“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.
Check us out on Patreon for regular Patron Book Clubs, Regrettable Geopolitics updates, Real Nerd Hours, and more...
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Episodes
Wednesday Feb 23, 2022
Wednesday Feb 23, 2022
Welcome to the fourth and final episode of our discussion on Chris Wickham's essay The Other Transition, about the transition from the classical to the feudal mode production. This is the last in this particular reading series, but not the last for this collaboration. We will be back soon with another series on a similar topic.
Chris Wickham, THE OTHER TRANSITION: FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD TO FEUDALISM, Past & Present, Volume 103, Issue 1, May 1984, Pages 3–36
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
Monday Feb 07, 2022
Monday Feb 07, 2022
This week the guys discuss the rotting whale carcass that is the American left. Gone are the days of mass organizations, the workers movement, and even the microsect. We discuss atomization, idealism, and our prospects moving forward.
Remapping the American Left: A History of Radical Discontinuity (pp 22-32)
https://depts.washington.edu/moves/pdf/Gregory_Remapping_the_American_Left_LABOR_May2020.pdf
The U.S. left at a strategic impasse
https://www.tempestmag.org/2022/01/the-u-s-left-at-a-strategic-impasse/
Bismarck, Browder, and Biden: Joe’s Hegemony Versus Ours
https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/10/bismarck-browder-biden-joes-hegemony-versus-ours/
Music: Tha Crossroads- Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Wednesday Jan 26, 2022
Wednesday Jan 26, 2022
This week Jason continues to teach us about the history of American socialism. We pick up with the collapse of the old left, discuss the birth of the New Left, the New Communist Movement, and end with the End of History and the turn inward.
Dennis, Peggy. The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life, 1925-1975. Lawrence Hill Books, 1977.
Bernstein, Walter. Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. Da Capo Press, 1996.
Isserman, Maurice. If I Had A Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left. Basic Books, 1987.
Unger, Irwin. The Movement: A History of the New Left, 1959-1972. Dodd, Mead, 1974.
Leonard, Aaron J & Gallagher, Conor A. A Threat of the First Magnitude: FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union, 1962-1974. Repeater, 2018.
Leonard, Aaron J & Gallagher, Conor A. Heavy Radicals - The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists: The Revolutionary Union / Revolutionary Communist Party, 1968-1980. Zero Books, 2015.
Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. Verso, 2018.
Dixon, Aaron. My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. Haymarket, 2012.
Sheppard, Barry. The Party: A Political Memoir (The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988). Haymarket, 2006.
Camejo, Peter. North Star: A Memoir. Haymarket, 2010.
Music: Fortunate Son- Circle Jerks
Friday Jan 21, 2022
Friday Jan 21, 2022
From the second installment of the Regrettable Book Club's reading of Antonio Labriola's Socialism and Philosophy covering the introduction by Paul Piccone.
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.
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theregrettablecentury)
Wednesday Jan 12, 2022
Wednesday Jan 12, 2022
Welcome to the third episode of a new collaborative series with Varn Vlog and the Regrettable Century, where we will be talking about history, historiography, social technologies, relations of production, modes of production, and most importantly, transitions.
In this episode, we continue talking about the other transition, the transition to the feudal mode of production.
Chris Wickham, THE OTHER TRANSITION: FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD TO FEUDALISM, Past & Present, Volume 103, Issue 1, May 1984, Pages 3–36
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
Saturday Jan 01, 2022
Saturday Jan 01, 2022
Last year, Neil Gorman and Regrettable Chris hung out during the Christmas break to talk about how bad higher education had gotten during the pandemic. This clip however, is a little preview of the other stuff they talked about.
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.
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
This week we further explore our critique of technology under capitalism. Chris was absent from the recording due to grad school reasons, so Jess led the charge on this one. We ultimately determine that technology is bad and the Luddites were right.
The Rise of the Machines
https://jacobinmag.com/2013/04/the-rise-of-the-machines
The Ideology Behind Technology
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3333-the-ideology-behind-technology
The Case Against Naive Technocapitalist Optimism
https://consilienceproject.org/the-case-against-naive-technocapitalist-optimism/
Marx on Technology
https://andymerrifield.org/2019/09/29/marx-on-technology/
HYPER-REALITY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs&t=291s
Music: Bathsheba- At the End of Everything
Wednesday Dec 15, 2021
Wednesday Dec 15, 2021
This week Jason teaches us about the history of American socialism. We start with the beginnings of the movement in the late 19th century and ends just after the Second World War.
Cannon, James P. The History of American Trotskyism, 1928-1938 : Report of a participant. New York: Pathfinder, 2002.
Drucker, Peter. Max Shachtman and His Left : A Socialist's Odyssey Through the "American century. Amherst: Prometheus, 2001.
Foner, Philip S. The Great Labor Uprising of 1877. New York: Pathfinder, 2002.
Ginger, Ray. The Bending Cross : A biography of Eugene Victor Debs. Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books, 2007.
Gornick, Vivian. The Romance of American Communism. London Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2020.
Johanningsmeier, Edward P. Forging American Communism : The Life of William Z. Foster. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Kelley, Robin D. Hammer and hoe : Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Kipnis, Ira. The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912. Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books, 2004.
Naison, Mark D. Communists in Harlem During the Depression. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
Weinstein, James. The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1984.
Music: Talking Union- Pete Seeger
Monday Nov 29, 2021
Monday Nov 29, 2021
Welcome to the second episode of a new collaborative series with Varn Vlog and the Regrettable Century, where we will be talking about history, historiography, social technologies, relations of production, modes of production, and most importantly, transitions.
On this episode we continue talking about the other transition, the transition to the feudal mode of production.
Chris Wickham, THE OTHER TRANSITION: FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD TO FEUDALISM, Past & Present, Volume 103, Issue 1, May 1984, Pages 3–36
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
Wednesday Nov 10, 2021
Wednesday Nov 10, 2021
This is the first episode in a series on the book Psychoanalytic Politics by Sherry Turkle. We teamed up with Neil, our Lost Horizons alumnus of From 78 fame, to talk about this book he likes and thought we might too. Neil is really into psychoanalysis and we are really into politics, we figured this would be a good book to bridge our interests and have a discussion.
Check out InForm here:
https://inform.transistor.fm/
Turkle, Sherry. Psychoanalytic politics : Jacques Lacan and Freud's French revolution. London New York: Free Association Books Guilford Press, 1992.