"Because things are the way they are, things cannot stay the way they are." - Bertolt Brecht

This book is filled with descriptions of degradation that truly beggar belief. Millions of people living in shit. A growing market for the organs of the poor. Child labor that exceeds even the most harrowing accounts in Capital.

Living up to its title, a global survey. Davis is endlessly attentive, curious, compassionate. Personally I found some of the most, er, memorable stops to be in Varanasi, Kinshasa, and Cairo. Beyond these conditions, surely, can only lie famine, mass slaughter, or maybe revolution.

Soon after finishing this book today I happened to have a conversation with a young Egyptian American woman. She'd been in her parents' country in 2010, right before Mubarak fell, and then again in 2013 when Sisi took over in a military coup.

She said that right up until it happened, no one saw the Arab Spring coming. I asked if she had any idea if another uprising might occur today. She said no, there was no way to tell, but one thing is different from how it was in 2011. Back then the Egypt's middle class got excited by the idea of revolution. Today, however, they do not want it. Not a wholly irrational calculation on their part. Sisi can point to Syria to bolster his own legitimacy. See where that sort of thing leads. There are plenty of people in Egypt who would like to live in a democracy, and maybe even despise Sisi, but simply have too much to lose in the event of another revolution.

But then there are also many millions in Egypt who live in abject poverty, the ones whose kidneys are the target of wealthy Gulf organ harvesters. It's hard to imagine them ever becoming reconciled to their condition. One way or another, for better and worse, the ghetto is bound to explode again.

***

Mike Davis is one of the greats. A brilliant scholar and man of the people, committed to the idea that it’s possible to tell the story of humanity as a whole. This book does not make for easy reading, but then there’s some consolation to be found in his courage to face reality.

***

Marx wrote Capital in 19th century London - the largest city in world history up to that point. At that time it was easy to assume that urbanization was a concomitant of industrial development. In Marx's telling, this meant that there was a silver lining to urban poverty and exploitation. The very same process that caused this misery also created a new class - the proletariat, an agent capable of transforming it.

Marx's story is not wholly irrelevant to the 21st century. China's development in the past quarter century fits pretty closely to the framework laid out in Capital; industrial development leading to the growth of massive cities.

However - and this is where one starts to get a sinking feeling - China is more the exception than the rule today. Throughout the global south massive cities have sprung up without any attendant economic growth or industrial development . Rather than the birthplace of a new revolutionary class, cities have become the place to warehouse superfluous humanity. The implications here are potentially rather dire.

most depressing and informative book ive read in a while. IMF and world bank decimating developing countries’ living standards to unimaginable destitution to expand circuits of capital is the story of our time and system. the statistics of poverty and squalor are horrifying even 20 years ago, an update on this situation is a (morbid) necessity

a caustic, excoriating critique of neoliberalism. absolutely essential reading

Combine with John Smith's Imperialism in the 21st Century and Joshua Clover's Riot.Strike.Riot for an understanding of world conditions and the future and realize that class struggle will take on a characteristic different from the 20th century. Tailor politics accordingly.

As a sidenote, I can't remember seeing Hardt and Negri's Empire referenced in texts written after 2006 or so with anything other than deep disdain. That whole anti-globalization era of theory did not age well.

n  "A terrifying, magisterial work." - Harpersn

n  "The astonishing facts hit like anvil blows... A heartbreaking book." - Financial Timesn

Those are the two bold claims on the cover of my copy of this book. Both I would say are hyperbolic. Magisterial implies a show of great authority and I'd definitely give Davis that credit, but much like a magistrate, Davis can tend to tedium and writes in an academic dialect that quite frankly precludes the facts from hitting like anvil blows. If you can imagine a blacksmith lightly but quickly tapping away at a small elaborate piece of metal work that would be more akin to Davis' efforts, but it's no Hephaestus forging Zeus' thunderbolts.

The core point of this book seems to me two fold. Firstly, there are more people living in slums around the world than you could ever imagine and these slums are actually getting progressively worse. Secondly, the IMF, World Bank, and NGO's, essentially implementing US foreign policy have served to make matters infinitely worse over the past 40 years. And there's mountains of evidence for this position. But that's in some way a limitation of this book, the sheer amount of numbers thrown at the reader, a billion here, 28,000 there, 25% over there, 1/8th right here. You can't possibly keep all these facts in your head and what's more, 20 years on from publication they are now all out of date and all I want to know is what the more recent numbers are.

Reading Davis reminds me a lot of James C Scott. There's undoubtedly some paradigm shaking truths in there but you've got to take the heavy psychic damage dealt out by reading the stilted, fact-stuffed academese. The trivia addict in me loved trying to pin each city and slum that popped up to its respective country, but the book would be significantly more approachable with some more context. Instead we hop number to number, city to city, slum to slum with no differentiation of the national boundaries.

The epilogue was the most bizarre part of the book. Davis laments that things are too far gone and says that all the think tanks be they RAND or otherwise have identified that the slums will not only be the heart of future civil unrest, but also a hotbed for global terror, and even global pandemics. Then suddenly we take a right turn and all the talk is of how one might fight a war in the slums. As if Davis has despaired in finding any other solution and the only thing left to consider is how to blow them up. Picture variations of Black Hawk Down happening across the world.

There's some cracking facts in here that I'll try to get up in the next few days.

Interesting facts and graphs and history but dry too. Also analysis seemed reductive and a bit of a diatribe at points. Some slum studies of days of yore he mentioned seemed much more interesting.

Capitalism brutality. North barbarism over the surplus population of the south produces nearly a half of the humanity living in slums surviving in extreme conditions.

The global billionaire class (i.e. yank and anglo-saxon imperialism with its executioners in the IMF and World Bank and NGO's) since the last century's late '70s up to past decade, have accumulated capital in such almost in-commensurable amounts by pushing the third world people into that cesspool of modern urban landscapes throughout their neoliberal recipes for structural advancement programmes, and the complicity of corrupt national bourgeoisies in Africa, Asia and América Latina.

This brilliant book is an enlightening account of how the planet has been shaped into toxic slums sprawled all over the global south, and parts of the imperialist north. A never ending war against the workers and their rights, a relentless cut in salaries, living conditions, privatizations of public services and the incorporation of women, children and toddlers into the slave labour for the capitalist parasites.

There must be a way to dump all the rubbish and shite from the slums over Wall Street, and drown the bastards in there.

Mike Davis's 'Planet of the Slums' is a tremendously compelling, readable and relevant book. Dealing with the explosive increase of urban and peri-urban populations, this author charts a clear course explaining why we are seeing an increase an increase in 'slum-dweller' populations, how this increase has been brought about, and the horrifying conditions which these people endure.

This is a sobering read, but hardly a melodramatic one. Davis does not embellish facts with cheap emotional asides, as the facts are shocking enough when stated plainly. His voice throughout the book is clinical and pragmatic; he is urgent without being hysterical, calmly stating that the increasing population of urban poor has been diagnosed as a budding catastrophe, and that it demands to be addressed.

Each chapter is rather self-contained, dealing with the different political and sociological conditions that surround the slums. He begins by describing the widespread prevalence of slums, and the different living arrangements of the urban poor. He then explains the state's hand in these people's destitution and how they have ignored their needs in favour of supporting the middle-class and the wealthy. Finally, the last few chapters deal with a variety of loosely-related topics: from the toxic ecology of slum conditions to the collapse of formal employment and the rise of informal workers. However, Davis still imbues the winding narrative of his book with a fine sense of structure. He slowly builds the reader's knowledge, introducing them to the basics of slum life and politics and then uses this fostered understanding to discuss more specific issues affecting the urban poor.

If this book sounds comprehensive, it's because it is. However, I also found it to be a very approachable read. Though Davis can be quite verbose at times, his prose is generally easy-to-follow and he carefully constructs his sentences to make sure the reader can take in complicated information.

On a personal level I found the book to be a great eye-opener. It's not exactly an uplifting book, but instead of depressing me I found it was more like having cold water splashed on my face. I knew that life in the third-world was awful, but I didn't know the exact nature of its awfulness. Davis describes the legions of people living in chemical-filled areas clogged with excrement; the urchin children who are killed by death squads and dumped at the edge of cities; the impoverished landlords who prey on their even poorer tenants. For someone lucky enough to be born in Australia, it boggles my mind that roughly a billion people live inside a literal hell. This wasn't a book that evoked guilt or self-righteousness on my part, but more of a reaction along the lines of 'OH NO. OH THIS IS BAD. THIS IS REALLY, REALLY BAD.'

Of course, Davis spends the book looking at the cause of the problem as well as its effect. It was interesting to read how even communist governments betrayed their promises to the disenfranchised to better suit their own supporters. Land inflation and the withdrawal of government programs also added to the inflation and misery of the urban poor. The rhetoric that the resourcefulness of the poor will allow them to thrive might be a comforting one, but as Davis explains, it doesn't seem to play out in reality. Without even basic facilities (such as adequate toilets or clean running water) it is nigh-impossible for the very poor to better their miserable lot. This becomes even more egregious when you consider the luxury housing that exists side-by-side with slums: sometimes even necessitating the slum-dwellers' eviction.

The facts, studies and anecdotes that Davis provides makes it very clear that something needs to be done to improve the living conditions of the very poor. He may not outline this solution himself, but he does an excellent job of diagnosing the problem, illustrating the failed solutions that should be avoided and explaining that the issue needs to be tackled before it becomes even worse.

رائع جدًا، ويستحق القراءة والتكرار
استعراض للعشوائيات حول العالم بالقباحة والجمال والروابط بين كل العشوائيات.
انتابني شعور بالوحدة العالمية للحظة، فكل المدن والعالم يشترك بالعشوائيات وقباحتها.

*sigh*

man, we've fucked everything up, haven't we.

ugh

I am fascinated by the topic of this book but please!! can you write so I don't get lost in a jumble of statistics and a million of the same facts but in different geographical contexts.

Dear little Swallow," said the Prince, "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there." - Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince.

There are at least four ways that this book can be read. Much depends, of course on the positioning of the reader.

First, straight up, as a catalogue of some truly horrific evidence of what human beings are able to do and endure on a daily basis. Not much point going into detail here; others on goodreads have done it much better...

Second, as a practical example of how to write incendiary literature in clear and simple prose.

Third, as an extended essay written in measured polemic, partly to help carry across some rather complex (but fragmented) ideas to a relatively broad Western readership.

Fourth, as a call to arms for socialists everywhere; to acknowledge, investigate and act on a central issue of political sociology within labour, i.e. overcoming the 'struggle over class' prior to the 'struggle between classes.'

Once the book is gutted the ideas are actually much more palatable and less hallucinatory than the examples that Davis selects and uses to bludgeon the reader with...although I suppose what can be judged as hallucinatory probably still depends on one's political leanings....

The entire premise of this book can be summed up in one paragraph early on, in the opening chapter:

"Rather than the classical stereotype of the labor-intensive countryside and the capital-intensive metropolis, the Third World now contains many examples of capital-intensive countrysides and labor-intensive deindustrialized cities. "Overurbanization," in other words, is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs. This is one of the unexpected tracks down which a neoliberal world order is shunting the future."

In other words, brace yourselves, wherever you are...slums, slums, slums, everywhere, as far as the eye can see...or the mind can fathom...

Davis' paradigm really does add another layer to the usual socialist questions about future economic change, the agrarian question, the revolutionary potential of labour and the immiseration thesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immisera...

But there is also the issue of the Davis Paradigm's applicability to actual recent events after publication. Davis wrote and published the book in the midst of the foreign policy excesses of Bush II's administration, making a speculative link between slum-based political resistance and the 'war on terror'. However, it seems like much of what he warned about (in terms of the organised revolutionary potential of the informal sector) has already indeed taken place in the Maghreb/Mashreq (although I could be very wrong about drawing this parallel). Fast forward to the first phase of the 'Arab Spring' in 2011 - Egypt, Tunisia, and perhaps even Libya (on the grounds of massive urban unemployment): in a way, Davis was there long before the Middle East watchers even knew what was happening before their very eyes...which probably isn't a bad thing...

For more constructive views, Davis has a much shorter and marginally more uplifting read in New Left Review 61, Jan-Feb 2010, entitled "Who Will Build the Ark?". Aside from what is a very astute assessment of the energy conundrum, he actually does offer some personal positive urban guidelines for living the good life, courtesy of the Constructivists. Not quite the doom-monger that some readers tend to make him out to be...