Too Long, Too Clever, both by half
Lewis Mumford's The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects is a canonical work, and perhaps deservedly so. By that I mean that it certainly covers a lot of ground*, for which he deserves credit. Unfortunately, Mumford tries too hard to shove history into Karl Marx's neat little Hegelian theory and then ultimately fails to bring his analysis closed to a successful conclusion. And for something that pretends to be The History of The City, it certainly lacks the non-Western perspective, as if this was the work not of a world historian but of a well-traveled American or Englishman. Perhaps it should have been called, "The City as Tool of Oppression in Western History".
As an example of the first problem, his explanation of early cities leaves much to be desired. Here we have neolithic man living in villages and tending crops, the happy idyllic life, a primitive utopia starring the Noble Savage. Rather than offering a sampling of theories as to how the city and king-based government came about, he forces the dialectic into the tale by bringing paleolithic man back and putting him in the place of the brutal warlord-king. Rex ex machina, I thought at the time. It was truly bizarre and forces all of the explanations to be backwards from what is most likely the truth. Mumford seems to imply that the savage, paleolithic hunter-gatherers came back, built cities, and then forced the farmers to move into them when I suspect a much more organic process was involved in response to ... what? Marauding bands of warriors? What is the relevant scarcity that would have caused people to gradually transfer their own sovereignty to the king? Mumsford's treatment of the subject is unsophisticated.
He demonstrates appreciation for Classical Greece, then nearly spits as he goes through the Roman period, and then comes back into his stride when discussing the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. I actually found this to be an enlightening section of the book; it explains what I like about cities like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and what I dislike about Washington D.C. In fact, I think one could skip ahead to that part, and stop reading once you hit the early 19th century. From the standpoint of someone who dislikes much of what the modern world has become, mostly due to an overweening tendency toward centralization and rationalization of that which cannot or should not be rationalized**, I think that the future should look much more like the Medieval period without all the bad stuff (yeah, that is a breathtaking simplification that I don't intend to defend here).
After that, the book becomes a one-sided discussion of the evils of capitalism. Once again, Mumford stops being a historian and tries to interpret everything through a Marxist lens. For a counterpoint to this, I would recommend some of the work of T. S. Ashton.
I tend, however, to agree with Mumford on his observations about the impact of the automobile, but not the cause of it. "Capitalist" has two meanings: one is a person who makes a living renting capital, the other is a person who believes in a system with minimal state involvement***. The latter is the opposite of a system which provides government subsidization of the automobile culture the way we do in the US. Prior to the railroads, many turnpikes were privately owned and operated, but Americans loved first the idea of the railroad and then the idea of a system that freed men from dependence on the railroad ... to which they had given birth just 60 years before. The result today is a leviathan which we keep trying to control by ever larger public projects and programs, funded and operated by ever larger, more distant agencies. In fact, today people are advocating more railroad-based traffic even though they were condemning it just 100 years ago. It is to Mumford's credit that he seems to be a thorough Marxist in the sense that at least he does not follow his fellow-travelers down the road toward central governance. For those socialists who want to define socialism by what Marx said, I doubt they'll find much support for limitless expansion of that which Marx believed will whither away.
In the end, Mumford fails to provide any substantive suggestion as to which way we should turn to create a more livable city. The suburbs and freeways, as unpopular as they are, seem to still be dominant, but I think a generation of people exposed to Mumford's description of the livable Medieval city are starting to do something about it. Unfortunately, the people who share Mumford's politics are now the defenders of the status quo -- in San Francisco, for example, defending their own real estate investments, opposing building, and forcing people to spend ever more time on the concrete-and-asphault shackles that bind yet divide our cities.
----------------------------------------------
* I decided to read the book last weekend after coming across multiple references to it in my other recent reading material, and then a reference by Kevin Carson to it sealed the deal. Just kidding - the book is over 700 pages long, no way could I read that in a weekend.
** This is, believe it or not, not a bias toward irrationality or Romantic ideals, but rather towards rational rationality that reflects the fact that the future is uncertain and humans are neither means to others' ends, nor members of a unified collective, but rather individuals with social skills and needs too varied to be able to plug into a set of equations, pamphlets, or budgets. Perhaps Shaw sums it up best: "A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This is a brilliant, self-referential, seemingly illogical bit of wisdom that forces you to question whether the perfectly rational, centrally directed state with answers to all of life's problems (which Shaw, ironically, seemed to believe in) would be dynamic or static.
*** My standard example is that Ted Turner is the former type of capitalist but not the latter, while I am the latter and not the former. This is true of most libertarians, which is why the claim that we are looking out for "our" class interests is not only an ad hominem argument, but an unfounded one at that. Indeed, it is ironic that many if not most libertarians are academics, but most academics are not libertarians by any stretch of the imagination. Also, not that while most libertarians mean "laissez faire capitalism" or "merchant capitalism", many people intentionally or unintentionally conflate "finance capitalism", "state capitalism", and "laissez faire capitalism" as if they all meant the same thing.
As an example of the first problem, his explanation of early cities leaves much to be desired. Here we have neolithic man living in villages and tending crops, the happy idyllic life, a primitive utopia starring the Noble Savage. Rather than offering a sampling of theories as to how the city and king-based government came about, he forces the dialectic into the tale by bringing paleolithic man back and putting him in the place of the brutal warlord-king. Rex ex machina, I thought at the time. It was truly bizarre and forces all of the explanations to be backwards from what is most likely the truth. Mumford seems to imply that the savage, paleolithic hunter-gatherers came back, built cities, and then forced the farmers to move into them when I suspect a much more organic process was involved in response to ... what? Marauding bands of warriors? What is the relevant scarcity that would have caused people to gradually transfer their own sovereignty to the king? Mumsford's treatment of the subject is unsophisticated.
He demonstrates appreciation for Classical Greece, then nearly spits as he goes through the Roman period, and then comes back into his stride when discussing the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. I actually found this to be an enlightening section of the book; it explains what I like about cities like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and what I dislike about Washington D.C. In fact, I think one could skip ahead to that part, and stop reading once you hit the early 19th century. From the standpoint of someone who dislikes much of what the modern world has become, mostly due to an overweening tendency toward centralization and rationalization of that which cannot or should not be rationalized**, I think that the future should look much more like the Medieval period without all the bad stuff (yeah, that is a breathtaking simplification that I don't intend to defend here).
After that, the book becomes a one-sided discussion of the evils of capitalism. Once again, Mumford stops being a historian and tries to interpret everything through a Marxist lens. For a counterpoint to this, I would recommend some of the work of T. S. Ashton.
I tend, however, to agree with Mumford on his observations about the impact of the automobile, but not the cause of it. "Capitalist" has two meanings: one is a person who makes a living renting capital, the other is a person who believes in a system with minimal state involvement***. The latter is the opposite of a system which provides government subsidization of the automobile culture the way we do in the US. Prior to the railroads, many turnpikes were privately owned and operated, but Americans loved first the idea of the railroad and then the idea of a system that freed men from dependence on the railroad ... to which they had given birth just 60 years before. The result today is a leviathan which we keep trying to control by ever larger public projects and programs, funded and operated by ever larger, more distant agencies. In fact, today people are advocating more railroad-based traffic even though they were condemning it just 100 years ago. It is to Mumford's credit that he seems to be a thorough Marxist in the sense that at least he does not follow his fellow-travelers down the road toward central governance. For those socialists who want to define socialism by what Marx said, I doubt they'll find much support for limitless expansion of that which Marx believed will whither away.
In the end, Mumford fails to provide any substantive suggestion as to which way we should turn to create a more livable city. The suburbs and freeways, as unpopular as they are, seem to still be dominant, but I think a generation of people exposed to Mumford's description of the livable Medieval city are starting to do something about it. Unfortunately, the people who share Mumford's politics are now the defenders of the status quo -- in San Francisco, for example, defending their own real estate investments, opposing building, and forcing people to spend ever more time on the concrete-and-asphault shackles that bind yet divide our cities.
----------------------------------------------
* I decided to read the book last weekend after coming across multiple references to it in my other recent reading material, and then a reference by Kevin Carson to it sealed the deal. Just kidding - the book is over 700 pages long, no way could I read that in a weekend.
** This is, believe it or not, not a bias toward irrationality or Romantic ideals, but rather towards rational rationality that reflects the fact that the future is uncertain and humans are neither means to others' ends, nor members of a unified collective, but rather individuals with social skills and needs too varied to be able to plug into a set of equations, pamphlets, or budgets. Perhaps Shaw sums it up best: "A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This is a brilliant, self-referential, seemingly illogical bit of wisdom that forces you to question whether the perfectly rational, centrally directed state with answers to all of life's problems (which Shaw, ironically, seemed to believe in) would be dynamic or static.
*** My standard example is that Ted Turner is the former type of capitalist but not the latter, while I am the latter and not the former. This is true of most libertarians, which is why the claim that we are looking out for "our" class interests is not only an ad hominem argument, but an unfounded one at that. Indeed, it is ironic that many if not most libertarians are academics, but most academics are not libertarians by any stretch of the imagination. Also, not that while most libertarians mean "laissez faire capitalism" or "merchant capitalism", many people intentionally or unintentionally conflate "finance capitalism", "state capitalism", and "laissez faire capitalism" as if they all meant the same thing.
<< Home