“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
Sunday Sep 01, 2019
Sunday Sep 01, 2019
"Perhaps the feeling most characteristic of our current moment is a mixture of boredom and compulsion. Even though we recognise that they are boring, we nevertheless feel compelled to do yet another Facebook quiz, to read yet another Buzzfeed list, to click on some celebrity gossip about someone we don’t even remotely care about. We endlessly move among the boring, but our nervous systems are so overstimulated that we never have the luxury of feeling bored. No one is bored, everything is boring."
For this episode we read a couple of articles by Mark Fisher and the Institute for Precarious Consciousness discussing some of the mechanisms that capitalism exploits to dampen our abilities to organize against it. While the production of this episode really is us just feeding more content into a machine that devours our time and creativity, we are kinda hoping this is an example of the capitalists selling us some rope.
Mark Fisher: No one is bored, Everything is boring
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/no-one-is-bored-everything-is-boring/
Institute for Precarious Consciousness: We Are All Very Anxious
http://intercommunalworkshop.org/we-are-all-anxious/
Jodi Dean: Communicative Capitalism and Class Struggle
http://spheres-journal.org/communicative-capitalism-and-class-struggle/
Music: Savages- Shut Up
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
This week we dive in to the second part of our two part collaboration with Adam from Red Library, who hosts s a great podcast that analyzes and discusses important works of Marxist theory and history. We are big fans, go check them out.
This week we continued our discussion on Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism by Russell Jacoby, so if you haven't listened to the first part, do that now.
In Dialectic of Defeat, Jacoby examines the losers of the Marxist tradition and argues that there is something to be learned from them, even in their defeat. He exhorts us to read the heretics, doubt the orthodoxies, and truly understand all of the rich and varied currents of Marxism, even if they ultimately failed to create a successful revolution.
After all, all of our gods failed us in the end.
Either that, or we failed them.
Jacoby, Russell. Dialectic of defeat : contours of western Marxism. Cambridge, U.K. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.
Music:
Current 93/Nurse With Wound- Ballad of the Pale Girl
Sunday Aug 11, 2019
Sunday Aug 11, 2019
Red Library is a great podcast that analyzes and discusses important works of Marxist (and other leftist) literature, and we are big fans. So, we are happy to announce that this week we teamed up with them to read and talk about Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism by Russell Jacoby. The discussion ran long, so it has been broken into two parts. This is part one.
In Dialectic of Defeat, Jacoby examines the losers of the Marxist tradition and argues that there is something to be learned from them, even in their defeat. He exhorts us to read the heretics, doubt the orthodoxies, and truly understand all of the rich and varied currents of Marxism, even if they ultimately failed to create a successful revolution.
After all, all of our gods failed us in the end.
Either that, or we failed them.
Jacoby, Russell. Dialectic of defeat : contours of western Marxism. Cambridge, U.K. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.
Music:
Modern Life Is War- Farmer's Holiday Association
Friday Aug 02, 2019
Friday Aug 02, 2019
We decided that a good companion to our episode about Melancholia and Organized Pessimism would be a rare recording with all of us (except Kevin) in the same room, talking about a pretty cool movie that we saw over a decade ago.
Sign up on our, very reasonably priced, Patreon to access our-- small but ever growing number of-- bonus episodes.
https://www.patreon.com/theregrettablecentury
Monday Jul 29, 2019
Monday Jul 29, 2019
When we were kids: history ended, the Christian right launched an all out assault on the gains of the 1960s/70s, the liberals launched an all out assault on the gains of the New Deal/labor movement, and the left launched an all out assault on each others shopping choices. It sucked.
The world was recreated in the dumbest and worst possible ways and we are going to let you listen to us talk about how it warped all of our brains.
Coming of Age at the End of History
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/coming-of-age-at-the-end-of-history-2/
Neoliberalism Is A Political Project
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/
From Revolution to Evolution: The Changing Nature of the Christian Right (1994)
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.857.5145&rep=rep1&type=pdf
What Pat Robertson Teaches Us
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/pat-robertson-cbn-evangelical-christian-sanders
The Reagan Counterrevolution Crushes The American Dream
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/9/8/1328063/-The-Reagan-Counter-Revolution-Crushes-the-American-Dream
How The Christian Right Ended Up Transforming American Politics
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/brief-history-of-the-christian-right
The Sexual Counterrevolution
https://prospect.org/article/sexual-counterrevolution
Music: Propagandhi- "Stick The Fucking Flag Up Your Goddam Ass, You Sonofabitch"
Monday Jul 15, 2019
Monday Jul 15, 2019
We received a really thoughtful and challenging question/comment from one of our Patrons and we decided to give it the attention it deserves, in the form of a full episode.
We discuss "pessimism of the intellect/optimism of the will," mourning, melancholy, the church-like euphoria of the mass meeting, and how much it is necessary to bum people out.
If you have a question or concern you'd like us to address, send it to our email address regrettablecentury@gmail.com or message us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Patreon.
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
We read a bunch of stuff about Walter Benjamin and Enzo Traverso and tried to have a conversation about it.
We've only managed to reinforce the idea that "The organization of pessimism" is the only slogan that can save us from death.
Traverso, Enzo. Left-wing melancholia : Marxism, history, and memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Print.
Against Revolutionary Pessimism and Optimism: Revolutionary Realism by J. Moufawad Paul
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2016/10/against-revolutionary-pessimism-and.html
An Invisible Underground River: On Left-Wing Melancholia- Michael Lowy
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3289-an-invisible-underground-river-on-left-wing-melancholia
How to kill a zombie: strategizing the end of neoliberalism- Mark Fisher
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-to-kill-zombie-strategizing-end-of-neoliberalism/
Walter Benjamin’s Gothic Marxism and The Organization of Pessimism: Michael Lowy
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/walter-benjamin-and-surrealism
Victor Serge: Indispensable Critic of Leftist Illusion- Mitchel Abidor
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/28/victor-serge-indispensable-critic-of-leftist-illusion/
Four Reasons the European Left Lost- Wolfgang Streeck
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/european-parliament-elections-results-left?fbclid=IwAR0IIEH5W8SrlH9EfJ31XDLDFjvTZ2lp-ucok0GtxtpDsWzsrSMHQ_oB9DM
The Organization of Pessimism: Profane Illumination & Anthropological Materialism in Walter Benjamin
https://www.academia.edu/33848834/The_Organization_of_Pessimism_Profane_Illumination_and_Anthropological_Materialism_in_Walter_Benjamin
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
We sat down with C. Derick Varn and solved all the problems that are currently ailing the left. We reconciled the divergent currents of Marxism and wove together the materialist and idealist dichotomy with resounding success, but then lost an hour and a half of audio and were forced to restart the recording; what resulted was a meandering, but entertaining, discussion about just about everything... and religion.
Varn's Podcast "Symptomatic Redness"
http://zero-books.net/blogs/zero/tag/symptomatic-redness/
and his poetry.
http://www.unlikelystories.org/unlikely-books/apocalyptics
Music:
Des Geyers Schwarzer Haufen- Bauernkreig (German Peasant Revolt Anthem)
Further Reading:
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. Marxism and Christianity. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
Religion for radicals: An interview with Terry Eagleton
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-gospel-according-to-terry
Roland Boer on Marxism and Religion
http://isj.org.uk/the-full-story-on-marxism-and-religion/
Lenin: The Attitude of the Workers Party To Religion
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/may/13.htm
Boer, R. (2014). Religion and Socialism. Political Theology, 15(2), 188–209.
Fitzpatrick, F. (1967). A. V. Lunacharsky: Recent Soviet Interpretations and Republications.
Soviet Studies. Vol. 18. No. 3. pp 267-289
Monday Jun 03, 2019
Monday Jun 03, 2019
After our Socialism From Below episode, Jason and Chris thought they could have used more time to talk about the 4th Comintern congress and the question of "Workers' Governments."
What resulted is an impromptu discussion that we posted on our Patreon.
Head on over and sign up for $2.
Monday May 27, 2019
Monday May 27, 2019
From Babeuf and Blanqui to Bakunin; from Karl Marx and Kautsky to Kropotkin, an ideological battle rages over the true nature of socialism!
But why though?
This week we discuss whether or not there really are only "Two Souls of Socialism" and if idea of "socialism from below" is a useful analytical framework around which to organize our politics.
Hal Draper’s “Two Souls of Socialism”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/
Marxism, Anarchism, & the Genealogy of “Socialism From Below”
https://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/02-marxism-anarchism-the-genealogy-of-socialism-from-below
Building Socialism From Below- Ben Tarnoff
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/nicos-poulantzas-socialism-from-below-democratic-power
Socialism From Below: A Delusion?
-Mike McNair
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1071/socialism-from-below-a-delusion/
Music: Back in the USSR by Crisis