Written in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election, Mike Davis’s Prisoners of the American Dream asks a question that remains as urgent today as it was 40 years ago: Why has the American working class, “for all its cultural and organizational assets,” proved so weak as a political force? In Prisoners, Davis charts the history of U.S. working class organization—from its revolutionary agitation during the War of Independence to the rise of the Knights of Labor and A.F.L., from the great Depression-era strike waves to labor’s later adjunctification to the Democratic Party—analyzing the cumulative victories, defeats, and missed opportunities that have seemingly doomed American labor to the margins of U.S. political power. And filling the void, so Davis argues, is Reaganism—i.e., the concerted attempt to “sustain booming middle-class affluence and corporate profitability” at the permanent expense of New Deal-style reformism. But why hasn’t the American working class ever produced an independent “labor” political party? How can we understand the interplay of factors of race, class, and ideology as it both propelled and limited labor and working class power? And what is the connection between labor’s political marginality and Reaganism’s enduring political hegemony? Does working class consciousness invariably pale before the attractions of the American dream?
In this course, we’ll read Prisoners of the American Dream fully and assess Davis’s arguments, bearing in mind its context and the present day. We’ll first consider the (un)making of the American working class in light of the path of the bourgeois revolution in the U.S. and the 19th-century and early 20th-century waves of mass struggle. We’ll also look into the terrain of 20th-century industrial unionism and the “barren marriage” of American labor and the Democratic Party. Subsequently, we’ll discuss post-war realignments and transformations as well as the political economy of the Reagan years, centered on the rise of the so-called Sunbelt capitalism and a “haves coalition” that furthered a middle-class militancy against the poor. We’ll conclude by considering the way the Reagan boom reshaped American imperialism and the domestic post-civil rights movement landscape. We’ll ask: What explains “American exceptionalism,” after all? Why have US workers been uniquely resistant to socialist politics compared to other industrialized nations? What role does Davis assign to religious, ethnic, and racial lines within the US working class (and how does this analysis enhance or challenge traditional Marxist approaches)? What’s the role of the Democratic Party in shaping the political landscape for the working class, and what are its lasting consequences? How can we characterize the social, political, and economic formation called Sunbelt capitalism, and what aspects of it can shed light on 21st-century US capitalism? What is the link between neoliberal policies, the decline in working-class power, and the ascendency of middle-class power? What is the role of immigration from the Global South and the border within US capitalism? What aspects of Davis’s analysis resonate most strongly with the current political and economic landscape? And what lessons does Davis draw for contemporary organizing? Alongside Davis’s work, lessons will draw from the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, WEB Du Bois, CLR James, Stuart Hall, Eric Arnesen, Philip Foner, Kim Moody, Kim Voss, David Roediger, Frances Fox Piven, Robin D.G. Kelley, Ruth Milkman, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David Harvey, Gabriel Winant, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, among others.
