“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
-- Antonio Gramsci
The old forms of the Left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a Dialectical Pessimism and develop a salvage project capable of sparking a new workers' movement for socialism.
A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
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Episodes
Sunday Jul 30, 2023
Sunday Jul 30, 2023
Our third reading group episode on Revolution: An Intellectual History, by Enzo Traverso. This week we discuss Concepts, Symbols, and Realms of Memory.
Traverso, Enzo. 2021. Revolution : An Intellectual History. London ; New York: Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2783-revolution
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Monday Jul 24, 2023
Kevin recently gave a talk about William Morris' transition from romantic anti-capitalism to Marxism and is thus well suited to school us on the subject. We decided to record it and share it with all of you.
How I Became a Socialist (William Morris)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1894/hibs/hibs.htm
Under an Elm-Tree, Or, Thoughts in the Country-Side (William Morris)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1889/commonweal/07-elm-tree.htm
Facing the Worst of It (William Morris)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1887/commonweal/02-facing-worst.htm
William Morris (E.P. Thompson)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1959/william-morris.htm
Sunday Jul 16, 2023
Sunday Jul 16, 2023
This week we return to an old favorite topic of ours, the warm stream, romantic, or gothic in Marxism. This time we are joined by an accredited expert in all things gothic, Jon from the Horror Vanguard.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/horror-vanguard/id1445594437
https://twitter.com/TheLitCritGuy
Bloch, Ernst, Neville Plaice, and Stephen Plaice. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 1. MIT Press, 1995.
Music: Sisters of Mercy- She's a Monster
Thursday Jul 13, 2023
Thursday Jul 13, 2023
Ukrainian Nationalism and Third Worldism in the Cold War
This week we read and discussed Congo on the Dnipro: Third Worldism and the Nationalization of Soviet Internationalism in Ukraine by Thom Lloyd. The author discusses attempts by Ukrainian nationalists to appropriate the language of third world liberation struggles, but with a twist (spoiler alert, its a racist one).
Loyd, Thom. "Congo on the Dnipro: Third Worldism and the Nationalization of Soviet Internationalism in Ukraine." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 22, no. 4 (2021): 787-811. doi:10.1353/kri.2021.0053.
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Monday Jul 03, 2023
The Patsocs are coming, the Patsocs are coming!
There has been much fruitless discourse and claims of rising fascism among the keyboard proletarian vanguard about the problem of Social Patriotism. We got the original gang back together to talk about what the appropriate level for freaking out about it on the internet is.
There is no contradiction between patriotism and socialism
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/there-no-contradiction-between-patriotism-and-socialism
Is There a Place for Patriotism on the Left?
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/patriotism-left-nationalism/
Democratic Socialism Must Be Internationalist
https://jacobin.com/2021/04/john-judis-the-socialist-awakening-review-socialist-left-internationalism-nationalism
In Defense of U.S. Proletarian Patriotism
https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/in-defense-of-us-proletarian-patriotism-a-comradely-response-to-danny-haiphongs-marxist-polemic-on-patriotic-socialism-by-kayla-popuchet
British Communism’s Patriotic Disease
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/british-communisms-patriotic-disease
The Case for a Left Patriotism
https://www.thebellows.org/the-case-for-a-left-patriotism/
Wednesday Jun 28, 2023
Wednesday Jun 28, 2023
Welcome to our second reading group episode on Revolution: An Intellectual History, by Enzo Traverso. This week we discuss BODIES.
Traverso, Enzo. 2021. Revolution : An Intellectual History. London ; New York: Verso.
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.
Sunday Jun 18, 2023
Sunday Jun 18, 2023
No Royal Road is back with part four of our discussion of Evegny Morozov's
"Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason."
Check out Varn Vlog here:
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
Thursday Jun 15, 2023
Thursday Jun 15, 2023
Just like the Prague Spring, it seems clear that the intentions of its participants were the opposite. The vast majority of Czechoslovaks who participated in the movements that brought down the republic were attempting to reform the socialist system, not destroy it.
Krapfl, James. Revolution with a Human Face Politics, Culture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989–1992. Cornell University Press, 2017.
Scott Brown. “Prelude to a Divorce? The Prague Spring as Dress Rehearsal for Czechoslovakia’s ‘Velvet Divorce.’” Europe-Asia Studies 60, no. 10 (2008): 1783–1804.
Krishan Kumar (1992). The Revolutions of 1989: Socialism, Capitalism, and Democracy. Theory and Society, 21(3), 309–356.
Paal Sigurd Hilde (1999). Slovak Nationalism and the Break-Up of Czechoslovakia. Europe-Asia Studies, 51(4), 647–665.
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.
Sunday Jun 04, 2023
Sunday Jun 04, 2023
This week we discuss a couple of articles by Roland Boer about Lunacharsky, Lenin, and the project of godbuilding. This is our final episode with Mir before he goes off to Austria and Germany to learn all the sneakiest Jesuit tricks.
Boer, Roland . “God in the World: Lenin, Hegel, and the God-Builders.” Heythrop Journal, 2015.
Boer, Roland. “Religion and Socialism: A. V. Lunacharsky and the God-Builders.” Political Theology 15, no. 2 (March 2014): 188–209.
Music: Current 93- Thunder Perfect Mind I
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Back again with another one, this time we are throwing one out to the middle aged men in the audience by talking about World War Two.
Edele, Mark. Stalinism at War : The Soviet Union in World War II. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.