![[Book Club Discussion] Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory by Mike Davis - Part 3](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/FoJgMV6kqx.png){kind=link}
Book : Old Gods, New Enigmas by Mike Davis
Synopsis : In this collection of essays, Mike Davis explores Marx’s thoughts on two key questions of our time: Who can lead a revolutionary transformation of society? And what is the cause—and solution—of the environmental crisis? Davis searches Karl Marx’s works for a revolutionary paradigm capable of addressing these questions and argues that the history of worker-led uprisings in the late-modern period remains relevant to understanding how today’s “informal proletariat” might gain class consciousness and political agency.
Reading Schedule :
Sunday 11th September – Preface, Chapter 1Sunday 18th September – Chapter 2 & 3Sunday 25th September – Chapter 4
How to Access :
Available on LibGen
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I thought the first chapter was really good. Davis gives us some background on the ideas of Marx and Engels and the time periods that they were writing in, then he gives us some summaries of a lot of Marx and Engels' arguments that people might not be immediately aware of without having read them or any of the many authors Davis cites that analyse their works. He also goes beyond the two theorists to examine the histories of left wing movements across Europe and America and presents us with a range of theses he develops out of this examination. I think he hits on a lot of things that the left needs to be thinking about a lot more, such as organising and strategies for building power and growing left wing movements.
This chapter is very big though, it should've been its own book. By the time you get to chapter 2 - on Marx's ideas on nationalism - it just feels really out of place and I didn't really feel like I got all that much out of chapter 2. Chapter 3 was interesting, looking into early ideas about the warming planet and the theories as to what might be causing it, ranging from those who correctly predicted the effect of greenhouse gases to those absolutely batshit theories that canals supposedly seen on Mars proved that there used to be Martians but then the planet got hot and they all died and now that's happening to us lol. Chapter 4 I'd already read as an essay before, its really doomer in the first half giving all the details of how fucked we might well be when it comes to climate change, before shifting tone and presenting some of Davis' ideas on green urbanism and city building that might help to address the crisis. This final chapter definitely finishes on a more inspiring note than it starts. That said, I'm not sure why these other three chapters were added to the book - they're all about different topics and not really connected and leaves it feeling disjointed and kinda like Davis wrote the first half of the book and was done but then needed to tack on three essays to get to the number of pages he wanted.
Still, I thought the first and last chapters were both very good.
We'll be putting the next vote up sometime next week, and since its October we've decided to go with a spooky selection of horror books.