This week we read and discussed an article by Richard Seymour that explores Marxism's relationship with materialism and idealism. Seymour argues that the Hegelian inheritance within Marxism forces it in the direction of an idealism which is essential for a successful revolutionary politics.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/81735357?pr=true&fbclid=IwAR2ftGQudDJQhykIW4rv_3F34xqP8RGHZdyZyb4JsGQgxzQ7qxvRNI9BP7k

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The gang tackles Chapter 5 of Bauer's analysis of the concept of the nation.

Read Along With Us:

https://libcom.org/article/question-nationalities-and-social-democracy-otto-bauer

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This week we delve into what is sort of a pre-history of the American Socialist movement. Though the populist movement undeniably kept its Jeffersonian character, it was the first (arguably only) significant challenge to the dominance of the two major capitalist parties in the US. Much of the energy and the spirit of American populism flowed into and colored the burgeoning American workers' movement.

From Populism to Socialism and Back
https://jacobin.com/2019/08/populism-socialism-daniel-de-leon-eugene-debs

American Populism, 1876-1896
https://digital.lib.niu.edu/illinois/gildedage/populism

Populist Party Platform July 4, 1892
https://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1876-1900/populist-party-platform-july-4-1892.php

Cantrell, Gregg, and D. Scott Barton. “Texas Populists and the Failure of Biracial Politics.” The Journal of Southern History 55, no. 4 (1989): 659–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/2209044.

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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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The gang tackles Chapter 4 of Bauer's analysis of the concept of the nation...

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This week we entered the archives and poured through the codices and scrolls containing the wisdom of past episodes to give you this curated trash can of Ideology. We highlighted some themes from the past six years of podcasting that we thought were worth underscoring and how our ideas may have changed...

Our Underlying Philosophy of Dialectical Pessimism

• S1/Ep5: Pessimism of the Intellect, Pessimism of the Will
• S1/Ep26: The Proper Amount of Bumming People Out
• S4/Ep7: Death of The Left
• S5/Ep21: Pessimism is an Optimism: Revisiting Pessimism

Making Sense of Our Past

• S1/Ep27: Children of the Counterrevolution
• S3/Ep12: The Enlightenment is Dead, Long Live the Enlightenment
• S3/Ep22: The Unfulfilled Potential of the Republic
• S4/Ep3: The Tragedy of American Socialism

Rethinking What It Means To “Be” Revolutionary

• S1/Ep18: The Right to the City
• S2/Ep8: We Would Prefer Not To
• S5/Ep15: The Legacy of William Morris
• S6/Ep15: The Antifascism of Fools

A Willingness to Abandon Our Older Trajectory

• S4/Ep20: Labor Theory of Apocalypse
• S6/Ep5: One Plus One Is Three
• S6/Ep16: The Boys Figure Out Which Marxist Tendency is Correct
• S6/Ep19: To Front or Not to Front

The Major Obstacles/Challenges We Face

• S3/Ep5: Happiness Industry Socialism
• S3/Ep17: Everything Is Recuperated
• S5/Ep9: You're Not Making Liberals Socialist...
• S5/Ep19: The Dialectic of Degrowth

Our Deep Skepticism/Hostility Toward Techno-Solutions

• S1/Ep31: The Future Has Been Canceled
• S2/Ep2: Partially Automated Regular Communism
• S2/Ep5: Socialism Without Sacrifice...
• S4/Ep4: No Ethical Technical Innovation Under Capitalism

Looking Ahead

• S4/Ep11: Marxism in Dialogue With Christianity
• S5/Ep12: The Dialectic of Apotheosis
• S5/Ep16: Bathing in the Warm Stream
• S6/Ep22: Real Grouchy Old Man Hours

Regrettable Reading List:

• The Red Jacobins: Thermidor & The Russian Revolution in 1921
• Party As Articulator
• The Tragedy of the Worker
• Revolution: An Intellectual History
• Left Wing Melancholia
• Excremental Happiness: From Neurotic Hedonism to Dialectical Pessimism
• Liquid Modernity
• The True and Only Heaven: Progress & Its Critics
• The Twittering Machine
• Hegel & The Hermetic Tradition
• A Primer on Utopian Philosophy: Marxism & Utopian Struggle

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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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We are joined again by our official France correspondent, Matthew. Matthew is a veteran of American Trot sectarian organizing and the labor movement who lives in France and is more intimately involved in the happenings than we are.
We discuss the failure of the popular front, the ham-fisted triumph of Macron, and the death throes of the French political system.

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