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 Regrettable Century
UNLOCKED -- Socialism With a Human Face: The Prague Spring and Its Defeat (Czechoslovak Socialism Part II)
Continuing what has become a series on Czechoslovak Socialism, we dive into the attempt to reform the Czechoslovak system. The official ML narrative and the liberal narrative about the Prague Spring are the same, they say that it was an attempt to re-establish bourgeois democracy. However, it seems clear that the intentions of its participants were the opposite. They appear to have been a genuine attempt to revitalize and push forward the communist project.
The Action Programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
https://www.marxists.org/subject/czech/1968/action-programme.htm
Stoneman, Anna J. “Socialism With a Human Face: The Leadership and Legacy of the Prague Spring.” The History Teacher49, no. 1 (2015): 103–25.
Prague Spring Archive at MIA (worth browsing for historical first impressions)
https://www.marxists.org/subject/czech/index.htm
The Prague Spring of 1968: a glimpse of socialism?
http://isj.org.uk/the-prague-spring/
Liehm, A. J. (1978). The Prague Spring and Eurocommunism. International Journal, 33(4), 804. doi:10.2307/40201691
Skilling, H. Gordon. "The Prague Spring Reassessed." Slavic Review 38, no. 4 (1979): 663-66. doi:10.2307/2496570.
Reform and Counter-reform in Bureaucratic Power
https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/reform.html
Music: Karel Kryl - Veličenstvo kat
(English Translation)
In a gloomy light of a gothic hall
the scared profiteers are gazing into their missals
and a horde of slayers is asking for blessing
After all the first of the knights is his majesty executioner
Aaah look the first of the knights is his Majesty Executioner
Priest – the devil who served the mass
is wearing a stole made from a hangmans slope
Having a bottle of vitriol under the purple rochet
The smell of sulfur coming from the mortars
is crawling under the red hood of the first from all the knights
his Majesty Executioner
Aaah to the first of knights look it is his Majesty Executioner
On the national flag there is
an emblem with guillotine
And the barbed wire
smells by something decayed
In our region is a flock of raven nesting
the master hangman reigns these people
The king is kneeing infront of Satan
eagers to have the sceptre
And the rabble is hanging the wise council
at the plane tree
And the heretic crowd is exhilarated and rejoices
After all the first of knights is his Majesty Executioner
Aaah the first of knights is his Majesty Executioner
At a streetcorner a murderer is holding a lecture about moral
Infront of the prison's door the guardians are walking
From the military armour plate the black sign proclaims
that the first of the knights is his Majesty Executioner
Aaah that the first of the knights is his Majesty Executioner
Over the government palace
rises the flag with guillotine
The children love the ice cream cornets
The judges were upset about them
so they killed their ice cream man
A horrible state it was,
as you had to watch
the writing beeing forbidden
and the singing beeing forbidden
And they didn't have enough
they commanded the kids
to pra