The Regrettable Century

It is the first birthday of the Regrettable Century! We spent the better part of an hour reflecting on our proud moments, regrets, things we changed our minds about (or didn't), and where we would like to go in the future. We've got some heavy material coming up, so enjoy this comparatively light fare. Music: Every Day is Halloween- Ministry Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

The movement for proletarian self emancipation is at a low ebb, but in a testament to how stupid and bad the world is, Democrats, Republicans, and European post-fascists have ramped up their rhetorical attacks on the pale ghost of the specter of communism. Anti-communism has always been the stand-in ideology for racist authoritarianism and it serves the same purpose now in a world without a global movement to scare the bourgeoisie. Liberals, attempting to stem a nascent socialist movement, would condemn fascism and communism equally, hoping to stamp out a nascent workers' movement. We sat down to talk about how dumb that is. Losurdo vs. The Category of Totalitarianism http://awm.or.kr/bbs/data/document/1/Losurdo___Critique_of_Totalitarianism_(2004).pdf On the false equivalence of fascism and communism https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/bulgaria-fascism-nazism-anticommunism-historical-memory?fbclid=IwAR3KlX0_S-giXERD9s2CvrOk-cV0KkKmhXckAjgxSgT0orSlFOrXWH7U7iA Anticommunism in a world without communism https://www.patreon.com/posts/anticommunism-in-28790447 The New Anti-Communism: Rereading the Twentieth Century https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2811-enzo-traverso-the-new-anti-communism-rereading-the-twentieth-century?fbclid=IwAR2_nrgCygrq0vxJj79ufs4iPJ6ZC8bWSGL83faav1BSKVdP26Jb2eZXhJw Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

Steven from The Supreme Leap Forward is back to talk about the KKKriminal INjustice CIStem of the United $nakes of AmeriKKKa. We discuss the courts, restorative justice, twitter pileons/call out culture, and a little about Soviet jurisprudence. Steven's essay mentioned in the episode: Understanding Crime Under Capitalism: A Critique of American Criminal Justice and Introduction to Marxist Jurisprudence- Steven Gilmore The Works of Evegny Pshukanis: https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/index.htm The other episode we did with Steven http://regrettablecentury.buzzsprout.com/220523/989392-lawyerization-and-its-discontents-a-discussion-on-marxist-jurisprudence-with-steven-from-supreme-leap-forward-part-i Kevin and Steven's Marxist Law Podcast featuring Chris Supreme Leap Forward Episode 12 - Game Of Owns and Feudal Law Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations, both in the realm of cultural  and -- apparently -- technological production. Culture has crawled to a halt, its progress replaced by advances in methods of distribution. Technology is bogged down in a cycle of adding additional cameras to the iphone. Has capitalism outlived its progressive potential? (The TLDR is yes) Mark Fisher: The Slow Cancellation Of The Future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ&t=304s  David Graeber: Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit  We are not living in a technological golden age. https://youtu.be/tvG3dT79TeY Music: Маяк - Выше Звезд Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

Check out some Real Nerd Hours when Chris and Jason have a discussion about a not very well known article from an obscure Trotskyist journal written around a decade ago... It generated a little bit of a buzz, but was mostly ignored. We think that was a mistake and we are going to tell you all about why you should care about the decisions of the 10th party congress. https://www.patreon.com/posts/red-jacobins-and-29448338?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=postshare Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

"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 Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

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 Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

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 Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

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 Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

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" Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop