Many lessons for the left in the current moment. Just unfortunate we haven't already learned them.

Brilliant analysis of US working class politics. Quite depressing in parts to see the dismantling of their institutions by enemies and supposed leaders alike. Meticulously researched, the bibliography here is great.

Really good but super dense, need to give it a second read to make sure I really get everything out of it at a more relaxed pace than my reading group took.

Perhaps the most compelling case I’ve ever heard articulating the history and cause of an absent “American Left.” It’s so interesting that this book was written in the 1980s, given that it presaged many of the political and economic trends that have come to the fore in the 21st century. A little dense at times, and the sections on the American economy in the 7th chapter went right over my head, but when the book is distilled to its ultimate thesis (that the exclusion of Black and Latino workers from US labor movements and other realms of traditional political expression have been the single largest determining factor in the failure of the American left), this book really sings. Should absolutely be required reading for any nascent left movement.

An excellent and prescient text on how the American working class' pitiful situation emerged. Tells a powerful story about how labor relations, racism, imperialism, and state power shaped the unique story of class power in America. Highly recommend. Mike Davis is one of the most brilliant political economists of his era.

I love this book for the dense labor and economic history, his honest critiques of socialist movements right up through the Jesse Jackson campaign, his bold predictions, and his strategic assertions. Mostly focusing on the last item, here are a bunch of quotes I want to remember emphasizing the vanguard nature of socialist movements in Latin America. This seems prescient 36 years after publication, especially with the recent resurgence of Debsian ideas.

“In a period when Eurocommunism has become practically defunct, the Arab left destroyed, and Asian capitalism seems eerily stabilized—the massive, deep and continuing process of popular radicalization in Latin America and the Caribbean has truly become /the/ specter haunting American imperialism.” (212)

“The neocolonial logic of Sunbelt capitalism endures that no fundamental challenge can be mounted against the domestic low-wage economy without a simultaneous change in the borderland structures of hyper-unemployment and domination.” (228)

“By 1990, there will be a large outer perimeter of US society composed of workers without citizen rights or access to the political system at all: an American West Bank of terrorized illegal laborers” (315-316).

“Washington would probably be confronted with a revolutionary crisis in South America within the decade. Its dominant ideological colour, unlike in the Middle East or East Asia, is more likely to be an insurgent socialism than any other—perhaps on a new, Bolivarian scale.” (317)

“The view expressed here is diametrically opposed to that of many recent left-liberal and social democratic writers, who profess to see vistas of new liberations and reformist possibilities in late imperial America. …Rather than taking hope from make-believe social democracy, it seems better to prepare for the colder climate ahead.” (318-319)

“As I have argued at some length, the failure of the postwar labor movement to form an organic bloc with Black liberation, to organize the South or to defeat the power of Southern reaction in the Democratic Party, have determined, more than any other factors, the ultimate decline of American trade unionism and the rightward reconstruction of the political economy during the 1970s.” (322)

“The single most important organizational problem confronting the North American left today is the huge disjuncture between the progressive political consciousness of Black America and the weakness of any national Black socialist cadre (the same dilemma applies to Chicanos/Mexicanos in the Southwest).” (323)

“Leftists must reject the ‘majoritarian’ fallacy, nurtured by fellow-traveling in the Democratic Party, that all socialist politics must be cut to fit the pattern of whatever modish liberalism is in fashion or to conform with the requirements for securing ‘practical’ Democratic pluralities.” (324)

“If one precondition for the future of a popular left in the United States is a revived struggle for equality based on independent socialist political action, the other and equally crucial condition will be increasing solidarity between the liberation movement in Southern Africa and Latin America and movements of the Black and Hispanic communities in the USA.” (326)

“Ultimately, no doubt, the left in the United States will have to confront the fact that there is never likely to be an ‘American revolution’ as classically imagined by DeLeon, Debs or Cannon. If socialism is to arrive one day in North America, it is much more probable that it will be by virtue of a combined, hemispheric process or revolt that overlaps boundaries and interlaces movements. …It is necessary to begin to imagine more audacious projects of coordinated action and political cooperation among the popular lefts in all the countries of the Americas.” (327)

The material is essential. The prose is exhausting.

Contender for my favorite history book. For me this book showed how white supremacy in America is a historical process. Like it’s not an idea, it’s not like a misconception or a bad mentality, it’s a series of events that happened and continues to happen

alas, i have finished! 4.5 / 5

this book is dense and requires (some) foundations in american history and political economy. this book is best read slow and carefully, with a pen and paper and timeline of 20th century history in front of you!

davis's analysis is striking and, despite it being published in '86, incredibly relevant.

"if socialism is to arrive one day in North America, it is much more probable that it will be by virtue of a combined, hemispheric process of revolt that overlaps boundaries and interlaces movements. The long-term future of the US left will depend on its ability to become both more representative and self-organized among its own 'natural' mass constituencies, and more integrally a wing of new internationalism... we are all, finally, prisoners of the same malign 'american dream"

A remarkable book on the labour/capital relation in America throughout the fraught history of large-scale industrial capitalism (c. 1843-1979). Mike Davis combs through the tangled web of American labour history: from the early agitations of labour abolitionism, the formation of the Knights of Labour (and their astonishing Knight's "Courts"), the AFL's emergence during the labour disaffection from the Knights, and the contradictory CIO that was founded during the peak of the depression crisis.

He charts the triumphs, defeats, turning-points, and missed-opportunities of the American labour movement throughout this period. Time and time again, he consistently bemoans American Labour's fundamental failure to recognize that ultimately their power lay not in subordinating the unions to the Democratic apparatus and their anti-communist crusades in the hope for piecemeal reforms, but in continually mobilizing mass action with a more diverse coalition of woman, African Americans, and "new immigrants", at the point of production. He takes the story up to the election of Ronald Regan, and one senses the contempt in Davis' tone the further done the historical arc he goes. A book of immense importance and relevance.

I do, however, think this book is best supplemented by two other books: David Roediger's Wages of Whiteness and Philip Foner's Organized Labour and the Black Worker, 1619-1981. Both of these works explicitly integrate the question of racism and white supremacy, as well as White workers' tie to "whiteness", into the picture of American labour history much more forcefully than Davis. It's hard not to get the impression that Davis largely scants this integration - adopting instead for a more structural analysis - so as not to problematize or poke-holes in his overall narrative.

Still incredible ! Recommend it highly

This outstanding study by the late comrade Mike Davis demonstrates why the American proletariat is as disorganized and devoid of class consciousness as it is and likewise explains the pitiful state of the US left. It is dense and packed with detail (be prepared for a barrage of left-wing organizations, politicians, unions, trade unionists, figures, dates, places, etc.) requiring careful reading and contemplation. I greatly appreciated the critique of the theory and practice of the moronic social-chauvinist Michael Harrington and his legacy, i.e., contemporary DSA Democratic Party tailism. Davis also tackles the political economy of the US leading into Reaganism.

It is really a brilliant work and very rewarding. I learned a ton and could not recommend it enough to my fellow DSA members, not only for the lessons previous class struggle in this country has to teach us, but for its historical condemnation of the dangerously stupid class-collaborationist, social-imperialist treachery against the international proletariat forwarded by "our" contemporary Harringtons.

"Ultimately, no doubt, the left in the United States will have to confront the fact that there is never likely going to be an 'American revolution' as classically imagined by DeLeon, Debs or Cannon. If socialism is to arrive one day in North America, it is much more probable that it will be a virtue of a combined, hemispheric process of revolt that overlaps boundaries and interlaces movements. The long-term future of the US left will depend on its ability to become more representative and self-organized among its own 'natural' mass constituencies, and more integrally a wing of new internationalism."

Not many other books come to mind that are able to balance a broad, sweeping historical panoramic view of U.S. working class history with razor-sharp political analysis on the political moment it was written in.

“As Lenin pointed out three quarters of a century ago, with a perspicacity that has yet to be fully assimilated, ‘political’ consciousness comes from outside the immediate field of the economic class struggle - which is not to say that it is superimposed on the working class by intellectuals, but rather that it grows out of the overdetermination of the economic class struggle by other contradictions and forms of oppression.”