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Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory

Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory

by Mike Davis (Author), Mike Davis (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2018

    $5.64
Synopsis

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. 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, labor, capitalism, and revolution - themes ever present the early work from this leading radical thinker. This will be his first book on Marxism itself. In a time of ubiquitous disgust with political and economic elites, explores the question of revolutionary agency-what social forces and conditions do we need to transform the current order?-and the situation of the world's working classes from the US to Europe to China. Even the most preliminary tasks are daunting. A new theory of revolution needs to return to the big issues in classical socialist thought, such as clarifying proletarian agency , before turning to the urgent questions of our time: global warming, the social and economic gutting of the rustbelt, and the city's demographic eclipse of the countryside. What does revolution look like after the end of history?

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 320
 Publisher: Verso
Published: 26 Jun 2018
ISBN 10: 1788732162
ISBN 13: 9781788732161

Media Reviews
Davis resuscitates myriad overlooked works of political and environmental history and theory in this insightful collection. - Publishers Weekly Praise for Planet of Slums A profound enquiry into an urgent subject ... a brilliant book. --Arundhati Roy With cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor ... Like the work of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens over a century ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently clear. --Michael Sorkin The Raymond Chandler of urban geography ... In Planet of Slums, Davis's genre is the global disaster movie, as directed by the chroniclers of Victorian poverty: Engels, Booth and Dickens. The scale of modern squalor revealed in his brilliant survey dwarfs its predecessors ... a coruscating tragedy. --Independent The astonishing facts hit like anvil blows ... Davis has produced a heartbreaking book that hammers the reader a little further into the ground with the blow of each new and shocking statistic. --Financial Times A terrifying, magisterial work. --Harper's There can be no doubt about the achievement of Planet of Slums ... it forces us, angrily, to confront the deplorable realities of slum existence and the limitations of slum policies in many developing countries. --Times (London) While many case studies have described what it means to reside in a favela, basti, kampung, gecekondu or bidonville, Davis provides a properly global portrait ... And whereas urban specialists have focused on questions of space and land use in their discussions of slums, and developmentalists on the issue of their 'informal economies', Planet of Slums commands our attention as a broader historical synthesis of the two. --New Left Review Davis's descriptions of the conditions endured by slum-dwellers provide reason enough to read this book. His analysis is full of gripping stories from globalization's frontline. --New Statesman Packed with rigorous analysis and heart-stopping facts, this is a brilliant exploration of how millions of poor city-dwellers worldwide are being driven to the squalid periurban shadowlands of today's megaslums ... Davis's book is absolutely vital reading. --Big Issue A profound enquiry into an urgent subject ... a brilliant book. --Arundhati Roy With cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor ... Like the work of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens over a century ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently clear. --Michael Sorkin The Raymond Chandler of urban geography ... In Planet of Slums, Davis's genre is the global disaster movie, as directed by the chroniclers of Victorian poverty: Engels, Booth and Dickens. The scale of modern squalor revealed in his brilliant survey dwarfs its predecessors ... a coruscating tragedy. --Independent The astonishing facts hit like anvil blows ... Davis has produced a heartbreaking book that hammers the reader a little further into the ground with the blow of each new and shocking statistic. --Financial Times A terrifying, magisterial work. --Harper's There can be no doubt about the achievement of Planet of Slums ... it forces us, angrily, to confront the deplorable realities of slum existence and the limitations of slum policies in many developing countries. --Times (London) While many case studies have described what it means to reside in a favela, basti, kampung, gecekondu or bidonville, Davis provides a properly global portrait ... And whereas urban specialists have focused on questions of space and land use in their discussions of slums, and developmentalists on the issue of their 'informal economies', Planet of Slums commands our attention as a broader historical synthesis of the two. --New Left Review Davis's descriptions of the conditions endured by slum-dwellers provide reason enough to read this book. His analysis is full of gripping stories from globalization's frontline. --New Statesman Packed with rigorous analysis and heart-stopping facts, this is a brilliant exploration of how millions of poor city-dwellers worldwide are being driven to the squalid periurban shadowlands of today's megaslums ... Davis's book is absolutely vital reading. --Big Issue
Author Bio
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.