“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
Monday May 17, 2021
Monday May 17, 2021
This week we discuss the introduction and first chapter of the Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour in the first of a three part series.
Seymour's book is an extremely black-pilling look into the trolls, e-celebs, pile-ons, live streamed suicide, and corporate surveillance that make up the social media cesspool.
Ultimately we conclude that the internet and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Seymour, Richard. The twittering machine. London: The Indigo Press, 2019. Print.
Music: Snapcase- Break the Static
Wednesday May 05, 2021
Wednesday May 05, 2021
This week Chris is temporarily replaced by a special guest that long time listeners will remember from the early days of the pod, Jenny.
The gang talks about the loneliness of social distancing, the long term effects of pandemic based hyper-alienation, and what the political prospects moving forward look like.
Society of the Spectacle (sections 28, 172, 221)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm
The pandemic has unleashed the age of individualism
22 percent of millennials say they have “no friends”
Pandemic shaming: is it helping us keep our distance?
Isolation, Stress, and Poverty: Capitalism and Our Declining Mental Health
Music: Joy Divison- Isolation
Friday Apr 30, 2021
Friday Apr 30, 2021
Half the podcast crew and a couple of the extended family get together to steal a bit joy from the future by thinking aloud as to how a small handful of our myriad problems might begin to be addressed.
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and join the Discord to take part in more discussions like this one.
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theregrettablecentury)
Wednesday Apr 28, 2021
Wednesday Apr 28, 2021
Last year during the unrest after George Floyd's murder, we read an article about recuperation and talked about the concept within the context of then unfolding paroxysms of rage against police brutality.
Does every movement for social change eventually get recuperated? Yes. Is it still worth engaging in social movements? Also yes.
The Recuperation of Authentic Outrage
https://libcom.org/library/recuperation-authentic-outrage
Wednesday Apr 14, 2021
Wednesday Apr 14, 2021
We are now living in the most watched society in history. Our every move is tracked, our conversations monitored, our purchases logged, every link we click is logged, but its okay because its not the government doing it right?
You Are Now Remotely Controlled -- Shoshana Zuboff
Willing servants -- Richard Seymour
Communicative Capitalism and Class Struggle -- Jodi Dean
https://spheres-journal.org/contribution/communicative-capitalism-and-class-struggle/
When the social industry bans the people we hate -- Richard Seymour
Your Phone is Listening and it's Not Paranoia
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjbzzy/your-phone-is-listening-and-its-not-paranoia?fbclid=IwAR1UWg7TOU8ocwC1PXYqpBOuVXC9teau250pEynsUPlhyfKGFXwPtXrXb9o
Music- Bauhaus- The Spy in the Cab
Wednesday Mar 31, 2021
Wednesday Mar 31, 2021
Like most other political terms, the word "neoliberal" has been used so much to describe so many disparate things that it has ceased to have meaning. Well, unfortunately neoliberalism is real and it is an economic idea and political project that completely dominates every aspect of modern capitalist society and even our resistance to it.
So, listen up and learn what we just learned about how much everything sucks.
Varn talks with Mirowski on Symptomatic Redness
https://www.mixcloud.com/symptomatic-redness/ep-1-phillip-mirowski-on-neoliberalism/
Harvey on Neoliberalism As a Political Project
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/
Interview with Mirowski
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/fixing-old-markets-with-new-markets-the-origins-and-practice-of-neoliberalism.html
Mirowski on Neoliberalism
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/neoliberalism-movement-dare-not-speak-name/
The Uses and Abuses of “Neoliberalism”
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/uses-and-abuses-neoliberalism-debate
Michael Roberts on Neoliberalism
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/neoliberalism-not-so-bad/
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/neoliberalism-works-for-the-world/
Music: MelonadeM- Garfield Gameboy'd Credits
Thursday Mar 25, 2021
Thursday Mar 25, 2021
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and sign up on our Discord to take part in future Patron Roundtables.
We were joined by some of our choicest patrons to discuss the question of the party form. Join us as we solve the party problem.
Join us on our Discord to plan out to plan out the next one, then remember to come join in the discussion. All patrons are welcome!
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theregrettablecentury)
Monday Mar 22, 2021
Monday Mar 22, 2021
Its been said elsewhere that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Well, that may be true, but it doesn't take much imagining to conceive of the end of the world. We are currently living though the end of the world. Who would have thought it would be so boring?
Join us as we lament our collective willingness to go gentle into that good night.
Imagining the End of Capitalism With Kim Stanley Robinson
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/kim-stanley-robinson-ministry-future-science-fiction
IMAGINING THE END
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/imagining-the-end
In Defence of Metabolic Rift Theory
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3691-in-defence-of-metabolic-rift-theory#:~:text=One%20Marxist%20line%20of%20inquiry,%2C%20Morristown%2C%20Ohio%2C%201974
Music- Napalm Death: The Brink of Extinction
The Lost Horizons Network
https://losthorizonsnetwork.com/
The Lost Horizons Network Podcast
Well... Here we are still, after all.
https://well.transistor.fm/
Red Library Podcast:
https://www.patreon.com/redlibrary/posts
From78 Podcast
https://www.patreon.com/from78
Sunday Mar 07, 2021
Sunday Mar 07, 2021
This week we are joined once again by Adam from Red Library for the final episode in our series.
We continue our multi part series tackling the monster tome by Eugene McCarraher, The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.
McCarraher believes that capitalism displaced religion and disenchanted the world and that Capitalism then became a religion itself, replacing the sacramental enchantment of the pre-capitalist world with a pecuniary enchantment that he calls Mammonism.
McCarraher, Eugene. The enchantments of Mammon : how capitalism became the religion of modernity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. Print.
Music- Gregorian Chant for the Dead - Dies irae (Sequentia) -Alessio Randon
The Lost Horizons Network
https://losthorizonsnetwork.com/
The Lost Horizons Network Podcast
Well... Here we are still, after all.
https://well.transistor.fm/
Red Library Podcast:
https://www.patreon.com/redlibrary/posts
From78 Podcast
https://www.patreon.com/from78
Monday Mar 01, 2021
Monday Mar 01, 2021
Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the whole episode and sign up on our Discord to take part in future Patron Roundtables.
We were joined by some of our choicest patrons to discuss the question of the party form. Join us as we solve the party problem.
Join us on our Discord to plan out to plan out the next one, then remember to come join in the discussion. All patrons are welcome!