I'm embarrassed to never have heard of Mike Davis until he passed a few months ago. I'm glad though that I'm now getting to know his work.

This was a very dense, difficult book to get through but the history and analysis are really impressive: comprehensive, prescient and nearly flawless. Especially noteworthy is Davis's analysis of and prediction for neoliberalism, afaik a pretty new term for the time he was writing in the mid-80s. He totally nails its trajectory both into the 90s and beyond, and his analysis of the 80s Democrats could be applied virtually unchanged to 21st century politics. It's amazing and depressing how applicable most of his analysis still is: 30 years later, Democrats are still treating leftists as they did Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition -- trying to appeal to the mythical "alienated conservative" voter while both neglecting and browbeating what should be their Black and Brown base.

Also of great value is his summary of the entire U.S. labor history through the 80s. His realist corrective is sorely needed in an area that routinely suffers from unduly romanticizing past labor struggles. In reality, Big Labor was coopted by corporations as long as a century ago, and they've suffered almost continuous erosion of labor rights since, with the lone victories coming at the hands at more decentralized and radical efforts. The entire history can easily be read as a stinging critique of democratic centralism, which is quite remarkable coming from an avowed Marxist. Indeed, he strongly criticizes the Communist Party USA for capitulating to liberal electoralism in the 30s and 40s.

Ultimately, while I think this book is extremely valuable, its dense academic style will make it difficult for most normies to get through. I wish it were more accessible so that I could more widely recommend it, but as it is I can only highly recommend it to academics, or those sufficiently passionate about labor history to be able to slog through the jargon-filled analysis.

Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek

The raw explanatory power of this book cannot be overstated. The sheer volume of economic and political points of data from throughout the last 100+ years of American history (up to the second Reagan administration) that gets synthesized so artfully in this book will leave you with some "I know kung fu..." moments straight out of The Matrix. Wish I had read this years ago. Recommended. RIP to a REAL one.

Rating is based off its appropriateness for myself and not for how good of a book it is objectively. Felt it was meant for people who are American labour history nerds: the amount of references I wasn’t familiar with had me googling so much that it was taking me about 30 minutes per page to read. Had to essentially give up and fake read the book to get the 10% out of if that I could. I’m sure for others this book is fantastic, it’s just not my cup of tea.

Interesting analysis of the history of class struggle in the US, including why there’s no independent labor/socialist party, the fractured nature of the US working class, labor’s fruitless relationship with the Democratic Party, and the rise of fall of the Fordist model of accumulation in the years after ww2.

Written in 1986, the second half provides a really thorough explanation for the rise of the New Right, the “Reagan revolution”, its model for “economic growth”, and the class forces that benefit from it (Wall Street, military industrial complex, and professional managerial class). The last chapter is an analysis of the 1984 democratic primary campaigns, and the freezing out of the Jesse Jackson campaign’s attempt to bring social democracy to America. Chillingly similar to 2020 and the crushing of the Sanders campaign, with Walter Mondale being just as feeble and accommodating to capital as Biden. The point is we’ve seen all this before.

The only reason I wouldn’t recommend this is Davis oftentimes writes in insanely impenetrable language that a lot of times I would just skip over, and a lot of the economic stuff on reagonomics, wage trends, or global trade deficits went right over my head.

Fuck the AFL-CIO forever

rip mike davis. prologue eerily eerily prophetic

Esta obra de Mike Davis trata sobre la historia de la clase obrera en EUA desde una perspectiva marxista y de izquierda. Parte desde la mitad del siglo diecinueve llegando hasta la década de 1980.

En el se enfoca no sólo a explicar la historia de los movimientos obreros y la política que han seguido (luchas, objetivos, alianzas, etc), también el contexto político y económico en el que suceden en EUA. Se encuentra muy bien documentado para sostener sus tesis. En el mismo trata de explicar el porqué la clase obrera no se ha consolidado en EUA como una fuerza política (a diferencia de Europa) y el porqué de sus fracasos - de los cuales incluso hay consecuencias globales al significar el triunfo del capital de EUA- .

En especifico, las condiciones particulares de EUA han permitido dividir a la clase obrera mediante el nativismo, el racismo y la religión, de tal forma que no se ha logrado consolidar una conciencia de clase común. Lo cual ha facilitado parte del partido demócrata (de corte reformista) mantener el control del discurso de izquierda, así como fomentó el resurgimiento de la derecha en EUA. Esto al abrazar causas conservadoras: pro familia, pro guerra fría, pro armas, anti derechos, pro clases medias suburbanas, etc. Todo esto en un contexto de cambios políticos y económicos, que fueron pensados para debilitar a los sindicatos (producción fuera de los centros industriales, flexibilización laboral, etc.) que también creo una re composición de las clases medias y de las clases capitalistas.

Sin duda un libro referencia para entender incluso la política actual de EUA, pues desde ahí se dibuja la idea del ascenso de una derecha populista (como la encabezada por Trump) o el giro del partido demócrata al neoliberalismo (como sucedió con Clinton).

Simply excellent analysis of the reasons for working people's support of right wing politics during the 1980s. Sobering analysis of the power of ideology.

Canon

a fantastic reference on working class history in the united states. it has particularly strong sections on:
- the early US trade union movement
- the decline of rank and file militarism and subsequent embrace of the democratic party on the part of the labor bureaucracy
- the shift to right-wing populism by the GOP and strategies mobilized by the right to develop a cross-issue, national coalition
- the rise of reaganomics, financialization, and neoliberalism
- the beginnings of leveraged buyouts
- the dismissal of jesse jackson’s presidential campaign and, more broadly, the demands of anti-imperialism, Black liberation, and the rainbow coalition by the democrats

at the same time, it is not as beautifully written as any of davis’s essays. it’s long and dense, but still an important read.

I'm not sure this title really fits the work. Perhaps due to my own failings, I found most of this book to be forcefully jammed full of facts that were entirely void of context, so seemingly entirely unnecessary, and found most of it a true and menacing slog.

While admittedly I had a hard time MOST of the time following Davis' argument, I am not sure I am entirely to blame. As illuminating and insightful as it was here and there, maybe exactly that many times, to be honest the style was truly failing as engaging political writing. Davis repeatedly and unfailingly leans on pretty strange language where the sentence seemingly must draw its source of energy from some bending of the meaning of a word into its most unnatural and mechanical form, ending in '-ization,' and designating some economic-agency that is either beyond explicable or never explained in economic terms - just more and more facts and the introduction of more and more perspectives to intersect those facts, both facts and characters hardly assembled to form anything very coherent.

Maybe I should provide examples or explain this better, but I'm not sure you, reader, truly care. If you do, please tell me I am just being too critical and that I have fundamentally missed something - the title really is appropriate and fitting to more than a few sentences in this book; the hyper-mechanical-ization of language is not Davis' fault, it truly is some driving entity that exists beyond the realm of questions of style or clarity.

I hope his books on political ecology are better.

A very engaging, provocative analysis on why America has never really had a mass labor party, unlike other Western democracies. It goes deep into labor history, economics, politics, industrial policy, military spending, the rise of a new-money rentier class in the sun belt, and so much more, to try to answer this question.

He wrote this at the apex of Reaganism, but it could have been written last week in terms of the insights he comes up with about the failure of labor's plan:subordinate itself to the Democratic party and thereby impact policy post Watergate.

I've often wondered why the Democratic party is so awful at politics and often has basically only offered a "Republican lite, but good on social issues" choice. The last few chapters ably show how this is terrible electoral calculus and has allowed Republicans to use debt financing to actually offer parts of the populace benefits, until the Democrats come in and "responsibly" balance the budget....just in time for the next Republican administration to come in and enact tax cuts.

A trap I'm so confident Biden and Co. won't fall into ;)

The book, lastly, lays out an analysis of how we could have gone down a different path instead of the uninspiring shite we've seen for decades. He sees potential in the old labor movement partnering with the most faithfully progressive bloc in the country, African Americans, to really start a full-employment politics that would lift so many out of misery. Will we ever get there? He doesn't seem confident (and judging from the 30 years after the book, you would have to say he's right not to be confident), but he also isn't hopeless.

And sometimes not being hopeless is all we have.....

Absolutely excellent political economy, prescient and revelatory. Wonderfully describes the dynamics(hint: it's mostly racism) that prevented the unification of the US working class, and where it was in the 80s.