Why Not Marxism? (Ft. Benjamin Studebaker)

2026-07-31

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Get access to The Backroom, with 100+ exclusive episodes of 1Dime Radio, on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OneDimeThis special bonus episode of 1Dime Radio is a rare public release of a conversation previously available only through The Backroom, my Patreon-exclusive podcast. I sit down with political theorist Benjamin Studebaker to challenge assumptions on the far left about Marxism, communism, class, and revolution, from the decline of the organized working class and the rise of rentier capitalism to Marxism’s missing theory of p...

Get access to The Backroom, with 100+ exclusive episodes of 1Dime Radio, on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OneDime

This special bonus episode of 1Dime Radio is a rare public release of a conversation previously available only through The Backroom, my Patreon-exclusive podcast. I sit down with political theorist Benjamin Studebaker to challenge assumptions on the far left about Marxism, communism, class, and revolution, from the decline of the organized working class and the rise of rentier capitalism to Marxism’s missing theory of politics, the failures of one-party states, China’s relationship to the world system, and the fantasy of world revolution.

This public release contains the first half of our three-and-a-half-hour conversation and ends just as we turn to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Patrons can hear the full discussion in The Backroom.

You can listen to 1Dime Radio on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts.

Timestamps:
0:00 Preview: How Capitalism Ruins the Elite
2:37 Intro
3:35 Are We Marxists?
10:43 Middle Capitalism and the New Class Structure
25:14 Labor vs. the Vulnerable
30:27 What Marxism Gets Right About Capitalism
37:36 Marxism’s Moral and Political Blind Spot
46:45 Needs, Consumer Goods, and Soviet Collapse
54:38 False Needs, Christianity, and the Internet
1:03:09 Pessimism, Accelerationism, and Anti-Imperialism
1:06:05 Why Not Communism?
1:12:01 Can Politics Exist Without the State?
1:16:21 China, the WTO, and the Limits of Socialist Power
1:25:01 Can Internationalism Avoid Imperialism?
1:40:22 Socialist Geopolitics and the Burden of Proof
1:43:17 Hear the Full Conversation on Patreon
1:44:25 The True Test of a Revolution