The Regrettable Century
Chris, Kevin, Jason, & Ben
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.
“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
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Top 10 The Regrettable Century Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Regrettable Century episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Regrettable Century for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Regrettable Century episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
The Dialectic of Apotheosis: Lunacharsky and the Godbuilders
The Regrettable Century
06/05/23 • 68 min
This week we discuss a couple of articles by Roland Boer about Lunacharsky, Lenin, and the project of godbuilding. This is our final episode with Mir before he goes off to Austria and Germany to learn all the sneakiest Jesuit tricks.
Boer, Roland . “God in the World: Lenin, Hegel, and the God-Builders.” Heythrop Journal, 2015.
Boer, Roland. “Religion and Socialism: A. V. Lunacharsky and the God-Builders.” Political Theology 15, no. 2 (March 2014): 188–209.
Music: Current 93- Thunder Perfect Mind I
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We Are All Dying: The Twittering Machine (Part III of III)
The Regrettable Century
06/02/21 • 82 min
This week we discuss the final chapters of the Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour in the conclusion of our 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: Earth Crisis- Destroy the Machines
1 Listener
The Broken Bones of Belief: Why They Left the Left
The Regrettable Century
03/11/24 • 102 min
This week the boys got together to talk about political apostasy. From the old left, to the new left, to whatever the hell it is that we have now. We discuss the motivations and consequences of jumping ship.
The Ex-Communist’s Conscience
https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1950/ex-communist.htm
Turned Around: Why Leftists Go Right
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/why-leftists-go-right
From Memoirs of a Trotskyist by Irving Kristol
https://www.pbs.org/arguing/nyintellectuals_krystol_2.html
The Neoconservative Counterrevolution
https://jacobin.com/2015/04/neoconservatives-kristol-podhoretz-hartman-culture-war
How Ex-Communists Shaped American Conservatism
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/how-ex-communists-shaped-american-conservatism/426849/
Trotskycons
https://www.nationalreview.com/2003/06/trotskycons-stephen-schwartz/
The Neoconservative Journey
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/0817945725_105.pdf
The Legacy of the Trotskyist Right
https://www.toqonline.com/archives/v6n2/SneigoskiTOQV6N2.pdf
Like our theme song? Check out Autumn Brigade here:
https://autumnbrigade.bandcamp.com/album/geist-ist-tot
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Red Theology (Part V- Final): Revolutionary Christianity With East Asian Characteristics
The Regrettable Century
09/12/22 • 139 min
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, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: Han Lei, Qi Jianbo, and Fan Xiaobin- The Vast Heaven and Earth
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You're Not Making Liberals Socialist, You're Just Making Socialists More Liberal!
The Regrettable Century
04/17/23 • 65 min
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/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell17.htm
Nothing is Any Longer the Opposite of Anything: Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle Today
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Preview -- From 78: Jason's Talk with Neil of Inform:Podcast
The Regrettable Century
01/25/24 • 8 min
This episode of InForm:Podcast is a re-release and cross-post of an older interview done with From78 (of Lost Horizons fame). It was originally posted several lifetimes ago, in 2020, but has been re-released by InForm so we decided to promote it here.
Go check out the full episode: https://www.surplusjouissance.com/inform-podcast/
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Patreon Preview -- Film Review: The Society of the Spectacle (w/Grindhaus Podcast)
The Regrettable Century
01/02/25 • 21 min
This is an old episode of our friend Andrew's podcast that was recorded a few years ago. The podcast is now defunct, but we thought y'all deserved to hear it.
In this episode Jason and Andrew watched and discussed Guy Debord's 1974 film version of The Society of the Spectacle.
Enjoy and Happy New Year.
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From Dawn to Decadence (Part III): With Varn Vlog *UNLOCKED*
The Regrettable Century
03/11/25 • 111 min
The boys and Varn Vlog are back again, talking about "Decadence Theory" and how it differs from "crisis theory" and "breakdown theory." We discuss Samir Amin's third-worldist (and not very Marxist) take on decadence theory.
Revolution or Decadence- Samir Amin
https://monthlyreview.org/2018/05/01/revolution-or-decadence/
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Marxism & Religion & Everything Else & Religion, With C. Derick Varn
The Regrettable Century
06/10/19 • 72 min
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
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No Ethical Technological Innovation Under Capitalism
The Regrettable Century
12/28/21 • 55 min
This week we further explore our critique of technology under capitalism. Chris was absent from the recording due to grad school reasons, so Jess led the charge on this one. We ultimately determine that technology is bad and the Luddites were right.
The Rise of the Machines
https://jacobinmag.com/2013/04/the-rise-of-the-machines
The Ideology Behind Technology
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3333-the-ideology-behind-technology
The Case Against Naive Technocapitalist Optimism
https://consilienceproject.org/the-case-against-naive-technocapitalist-optimism/
Marx on Technology
https://andymerrifield.org/2019/09/29/marx-on-technology/
HYPER-REALITY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs&t=291s
Music: Bathsheba- At the End of Everything
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FAQ
How many episodes does The Regrettable Century have?
The Regrettable Century currently has 295 episodes available.
What topics does The Regrettable Century cover?
The podcast is about Culture, History, Marxism, Courses, Podcasts, Education and Politics.
What is the most popular episode on The Regrettable Century?
The episode title 'The Dialectic of Apotheosis: Lunacharsky and the Godbuilders' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The Regrettable Century?
The average episode length on The Regrettable Century is 54 minutes.
How often are episodes of The Regrettable Century released?
Episodes of The Regrettable Century are typically released every 7 days, 2 hours.
When was the first episode of The Regrettable Century?
The first episode of The Regrettable Century was released on Oct 23, 2018.
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