...' Episode 1
Send us a text We are changing things up here at Measures Taken HQ! In this new series (which will supplement but not replace our former episode track) we discuss what's being talked about on the contemporary left.
Apr 10, 2024•55 min
2.02: 'Left-Wing' Communism
Send us a text We discuss Lenin's "'Left-Wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder" as well as the responses and political positions of some of the pamphlet's main targets. We also examine the concept of left-wing communism itself, asking whether or not it is a category that can clarify our political lives today.
Feb 15, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 2
2.01: Red Terror
Send us a text What components of Marxism can most successfully help us to understand the appearance and shape of the phenomenon of ‘Red Terror?’
Sep 01, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 1
1.12: The Invention of Communism
Send us a text The seizure of state power by Russian social democrats, and the success of their party in developing military and administrative capacities, forced the class-conscious worker the rest of the world over to decide to what extent it was appropriate to accept organizational leadership from the first and only proletarian dictatorship (if one does not count the inspired and brief experiments in Paris 1871). The choice all but made itself, especially if bearing witness to industrial warf...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 12
1.11: The World War
Send us a text The climax of the World War would present socialists with the actuality of revolution and result in a new North Star for Marxism, but its immediate effects were to irrevocably destroy the fabric of the international socialist movement, and in doing so inaugurate a period of painful soul-searching. In this episode, we will trace the responses of socialists to the war, as well as responses to the existential crises it provoked....
Dec 02, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Interview: Ben Lewis
Send us a text Ben is editor and translator of a number of important collections of primarily source documents from the Second International period, including Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism (Haymarket). He is also the author of Oswald Spengler and the Politics of Decline (Berghahn Books). You can support his translation work on Patreon by searching for his project, Marxism Translated....
Aug 04, 2022•53 min
1.10: The Agrarian Question
Send us a text The question of Social Democracy’s role when it came to peasants and agricultural laborers opened the floodgates to a wide range of theoretical and tactical debates. In this episode, we will dive into this era’s landmark texts and strategic, Party-level debates and decisions on the agrarian question— a question that will arise and be contested many more times as we proceed through the history of Marxism as a political tradition....
May 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 10
1.09: The Question of the Party
Send us a text It has hardly been lost on convinced readers of Capital that the book contains no blueprint for building an organization, one that might sound the “death knell” of the capitalist mode of production, expropriate the expropriators, and usher in the free association of labor. In this episode, we will open up the organizational question to see what we can learn from our traditions best planned failures....
Mar 12, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 9
1.08: Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Send us a text 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....
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 8
1.07: The Woman Question
Send us a text 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....
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 7
1.06: The National Question
Send us a text Despite the simplicity and strong appeal of the slogan “Proletarians of all countries unite,” the early Social Democratic movement would find themselves divided on how to carry out this task. Alongside controversy over Revisionism and the early debates on Imperialism, the National Question would be hotly contested across the Second International.
Oct 27, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 6
1.05: Early Debates on Imperialism
Send us a text 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 brings 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 cont...
Sep 20, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 5
1.04: The Revisionist Controversy
Send us a text 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....
Aug 09, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 4
1.03: The Invention of Marxism
Send us a text 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.
Aug 08, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 3
1.02: The Many Lives of Marx's Capital
Send us a text 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.
Aug 07, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 2
1.01: The New Moment in Marxism
Send us a text 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.
Aug 06, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Hosted on Buzzsprout
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android