The Regrettable Century
The old forms of the left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that talks about the need to organize a dialectical pessimism and develop a Marxist salvage project capable of putting up a good fight as the world burns around us. A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we've cultivated one and would like to share it with you.
Patreon Preview: Neither Vertical nor Horizontal (Part IV -- Finale)
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.
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theregrettablecentury)
Support the showNo Royal Road: Neo-Feudalism, or the Fuzzy Edges of Capitalism -- Part II

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
Liquid Fear (Part III: Finale) -- Setting Fears Afloat
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 forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether its the fear of...
No Republic is Safe That Tolerates a Privileged Class: On Marxist Republicanism
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: Cambridge University Press.
Bill of Rights Socialism and the Future of the Republic
Patreon Preview: A Failed Empire
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 whole episode and join the Discord to take part in the discussions.
No Royal Road: Neo-Feudalism, or the Fuzzy Edges of Capitalism -- Part I

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
The Dialectics of Wood Law: Marxism and Natural Law with Steven
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-anna-lukina/?fbclid=IwAR3qomVFwcvNttJqNJJKDhJcyrRPLbF4kGnBpplao3C-BsS3EfjZp01Ajcw
Music: Tupac- Fuck the Law
Patreon Preview: Laboratory of Socialist Development
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 University Press.
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)
S...The Boys Win the Culture War- With Matthew from A Fine Old Conflict
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
Liquid Fear (Part II)- Unimaginable Horrors and the Terrors of the Global
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 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 forces of the social a...
Patreon Preview: Neither Vertical nor Horizontal (Part III)
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)
Support the showFour Regrettable Years
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 five!
Music: The Dead Kennedys- Kill The Poor
Meming Prometheus and the Continuing Tragedy of the Worker (II of II)
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
The Labor Theory of Apocalypse (I of II)
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
The Dialectics of Madness- With Adam from Subjective Conditions
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
Liquid Fear- (Part I): Fear of Evil, Dread of Death- Featuring the Return of Jason
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 past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural w...
Patreon Preview: Hangin' Out With Jason
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 our Czechoslovak socialism series this month as well.
Support the showRed Theology (Part V- Final): Revolutionary Christianity With East Asian Characteristics
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...
Patreon Preview: Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: Book Club (Part I)
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 reading groups please join our Patreon by clicking below.
Red Theology (Part IV): The Possibility of Religious Revolution
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 then we will wrap up this series without him.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Mu...
Red Theology (Part III): Heilsgeschichte, History, and Marxism
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 has been a crazy month, but we are hoping to get back in the swing of things soon. Jason won't be able to podcast again until probably September at...
PODCAST UPDATE
It's been about a month since we posted anything, here is why.
Don't worry, we will be back soon!
Red Theology (Part II): Omnia Sunt Communia
Welcome to the second 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 second set of chapters dealing with the contradictory legacies of St, Paul, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: John Brown's Body- Paul Robeson
Patreon Preview: Socialism With A Human Face -- The Prague Spring of 1968
Continuing what has become a series on Czechoslovak Socialism, we discuss the attempt to reform the ČSSR in 1968.
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)
Support the showThe Dharma of Emancipation: Marxism in Dialogue with Buddhism (With Adam from Subjective Conditions)
This week we are joined by Comrade Adam, a Lost Horizons alumnus of Red Library fame, to discuss what sort of dialogue can be had between Marxism and Buddhism. We decided to branch out, and cover a non-Christian faith in this continuation of our series on Marxism and religion. We hope to continue touching on other faiths and their interaction and overlap with the emancipatory project.
Dharmic Marxism- A blog that posts about Marxism and Buddhism
https://dharmicmarxism.wordpress.com/
Subjective Conditions Podcast
https://sites.libsyn.com/subjectiveconditions?fbclid=IwAR3KGWIeoFCwqPy8A0Cmbhher7J...
Red Theology (Part I): Christian Communism as Political Myth
Welcome to the first 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 first two chapters, which mostly deal with Karl Kautsky's writings about early Christianity and how it informs the communist tradition.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: Ktož jsú boží bojovníci written by Jan Čapek z Klatov in 15th Century as a battle anthem for the Hussite rebels.
No Royal Road- The Feudal Revolution Debate I of I (With C. Derick Varn)

In this episode, we discuss another Chris Wickham article about feudalism. This is a stand-alone episode, but it is in spiritual continuity with our previous series discussing Chris Wickham's The Other Transition. We will be back soon with another series on a similar topic.
Reuter, Timothy, and Chris Wickham. “The ‘Feudal Revolution.’” Past & Present, no. 155 (1997): 177–208. http://www.jstor.org/stable/651130.
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
Patreon Preview: Victorious February (Lessons From The Czechoslovak Revolution)
Continuing in the spirit of our discussions about the relationship between "Socialism From Below" and "Socialism From Above," we've decided to dive in a bit deeper into a topic we've referenced many times in passing...
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)
Support the showMarxism in Dialogue With Christianity
Once again, we continue our unending project of reuniting the cold and the warm streams of Marxism. This time we are joined by our comrade Ben to talk about the need for a dialogue between Marxism and Christianity.
We once again ask what Christians can learn from the liberatory message of Marxism and what Marxists may be able to take away from the liberatory message of Christianity.
Marxists and Christians: The Fate of the Dialogue The Urgency of Marxist-Christian Dialogue by Herbert Aptheker; Marxism and Radical Religion: Essays toward a Revolutionary Humanity by Thomas...
Patreon Preview: The Left In Purgatory (I of II)
Wherein a group of us get together to read and discuss the latest issue of Jacobin magazine, its analysis of the current political situation, and what to do about it... and the extent to which it actually does those things.
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)
Support the showThe One Where We Talk About Everything That Is Wrong
Here is about an hour's worth of bonus content recorded before our last episode of No Royal Road. We were just riffing about neoliberalism, left delusions, anti-imperialism, paleo-cons, liberals, conservatism, inflation, Volcker Shock, internet tankies, and a bunch of other things we thought might be worth recording. So, we hit record.
Enjoy.
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog/posts
Music: Tragedy- Conflicting Ideas
Neither "Neither Washington nor Moscow" nor Washington nor Moscow
The American left's response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is as depressing as its prospects. We at the Regrettable Century are against invasions and World War 3 and think you should be too. We talk about what orientation if any, it would be useful for Marxists to take in response to the unfolding tragedy in Eastern Europe.
The Ugly, Embarrassing Spectacle of ‘Milling’ Around Online
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/03/russia-ukraine-invasion-twitter/624168/
Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine
https://www.ne...
Patreon Preview: Weimar German Communism & National Bolshevism (Part II of II)
Some Real Nerd Hours covering the emergence of a conscious German "National Bolshevism" during the Weimar Era between the World Wars...
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)
Support the showNo Royal Road- As Old Worlds End and New Ones Begin: Part IV (With C. Derick Varn)

Welcome to the fourth and final episode of our discussion on Chris Wickham's essay The Other Transition, about the transition from the classical to the feudal mode production. This is the last in this particular reading series, but not the last for this collaboration. We will be back soon with another series on a similar topic.
Chris Wickham, THE OTHER TRANSITION: FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD TO FEUDALISM, Past & Present, Volume 103, Issue 1, May 1984, Pages 3–36
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
The Death of the Left?
This week the guys discuss the rotting whale carcass that is the American left. Gone are the days of mass organizations, the workers movement, and even the microsect. We discuss atomization, idealism, and our prospects moving forward.
Remapping the American Left: A History of Radical Discontinuity (pp 22-32)
https://depts.washington.edu/moves/pdf/Gregory_Remapping_the_American_Left_LABOR_May2020.pdf
The U.S. left at a strategic impasse
https://www.tempestmag.org/2022/01/the-u-s-left-at-a-strategic-impasse/
Bismarck, Browder, and Biden: Joe’s Hegemony Versus Ours
https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/10/bismarck-browder-biden-joes-hegemony-versus-ours/
...
The Farce of American Socialism: The American Socialist Movement, Part II
This week Jason continues to teach us about the history of American socialism. We pick up with the collapse of the old left, discuss the birth of the New Left, the New Communist Movement, and end with the End of History and the turn inward.
Dennis, Peggy. The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life, 1925-1975. Lawrence Hill Books, 1977.
Bernstein, Walter. Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. Da Capo Press, 1996.
Isserman, Maurice. If I Had A Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of...
Patreon Preview: Labriola's Socialism & Philosophy, Part II
From the second installment of the Regrettable Book Club's reading of Antonio Labriola's Socialism and Philosophy covering the introduction by Paul Piccone.
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)
Support the showNo Royal Road- As Old Worlds End and New Ones Begin: Part III (With C. Derick Varn)

Welcome to the third episode of a new collaborative series with Varn Vlog and the Regrettable Century, where we will be talking about history, historiography, social technologies, relations of production, modes of production, and most importantly, transitions.
In this episode, we continue talking about the other transition, the transition to the feudal mode of production.
Chris Wickham, THE OTHER TRANSITION: FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD TO FEUDALISM, Past & Present, Volume 103, Issue 1, May 1984, Pages 3–36
https://www.patreon.com/varnvlog
PATREON PREVIEW: Chris and Neil Talk About Academia
Last year, Neil Gorman and Regrettable Chris hung out during the Christmas break to talk about how bad higher education had gotten during the pandemic. This clip however, is a little preview of the other stuff they talked about.
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.
No Ethical Technological Innovation Under Capitalism
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 T...