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The premise of this book is that Los Angeles is both the utopia and the
dystopia of advanced capitalism, and that a detailed study of the area could
provide insight into what our world may become in the near future (18).
The way in which the city was founded, this "creature of real-estate capitalism," set the tone for its future expansion. After the first railroad-engineered land rush collapsed c. 1884, the city shifted into its contemporary mode of operation. The owner of the LA Times, Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, militarized the city's industrial relations to compete with the most unionized city in the world, San Francisco. Union activity was punished with violence, and the city began to feverishly sell itself and its "open shop." (25) Several myths about LA were invented to romanticize its history and seduce middle-class Midwesterners, but the central myth has consistently been the "mission myth," an idyllic past in which happy indigenous workers labored for their the benevolent Spanish patriarchs. Davis speculates that beyond romanticizing history (in favor of whites, of course), this myth redefined class relationships and obscured the real history of LA--bloody class warfare. Additionally, the white patronage element of LA's mythology played into its role as an ideological center of racism. In 1907 Joseph Widney, president of the University of Southern California argued in his book "Race Life of the Aryan Peoples" that LA was destined to become the world capital of white supremacy (28). LA as the land of opportunity within the country of opportunity extended in an ironic way to its unique housing situation. The "democratic" bungalows that were so popular in the city (94 percent of all housing was single-family) and was supposed to assure "industrial freedom" in fact locked the working population into a new form of peonage, where even the most poorly-paid worker had to meet mortgage payments or lose their house (28). As in Gerald Horne's "Fire This Time," the serenity of single-family neighborhoods has been a complete illusion. Alfred Doblin wrote that it was a "murderous desert of houses," saying "Indeed, one is much and extensively in the open here--yet, am I a cow?" (34) Strangely enough, after the military repression of industrial labor LA was able to create an image of itself so desirable that it could sustain itself through real estate alone, making it the first post-industrial city. Even today LA's primary export is empty space (135). In my opinion, Los Angeles illustrates well the many parallels between feudalism and capitalism. The power structure is directly tied to property, and the actions of the people in power and who they are follow the day's popular mode of land speculation (105) [give examples]. While the labor theory of value applies to a degree, resources seem to be more directly extracted through rents and manipulations of land. Now that developable coastal land is disappearing, land development has been re-monopolized (131), and in general it appears that much more labor is exchanged for temporary residence than for commodities. Real estate is not only directly central to LA's economy, but to the lives of many homeowners. An interesting aspect of LA's social development is the role of Homeowners' Associations (HA). Individuals' concerns with their property value apparently leads to the desire for socially homogenized neighborhoods. According to Davis, the primary concern of HA's from about 1920 to 1960 was to create a "bourgeoise utopia," racially and economically homogenous areas of single-family homes (169). He illustrates this by giving an example of an area called Canoga Park which contained $400,000 homes and $200,000 homes. The residents of the wealthier section (perhaps on a rumor spread by real estate agents that property values would increase by $20,000) demanded that the city put up signs saying "West Hills" in their section to segregate themselves from the undesirables (154). These signs were eventually erected, existing solely to socially and economically isolate the richer half. They have no legal significance. A more extreme example is the tax revolt of 1976-1979. A land inflation increased property taxes for middle-class families, while their prospects of benefitting from their new land value was dubious. The bourgeoise revolt was channeled by Republicans into Proposition 13, a reduction in taxes on the middle-class and rich, and an explicit promise to keep the taxes the suburbanites did pay from going to social spending in "inner-city" areas (183). So, now we move to what is actually being done with the land. An interesting twist on the early 1900's ideal of the bungalow as a "cathedral in wood" (28), buildings have been increasingly turning "outside-in." Davis says that public activity is increasingly being sorted into functional compartments, in a process mirroring the deregulation of the economy and a decrease in non-market entitlements (226). Mini-parks are built in parking lots and real parks are dug up (for parking?). New buildings have sheer, featureless facades directly on the sidewalk, and waterfalls in the center. Of course, the exception is in oppressed areas like Watts where the centers of malls are actually LAPD substations, a process Davis calls the recolonization of retail markets (224). The elimination of decent public space accomplishes several objectives: The first is illustrated by LA's new downtown. Too many poor Black and Mexican people were going downtown, decreasing property value (!). In response, at public expense the big businesses relocated downtown to a new location, and the railroad that ran there was destroyed to eliminate pedestrians (230). A magazine called "Urban Land" explains this process: "A downtown can be designed and developed to make visitors feel that it--or a significant portion of it--is attractive and the type of place that 'respectable people' like themselves tend to frequent" (231). Poor people in open spaces is bad for land speculation. Second, an absence of public space creates a market for pleasure, reflected in the Westside pleasure domes (227). Third, the pleasure domes require workers oppressed severely enough to continue working quietly (227). Public space would reduce their need for commodities and therefore reduce their willingness to endure demeaning service jobs. Finally, LA's official policy towards the poor is containment. Homeless people are restricted to small areas, enforced by police violence (232). The few park-like areas I saw in LA were entirely paved, with no sitting space at all. Anything that might otherwise be seat-like has a rounded or spiked top. The smallest number of public toilets in North America and randomly timed overhead sprinklers further immiserate anyone daring to be poor in LA (233). Crowd control is big in LA, involving both architecture and the police. Davis describes public architecture as a "Skinnerian orchestration [which] produces a veritable commercial symphony of swarming, consuming monads moving from one cashpoint to another" (257). The pigs role is even more sinister, however. The end of the 80's was celebrated by "Operation HAMMER," rationalized by the "War on Drugs." To summarize, this was a reign of police terror in which 50,000 people (mainly Black youth) were "picked up" in violent police blitzkreigs. There were only 100,000 Black youth in the entire Southcentral LA area that was targeted (277). One of the highlights of this regime was the attack of the residents of an apartment building, and the building itself, by 88 pigs that left the building so ruined that the Red Cross had to offer disaster relief (275). In another classic move, the LAPD ambushed four Latinos, killed three of them and charged the critically wounded fourth with the murder of his friends. Since 1974, two-thirds of the Black males in LA have been arrested. The LAPD has always been a pioneer in urban repression. In the 1920's, they were the first police to use radio patrol cars, and years later were the first to use helicopters for systematic aerial surveillance (251). They have cutting-edge techniques of boosting felony arrest numbers, such as "School Buy," in which undercover cops infiltrate high schools and convince students to sell drugs to them (286). This brutal police repression did happen for a reason, of course. The debut of LAPD's SWAT team was the 1969 day-long siege of the Panther headquarters in Southcentral (298). Three years later, sixty Black gang leaders were given a panel to discuss their concerns, and laid out demands for jobs, housing, better schools, recreation facilities, and community control of local institutions (300). While LA is unique in some respects, most of the major processes taking place in the city are common to almost all large amerikan cities, and LA only differs in degree. Davis' analysis made it even more clear to me that capitalism's power lies primarily in land ownership, and that any real challenge to the existing social order must have land as a central concern. |