Mike Davis explains why the US working class has been unable to build a labor party and win more transformative social reforms over 7 essays running chronologically from the knights of labor into Reagan's presidency. Because he drills into the details, examining the class war and divisions within the working class over time, primarily racial, ethnic and religious, the book is dense and probably not a good introduction to US working class politics but it's pretty comprehensive and unfortunately still relevant. I could have skipped the section on macroeconomics in the Reagan era.

The bigger picture has become more or less common knowledge among the labor left, but maybe not among labor or among the left, and definitely not common enough among the average American. That really needs to change.

Very good book on the history of the American political economy. A lot of concepts that are applicable today and gives a good frame of reference as to how organized labor and socialism is in its current state. From manifest destiny acting as a safety valve for class conflict to the unfortunate tethering of labor with the democratic party Davis lays out a broad range of explanations for his aforementioned positions. The last section of the book heavily covers the Mondale V. Reagan election which has eerie similarities to our most recent election in which a tepid centrist neoliberal beats out more radical candidates and then shifts to the right to appeal to moderate voters and loses handily to a Republican populist. Overall a good read for anyone interested in labor in America or who has ever wondered why there isn't a labor party and why the Democrats have been fumbling the bag.

Chapter seven is required reading for anyone in the Us, thank you

As opposed to historical critiques, this book was written and published in the moment the ‘New Right’ and Reagan were rolling out power in the American political-economy. Prisoners of the American Dream, traces the failures of the American working-class to create and sustain a revolutionary class-consciousness.
tThe book is divided into two parts: labor and American politics, and, the age of Reagan. Labour and American politics, explains the multi-ethnic and multi-racial peculiarities of the American working-class. This heterogeneity (supposedly) does not allow for the working-class to cohere. Antagonisms are articulated in racial, gendered, denominational, and political differences. These parochialisms indicate large swaths of the working-class have been barred from fair and equal participation in American democracy. Particularly precarious populations: African Americans, migrant workers, immigrants, and women to get their demands meet have been forced to work outside of the rank-and-file of organized labour. Organized labor has thus failed on two-fronts: the necessary and sustained linking of oppressions and meeting the radical demands of more oppressed groups, some of which are outside of its own orbit.
tThe labor movement’s failures allowed the ‘New Right’ to emerge and prosper. Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential campaign formula paved the wave for the arrival of the potent neo-populism. The campaign was based on two schemas: the ‘Southern strategy’ and the ‘hidden Republican majority’. The ‘Southern strategy‘ amassed support in the growth of white resistance to the Civil Rights movement. Goldwater received just over 38% of the overall vote, five of his six electoral victories came in the Deep South: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Moreover, the ‘hidden Republican majority’, focused on winning over particular elements of the Democratic party. Focusing on individual, single-issue, local politics: ‘law and order interest groups‘ (National Rifle Association), ‘new Cold War‘ lobbies, political fundamentalism (Jerry Falwell’s moral majority), and the defense of white suburban family life (anti-busing movements, the ‘right to life’, and anti-gay rights campaigns). Despite popular imaginations of Reagan’s rise to power, support was garnered through social not economic issues. The ‘New Right‘ was born.
tDavis’s structural analysis of a failed working-class consciousness culminates in the 1980s Democratic party waving the white flag to the tenets of neo-liberalism and the military-industrial complex. Does ‘revolution’ and consciousness have to come from within the Democratic party? Tisk. Tisk.

Fascinating and important subject matter but full of inaccessible over-the-top academic language and obscure foreign loan-phrases to the extent that it almost seems as if you're expected to know French, Spanish and German as well as English (I found myself looking up another word every few minutes, and I have a pretty sizable vocabulary). I also wasn't particularly fond of a passage in which Davis says that AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education's "labor strategy" was "sex-changed" into a "corporate strategy", exploiting transphobia for unnecessary rhetorical flourish. Nevertheless, overall it's a good critical overview of American labor history and analysis of why America has repeatedly failed to form a strong leftist/socialist politics. Apart from its inaccessibility, this subject probably should be revisited in a new work as much of the "current" information in Prisoners of the American Dream is now dated, even if it does offer valuable insight into how American "left" politics got into the sorry shape it's in now.

A really terrific book and a pox upon my house for taking so long to read Mike Davis. The first two chapters are *the* essential answers to the question of American exceptionalism. Mike's turn to specific historical conjectures and American labor's history of defeat as the explanation for the absence of an American socialist or labor party is conducted with a partisan lucidity that I have never seen replicated elsewhere. His breezy but also concretely detailed and rich exposition of the repeated failures of American labor to coalesce in the face of a short-sighted skilled trade union movement, ethnic fragmentation, within the context of the wider structures lazier historians and social scientists usually point to as the explanation, is really just so excellent.

I think the book is a little weaker in the second half. Because Mike is so focused on particular conjectures, we never get a theory of capital as such or society and history as a totality; as a result, capitalist crises appear contingent rather than necessary; and so we have no notion, in a strong sense, of the direction of history. This may be deliberate, but I think the negative upshot is that Mike's concept of 'overconsumptionism' and the bloatedness of the American middle class are sort of undertheorized and difficult to understand in an analytically precise way.

His final turn towards Rainbow coalition politics was prescient, as was his basic belief that the Democrats were on a miserable trajectory. Writing in November 2024, that's more apparent than ever, and Mike's historic perspective helped to further loosen my attachment to the party, which this book helped me see as the contingent result of failure.

Incredible first book from Davis. A dense and comprehensive history of a working class that never reaped the benefits of an independent revolutionary politics or the labor-capital concordat of coherent social democracy. His criticism of the Democratic Party and its decades-long quest to reduce organized labor to a docile, elite-led constituency are particularly relevant during an election year. Though some of his more apocalyptic predictions have not come to pass (like the generalization of the liberation struggle of the Sandinistas into a larger regional conflict), his analysis of Reagan’s rightward leap into the arms of finance capital still holds up. His linkage of single-issue voting to the rise of PACs and the stratification of the working class is also crucial.

A few thoughts on Prisoners of the American Dream by Mike Davis

In this book, Davis reviews a lot of the class struggle in America with amazing granularity of the 20th century through the early 80s. The big takeaway from this is that the workplace has always been a place of contention and struggle. I think leftists of my generation forget that as we look back to the period that was often seen as a time of relative peace as the economy was growing after the second world war, but there was always a struggle. And there always will be!

Probably one of the most densest/difficult book I've read, solely due to having no background in economics, political theory, and us labor history. Merriam-Webster and the internet were my best friends while reading this since I had to look something up every other sentence. But wowweeeee, glad I prevailed. It may be intimidating, and sure taking three-four hours to digest 15 pages was not ideal, but just pick it up and read it. Take notes, reread things, ask friends who can help you break down some of Davis' prose, because in the end, the entirety of the book is worth reading and learning about.

For how historically dense this book is, it was shockingly page turning (although I had to read every page 2-3 times before turning it), following the flow of US labor history as a narrative almost. Still processing it all and practicing how to articulate the insane amount of information this ran through. But yea ... what should we do about all this ? Genuinely asking. I gotta learn more it seems.

HD8076 .D34 2018 Historical Society Library
HD8066 D38 1986 Historical Society Library

An incisive historical analysis of the failure of working class militancy in the U.S to coalesce in an independent labor party, let alone make the jump to socialism or even the social democracy which prevailed in Western Europe during the immediate postwar years. Basically, capital has used the unparalleled diversity (American exceptionalism, in this case, is a thing) of the American working class against it -- geographically, ethnically, racially, etc. The inability of those aspects of the New Deal order which benefited the working class to penetrate the South in any meaningful way, typified by the failure of the CIOs Operation Dixie, gave capital a redoubt from which to launch an offensive against that order as soon as the economic structure that it was based on began to falter.

In the years since the book came out, those redoubts have multiplied across the world with the acceleration of neoliberal driven globalization. The planet is crisscrossed with jurisdictions that capital can easily cross but serve as formidable barriers to the movement of people (and international political and labor organizing).

One half formed thought - obviously severe racial inequities still persist in the U.S The almost daily murder of black people by the police is only the most striking evidence of this. However, the culture has changed dramatically in the past 40 years. Meaningful ethnic and religious differences amongst whites have all but disappeared, and even racial divide are, in some bizzare ways, softening (look at the shift in black and latino men towards Trump in 2020), as neoliberal American culture grinds everyone into a homogenous pink chicken nugget slime. On one hand, this means increased alienation and inability to relate to neighbors, coworkers etc; but on the other, might this provide an opening to overcome the historical divisions which have dogged the working class? I don't know.

A difficult read -- depressing and, as others have pointed out, Davis could use an editor. When he wants to be, he's very lucid. But oftentimes it's a slog. Still, I consider this book essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the U.S through a Marxist perspective.