The Regrettable Century

We are back with more books Chris read in grad school. This one is written by Rachel Applebaum (no relation to Anne) and discusses the Soviet Friendship programs, their successes, and failures. 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 Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support...

This week we discuss why the left allows the liberals to set the tone for its politics.  Liberalism’s Hegemony Over The Left https://www.counterfire.org/article/liberalisms-hegemony-over-the-left/   Death Sentence For The American Left? https://damagemag.com/2023/01/25/a-death-sentence-for-the-american-left/ Debord and the Postmodern Turn: New Stages of the Spectacle https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/f...

We are back with another book that Chris read in grad school. This one is an interesting read about the impact of material culture on the lives of late Soviet citizens called "The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet Russia" by Alexy Golulbev. 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 Send...

We are once again joined by our old friend and comrade Matthew, who is currently residing in Paris. Matthew gives us the rundown of the French pension reforms and we talk about the prospects for the labor and socialist movements.  Music- Edith Piaf- Ça Ira (Sans-culotte version) Ah! It'll be fine, It'll be fine, It'll be fine aristocrats to the lamp post! Ah! It'll be fine, It'll be fine, It'll be...

We are finally back with part four of our discussion of Rodrigo Nunes' new book on Verso. This week we actually finish the book. 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. Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

No Royal Road is back! Varn joins Chris and Jason to discuss the second part of Evegny Morozov's  "Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason."   Check out Varn Vlog here: https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

The boys are back and we are finally finishing this masterwork of left sociology by heavyweight Polish intellectual and dissident Marxist, Zygmunt Bauman. From the publisher's note: "Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled f...

We return to the concept of the republic, this time with our comrade Brad who is a member of the CPUSA, a union activist, and first class republic respecter. Brad  is here to make a pitch for the continuation of a revolutionary tradition that is steeped in revolutionary  republicanism.  Pettit, Philip. 2012. On the People’s Terms : A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Cambridge ; New York:...

This week we're discussing  A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev which is a not very good book that advances a thesis that doesn't need to exist. Enjoy!  Zubok, V M. 2009. A Failed Empire : The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill: University Of North Carolina Press. Head over to our Patreon and join for $2 a month to hear the who...

No Royal Road is back! Varn joins Chris and Jason to discuss Evegny Morozov's  "Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason." This is the first of what will probably be a multi part series.  Check out Varn Vlog here: https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

Steven from Supreme Leap Forward is back and this time he's bringing his thoughts on natural law. For this weeks episode we read from Olúfémi Táíwò's Legal Naturalism and an article by Anna Lukina to prepare for this discussion.  Olúfémi Táíwò. 2015. Legal Naturalism : A Marxist Theory of Law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. https://legalform.blog/2020/07/30/kelsen-on-marx-engels-and-natural-law...

Happy New Year and welcome to a new series where Chris talks about books he read in grad school. This week we are reading and discussing Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan by Artemy Kalinovsky.  Kalinovsky, Artemy M. 2018. Laboratory of Socialist Development : Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan. Ithaca: Cornell Univ...

We got together with our old friend and comrade from the Trot sect days to talk about why it is that the nominally socialist left is so obsessed with liberal culture war discourse. Music:  Embrace- Money Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the Regrettable Century Merch Shop

Happy December, I just finished my semester and finally got around to mastering this episode that we recorded a couple months ago.  We are revisiting this masterwork of left sociology by heavyweight Polish intellectual and dissident Marxist, Zygmunt Bauman who is a harsh critic of late capitalist modernity. From the publisher's note: "Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when t...

We are back with part three of our discussion of Rodrigo Nunes' new book on Verso. This week we talk about chapters three and four. 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) Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit the...

We just turned four! Looks like we have successfully fooled you into listening to us for another year. In honor of exiting the anal stage and entering our phallic stage of childhood psychosexual development as a podcast, we decided to do an episode about it. Please enjoy the very last episode of year four. Year five will be worse for humanity and likely better for our podcast. See you in season fi...

This week we continued our discussion of The Tragedy of the Worker by the Salvage Collective and discussed the implications of looming climate collapse. Once again we ask: what kind of world do you want to build in the post-apocalyptic wasteland? https://www.versobooks.com/books/3727-the-tragedy-of-the-worker Music: Bad Religion- Modern Man Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Suppo...

This week we read The Tragedy of the Worker by the Salvage Collective and discussed the implications of looming climate collapse. Once again we ask: what kind of world do you want to build in the post-apocalyptic wasteland? https://www.versobooks.com/books/3727-the-tragedy-of-the-worker Music: The Broadways- We'll Have a Party Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Vi...

The Lost Horizons gang is back together.  We welcome Comrade Adam back to the Lost Horizons network and discuss a couple of articles about Hegel, Foucault, and MADNESS. The Good the Mad and the Ugly: Part I The Good the Mad and the Ugly: Part II  https://www.patreon.com/subjectiveconditions Music: Madness- One Step Beyond Send us a message (sorry we can't respond on here). Support the show Visit t...

Happy October! Its what they call spooky season so it is only fitting that we dive into a book about Fear. This is a work of left sociology by heavyweight Polish intellectual and dissident Marxist, Zygmunt Bauman who is a harsh critic of late capitalist modernity. From the publisher's note: "Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the pa...

Jason is out of the rehab facility and convalescing with our sister, so we decided to do a little test recording to see how it felt to be podcasting again after a coma and traumatic brain injury. We decided it went pretty alright and will be back soon with some episodes. This isn't a real episode, but we have part two of our reading group coming soon and Jason and I will be recording part three of...

Welcome to the fifth and final part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for a set of chapters dealing with the Taiping Revolution, Chinese Christian Marxism, and Christianity in the DPRK. We are missing Jason on this podcast, but hopefully, he will be back some time this month.    Boer, Rol...

Book Clubs are back, back in a temporarily diminished capacity, but back. This week we read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Rodrigo Nunes' new book on Verso. This book rhymes with concepts we have been discussing on the podcast for quite some time, so we were excited to dive in. Nunes, Rodrigo. Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation. Verso, 2021. To join in future re...

Welcome to the fourth part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for a set of chapters dealing with Althusser's Christianity, Farnham Maynard, and the God-building Project of Anatoly Lunacharsky. We are missing Jason on this podcast, but hopefully, he will be back in a month or two. Until the...

Welcome to the third part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for the third set of chapters dealing with the contradictory legacy of Martin Luther and Marx's secular eschaton. This episode was recorded before Jason's accident, but I have just now gotten around to mixing and uploading it. It...