Old Gods, New Enigmas Marx's Lost Theory [Hardcover]

Is revolution possible in the age of the Anthropocene?

Marx has returned, but which Marx? Recent biographies have proclaimed him to be an emphatically nineteenth-century figure, but in this book, Mike Davis’s first directly about Marx and Marxism, a thinker comes to light who speaks to the present as much as the past. In a series of searching, propulsive essays, Davis, the bestselling author ofCity of Quartzand recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, explores Marx’s inquiries into two key questions of our time: Who can lead a revolutionary transformation of society? And what is the cause—and solution—of the planetary environmental crisis?

Davis consults a vast archive of labor history to illuminate new aspects of Marx’s theoretical texts and political journalism. He offers a “lost Marx,” whose analyses of historical agency, nationalism, and the “middle landscape” of class struggle are crucial to the renewal of revolutionary thought in our darkening age. Davis presents a critique of the current fetishism of the “anthropocene,” which suppresses the links between the global employment crisis and capitalism’s failure to ensure human survival in a more extreme climate. In a finale,Old Gods, New Enigmaslooks backward to the great forgotten debates on alternative socialist urbanism (1880–1934) to find the conceptual keys to a universal high quality of life in a sustainable environment.

“Old God, New Enigmasis 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’sCapitalitself. Historical sociol­ogy, cultural analysis, strategic handbook, and brilliant entrée to Marxist debates, Davis’s book constitutes a weapon for action that is outrageously pleasurable to utilize.”
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