The Regrettable Century
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
The Regrettable Century
The Broken Bones of Belief: Why They Left the Left
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