Old Gods, New Enigmas: Notes on Historical Agency

Congratulations! You made it to 2021! It's a new year, and the London Marxism Reading Group is back and in style.

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We'll be kicking off this year by reading the first chapter of Mike Davis' seminal 2018 work, Old Gods, New Enigmas. In "Notes on Historical Agency", Davis considers the central question in Marxism and in almost all social, political, and economic theory: who, if anyone, has the power to shape history?

https://catalyst-journal.com/vol1/no2/historical-agency-davis

"As globalization, union busting, and automation remake the world of work, leaving current and future generations to subsist on contingent and informal employment, can we still defend the idea of the working class as the principal agent of radical change? Does a “historic force,” as Eric Hobsbawm put it in 1995, still exist to support the socialist project?"

Our encounter with Davis will set us up for a year of wide-ranging discussion across topics as diverse as imperial supply chains, the nature of violence, the linkages between race, class, gender, the nature of the capitalist state, and much more.

Happy reading!

Find the full book at Verso, if you want it: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2779-old-gods-new-enigmas