“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 Apr 06, 2020
Monday Apr 06, 2020
(PART II)
The birth pangs of the bourgeois epoch included a multi faceted opposition in the form of romanticism. This reaction lauded humanity's lost connection to the natural world, to spirituality, and to a forgotten sense of communal life. While it is easy to point out the romantic strain in rightist political ideologies, we often overlook the one that has existed in Marxism since the beginning.
Löwy, Michael, and Robert Sayre. Romanticism against the tide of modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
The Word, the Devil, and the Flesh- JD Bernal
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1920s/soul/
Music: Alyans- Na Zare
Cosmonaut Magazine
https://cosmonaut.blog/
Cosmopod Podcast
https://cosmopod.libsyn.com/
Radical Thoughts Podcast
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/patricks-podcast
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Jenny, Chris, and Jason sat down with our friend, rank and file union organizer, and CPUSA member Brad to talk about electoralism and what the hell to do next.
Please head over to our Patreon and subscribe for the insanely low fee of $2 a month to hear the rest.
https://www.patreon.com/theregrettablecentury
Sunday Mar 29, 2020
Sunday Mar 29, 2020
The birth pangs of the bourgeois epoch included a multi faceted opposition in the form of romanticism. This reaction lauded humanity's lost connection to the natural world, to spirituality, and to a forgotten sense of communal life. While it is easy to point out the romantic strain in rightist political ideologies, we often overlook the one that has existed in Marxism since the beginning.
Löwy, Michael, and Robert Sayre. Romanticism against the tide of modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
The Word, the Devil, and the Flesh- JD Bernal
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1920s/soul/
Music: ROME- The Accidents of Gesture
Cosmonaut Magazine
https://cosmonaut.blog/
Cosmopod Podcast
https://cosmopod.libsyn.com/
Radical Thoughts Podcast
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/patricks-podcast
Monday Mar 16, 2020
Monday Mar 16, 2020
Our good friend and regular contributor to the show, Steven, brings his legal expertise and knowledge of early soviet law history to this weeks episode. We discuss the Evgeny Pashukanis, Pytor Stuchka, and their contributions to legal theory in the days just after the revolution. There was a debate among legal theorists of the time about whether it is possible to construct a socialist legal system and how the law should be used in a socialist society. Ultimately, Pashukanis would wind up on the losing side of the Socialism in One Country debate and would die for it.
Intro to Pashukanis
The Passionate Legal Debates of the Early Years of...
The trajectory of Yevgeniy Pashukanis and the struggle for power in Soviet law
Principles of Soviet Criminal Law
Looking Back And Forward At The Turn of the Century
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldjvuuchv4krvha/15AustlJLSocy101.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR0vVUJaaPTGVRdwPXFLTNavu8UgH0XrG1QV7_vxg60Pq2WfJunQ6K_9HTE
Dont forget to check out our podcast network comrades:
From 78
https://twitter.com/From78podcast
Red Library
https://twitter.com/RedLibraryPod
And coming soon, our network website...
https://losthorizonsnetwork.com/
Monday Mar 02, 2020
Monday Mar 02, 2020
We had an episode planned where we were going to talk about the Bolsheviks and Early Soviet Law, but our main law dude (Steven from Supreme Leap Forward) got deathly ill and bailed on us. So, we are unlocked one of our Patreon episodes. Please forgive us, but trust that we have some good stuff coming up.
Sometimes doing something (anything!) is much worse than doing nothing; we really need to figure out when that is. We read and thought and talked about an article that admonishes us to think and talk and read before acting. We have to stand against a politics of catharsis, a politics that does nothing but makes us feel like we are making a difference.
But... then what do we do?
I Would Prefer Not To: Žižek’s Bartleby Politics
https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/i-would-prefer-not-to-%C5%BEi%C5%BEeks-bartleby-politics-12bd8d9de66a
Sunday Feb 16, 2020
Sunday Feb 16, 2020
This week we continue our discussion of Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities: An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia by Darko Suvin with our podcast network comrade, Adam from Red Library.
Please Check out and subscribe to Red Library and From 78 and be on the lookout for more updates concerning the Lost Horizons Network.
Red Library: A Political Education Podcast for Today's Left
From 78 Podcast
Suvin, Darko. Splendour, misery, and possibilities : an X-ray of socialist Yugoslavia. Leiden Boston: Brill, 2016.
A UTOPIA IN THE BALKANS -- CATHERINE SAMARY
https://newleftreview.org/issues/II114/articles/catherine-samary-a-utopian-in-the-balkans
Splendours, Miseries, and Potentialities of Socialist Yugoslavia- The Berlin Thesis
The Life and Death of Yugoslav Socialism -- James Robertson
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/yugoslav-socialism-tito-self-management-serbia-balkans
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theregrettablecentury)
Sunday Feb 09, 2020
Sunday Feb 09, 2020
We read and discussed Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities: An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia by Darko Suvin with Adam from Red Library. This incredibly dense book was a wealth of theoretical and historical knowledge about one of our favorite subjects, Yugoslavia. The SFRY defies neat categorization and the more we learn about it the more questions we have about the process of transition to communism, workers' self management, radical democracy, markets, and state socialism. It is the perfect meditative subject for a podcast that continually implores Marxists to stop being so certain of everything.
Red Library: A Political Education Podcast for Today's Left
From 78 Podcast
Suvin, Darko. Splendour, misery, and possibilities : an X-ray of socialist Yugoslavia. Leiden Boston: Brill, 2016.
A UTOPIA IN THE BALKANS -- CATHERINE SAMARY
https://newleftreview.org/issues/II114/articles/catherine-samary-a-utopian-in-the-balkans
Splendours, Miseries, and Potentialities of Socialist Yugoslavia- The Berlin Thesis
The Life and Death of Yugoslav Socialism -- James Robertson
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/yugoslav-socialism-tito-self-management-serbia-balkans
Monday Feb 03, 2020
Monday Feb 03, 2020
In this episode we revisit the topic of Fully Automated Luxury Communism with our friend Annaliese. While we are already on the record opposing the viability and desirability of a socialism without sacrifice, we decided to make a few more critiques we didn't think of making last time, but we also talk a bit about what kinds of futures we would like to see, the nature of work and leisure time, and how much it would suck to have robots do everything.
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Head over to Patreon and sign up for $2 a month to hear the second part of the discussion.
https://www.patreon.com/theregrettablecentury
Sunday Jan 12, 2020
Sunday Jan 12, 2020
The British left was epically owned last month in one of the crappiest election results in several generations. While the reaction to this defeat has been largely one of despair and feelings of rudderlessness, we make the case that this is just one in a long line of defeats we will inevitably suffer. Unless we gird ourselves for defeat with a dialectical pessimism, there's no way we will last long enough to make a real difference.
Head over to Patreon and sign up for $2 a month to hear the second part of the discussion.
https://www.patreon.com/theregrettablecentury
This Is Why We Hate You: December Editorial
No False Consolations
The Last Gasp of Labourism
Class War Corbynism https://newsocialist.org.uk/class-war-corbynism/?fbclid=IwAR2h7UpFSSEXdywDypP2GSkI6y7aGnM8rCXWl3O-1lQwSx__6uz8aBGKxpw
Corbyn’s Defeat and the Democratic Socialists of America
What the U.S. Left Can Learn From the Labour Party’s Epic Loss
What the U.K. Election Does (and Doesn’t) Teach Democrats
Music:
Oi Polloi- (Expletive Deleted) Everybody Who Voted Tory