This is a tribute episode to the great Mike Davis, the visionary social theorist and comrade who recently passed away in October 2022. We discuss his pathbreaking social analysis of Los Angeles, his political economy of urban life, his fondness for and reactivation of Marx’s political writings, and his unique ability to locate concrete phenomena within a specific historical conjuncture. Despite his clairvoyance about our disastrous present trajectory, we show why he was not the ‘prophet of doom’ that some think he was, insisting on the renewal of his spirit of militancy and hope.

RIP to a true giant of the Left and a fierce, loving comrade.

leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil

References:

Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 2006).

Mike Davis, “Marx’s Lost Theory: The Politics of Nationalism in 1848”, New Left Review 93 (May/June 2015).

Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com