Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler before his profile as one of the world's leading urbanists emerged with the publication of his sober, if dystopian, survey of Los Angeles City of Quartz. Since then, he's developed a reputation not only for his caustic analysis of ecological catastrophe and colonial history, but as a stylist without peer. Old Gods, New Enigmas is Davis's book-length engagement with Karl Marx, marking the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth and exploring Davis's thinking on history, labour, capitalism, and revolution-themes ever present from the earliest work of this leading radical thinker. This is his first book on Marxism itself.
Mike Davis is the author of several books including City of Quartz, The Monster at Our Door, Buda's Wagon, and Planet of Slums. He is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in San Diego.
Title: Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marxs Lost Theory
Author: Mike Davis
ISBN: 9781788732178
Binding:
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication Date: 2020-10-06
Number of Pages: 320
Weight: 0.2591 kg
Old God, New Enigmas is a project that no one but Mike Davis could have conceived and successfully executed: a systematic account of working-class politics on a global scale that can serve as a worthy accompaniment to Marx's Capital itself. Historical sociol-ogy, cultural analysis, strategic handbook, and brilliant entr e to Marxist debates, Davis's book constitutes a weapon for action that is outrageously pleasurable to utilize. - Robert Brenner, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence In this collection of essays, Davis searches Karl Marx's oeuvre for a revolutionary paradigm capable of addressing present-day economic inequality and climate change ... While the esoteric case studies and historical summaries will appeal primarily to readers already familiar with Marx, the book also offers the simple pleasure of watching Davis's nimble mind at work. - New Yorker An exact and exacting account of the forces and tendencies that compose the present, written in the grand tradition of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, not as the application of a theory but as a guide to action. It is the indispensable starting point for any strategy that seeks to end the catastrophe of capitalism's continued existence. - Warren Montag, author of Bodies, Masses, Power There is no one better at building on Marx's legacy of profound and engaged political analysis--the Marx of the Manifesto and The 18th Brumaire--than Mike Davis. This new book puts the class formation, deformation and reformation of precarious proletariats, the social meanings and staying powers of national identities, the capitalist nature of ecological crises in brilliantly well-informed historical, comparative and revolutionary perspective. - Leo Panitch, Professor Emeritus, York University Whether his theme is Marxian views of proletarian agency or of nationalism, Kropotkin's climatological-historical materialism or the prospects for an ecosocialist reinvention of city life, Mike Davis's guiding vision is clear and bold: a reinvigorated and politi-cally charged Marxism, brimming with original insights and suf-fused with historical depth. - Nancy Fraser, author of Fortunes of Feminism Davis resuscitates myriad overlooked works of political and environmental history and theory in this insightful collection. - Publishers Weekly The heterogeneity of Davis's latest book reflects his decades of accumulated interests ... [Davis is] a formidable intellectual, and this collection contains many gems. - Troy Vettese, Boston Review An excellent, pocket-ready primer for historicized militant organizing. - Carl Grey Martin, Socialism and Democracy Davis offers the possibility of hope...His clear writing style...successfully combining a select history of labour movements, a careful rereading of Marx, and a frank consideration of the calamitous ecological consequences of capitalism on climate change, so as to present a vision of how coming forms of capitalism can best be opposed and transformed into socialist movements that can sustain life instead of destroying it. - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
