A political archaeology of the US class struggle: Mike Davis: Review

A political archaeology of the US class struggle: In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire

Davis performs a kind of literary archaeology, excavating vignettes from both political writing and radical fiction, which chronicle the devastation wrought by imperialism, whether it’s wedding parties bombed in Afghanistan or American workers losing their jobs and homes.

Davis rescues from beneath layers of rubble, rich gems of workers’ history such as the New York labour insurrection of 1863, that was deflected and fatally divided into a racist pogrom, or the great textile workers’ strikes of 1934 of the southern US states, mid-Atlantic and New England.

The central argument of the book is that the Bush plutocracy and Democratic aspirants to the presidency are but a temporary parasitic class that ultimately rests on sand. US capitalism may seem invincible but then so did Rome to the Romans. All around, it creates the forces that will overthrow it – immigrant labour forced into strikes, slum dwellers (the “outcast proletariat”) living on less than a dollar a day in the shanty towns, the urban black poor left to drown in ecological disasters – in short a variegated working class not yet aware of itself as a class but, at the margins, beginning to take action, gain confidence and learn lessons.

Another strand of the book is the weaving together of today’s struggles with those of the past, drawing parallels and hinting at lessons: for example, from the International Workers of the World (IWW) “that mobilised a supposedly ‘unorganisable’ immigrant working class into militant confrontations with the nation’s largest industrial corporations”, showing how they assembled a mass movement with internationalism at its core, yet simultaneously rooted in labour struggles and working class communities.

At times, Davis’ message may appear prematurely optimistic, though it does not gloss over some of the very real difficulties. However, he doesn’t explicitly address how to overcome these weaknesses, so Davis at times lapses into a comforting narrative that the US imperialism is so full of Roman arrogance it is destined to fall.

This risks underestimating the disconnectedness of the left from the burning concerns and interests of different working class communities and the weakness of fragmented struggles in being able to bring down such a mighty edifice.

What saves the book, and makes it an interesting as well as entertaining read, is the quality of the writing. Gordon Brown is described as having a “clown-like smile glued to his eroded face”; rich metaphors of dark water rising, of fire and pestilence, revolting legions and anarchy punctuate the essays. Militants wanting to reconnect with a battered and divided working class, to revive class-wide rebellion and assemble the mass movements of the future – to learn from both the victories and defeats, would do well to read these essays.

Tue 02, December 2008 @ 17:38