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 Luddites Were Right, Actually
Marxist, as well as conservative and liberal bourgeois historians alike, have always had a fundamental misunderstanding about the Luddites. It turns out they weren't just reactionary peasants who feared technology and wanted to keep the world mired in an economy based on stacking sticks and mud. The Luddites weren’t resisting technology itself—they were fighting the economic systems that exploited them through it. This week, the boys dive into a conversation about Luddism's past, present, and future.
The Luddites Were Right
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/06/the-luddites-were-right
What the Luddites Really Fought Against https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/
Rethinking the Luddites in the Age of AI https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/10/02/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-a-i/