Mike Davis, 1946-2022 Socialist, Activist, Historian of the Present
Mike Davis who has sadly died at 76 was a veteran figure of the US New Left, part of a generation that came after the likes of E P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. Free of their background in the Communist Parties, but well aware of the importance of that, Davis was able to become what Hobsbawm had urged after 1956 an historian of the present.
City of Quartz (1990) looked at the history of Los Angeles to inform the struggles of the present. Late Victorian Holocausts (2000) looked at the relationship between colonialism and climate change. Most recently The Monster at the Door (2005) looked at Avian flu and the process of how pandemics arise which proved highly relevant to Covid.
Most recently Mike Davis wrote in New Left Review (March 2022) interesting (brief) analysis of the current conjuncture east and west where he specifically addressed the great men theory of history. He notes: Everyone is quoting Gramsci on the interregnum, but that assumes that something new will be or could be born. I doubt it. I think what we must diagnose instead is a ruling class brain tumour.’
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/thanatos-triumphant
As a speaker Davis was compelling listening but his written work and his activism has added significantly to the history of the present and is a model for others to build on
Keith,
I was quite shaken to see your piece on Mike. I knew he was very ill but had not grasped that the end was near when I saw him on a recent zoom call Apart from his superb collection of work he was a delightful non-sectarian comrade who I first met nearly fifty years ago.
John.