Imatge de l'autor

Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019)

Autor/a de How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century

27+ obres 882 Membres 8 Ressenyes

Sobre l'autor

Erik Olin Wright was born in Berkeley, California on February 9, 1947. He won first place in mathematics at the 1964 National Science Fair with a project on Möbius strips. He received a bachelor's degree in social studies from Harvard University in 1968 and studied history for two years at Balliol mostra'n més College, Oxford. During the Vietnam War, he received a deferment from military service to attend a training school in Berkeley for Unitarian ministers. He also worked as a student chaplain at San Quentin State Prison. He received a doctorate in sociology in 1976 from Berkeley and became a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin. He spent his entire teaching career there. He was a Marxist sociologist who studied the complexities of social and economic classes and explored alternatives to capitalism. He wrote more than 15 books including Envisioning Real Utopias and How to Be an Anti-Capitalist for the 21st Century. He died from acute myeloid leukemia on January 23, 2019 at the age of 71. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys

Sèrie

Obres de Erik Olin Wright

Envisioning Real Utopias (2010) 182 exemplars
Classes (1985) 60 exemplars
Class Crisis & the State (1978) 52 exemplars
Understanding Class (2015) 51 exemplars
Class Counts Student Edition (2000) 29 exemplars
The Debate on Classes (1989) 22 exemplars
Approaches to Class Analysis (2005) 20 exemplars

Obres associades

Marxist inquiries : studies of labor, class, and states (1982) — Col·laborador — 13 exemplars
Omistus 2 exemplars

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Best for:
Anyone looking for an easy-to-digest outline of the options we have for moving society away from capitalism.

In a nutshell:
In six short but packed chapters, author Wright explores the problems of capitalism, the various ways of fighting it, and what is needed to accomplish that.

Worth quoting:
“The claim that capitalism harms democracy and freedom is more complex than simply proposing that capitalism is opposed to freedom and democracy. Rather, the logic is that capitalism generates severe deficits in realizing the values of democracy and freedom. Capitalism promotes the emergency and partial development of both freedom and democracy, but it obstructs the fullest possible realization of these values.”

Why I chose it:
I think I bought this nearly a year ago when Verso books was having a big sale. It looked interesting.

What it left me feeling:
Discouraged, despite the author’s best efforts.

Review:
I found this book to be really well done. I appreciate shorter books like this one (150 pages) that don’t try to fit the entire history of humanity into its pages. Instead, author Wright breaks this book into six easy to understand chapters: why be anti-capitalist?; diagnosis and critique of capitalism; varieties of anticapitalism, the destination beyond capitalism - socialism as economic democracy; anticapitalism and the state, and agents of transformation.

The author is not calling for a revolution, not is he suggesting we burn everything down and start from scratch. My guess from reading up on the author is this because of pragmatism — if an actual, successful, all-out revolution were possible without harming loads of the people already harmed by capitalism, my thinking is he’d support that. Instead he looks at the different ways we can approach essentially gnawing away at capitalism from above and below.

He starts by laying out his foundations for the values that society should hold dear: equality/fairness; democracy/freedom; and community/solidarity. He then talks about how capitalism is really not great for any of these things (I think some people who claim capitalism nearly equal to freedom and democracy would benefit from reading this section). The third chapter focuses on the five ways he posits we can be anticapitalist: smash capitalism, dismantle capitalism, tame capitalism, resist capitalism, and erode it. Some aspects he notes are already in play, usually when things we might associate with socialism are implemented to fix problems caused by socialism. Those five ways are a mix of from above and from below, which provides for some variety.

The fourth chapter I found to be quite interesting because it was a short glimpse into his idea of what socialism could look like if implemented, including unconditional basic income, cooperative market economies, and democratizing capitalist firms (along with other suggestion). Chapter five looks at all the challenges we face with the state as it stands now; the final chapter talks somewhat about how to harness collective action.

I’ve said the book has left be discouraged because I think about the politics of the two countries I know best: the US and the UK. In the US, even as little children are murdered by guns in their schools, politicians only care about prevent drag performers from reading books to kids, and making sure that anyone who does get pregnant is forced to stay pregnant. And all the gerrymandering (which Wright does reference a couple of times) is allowing the minority political groups (far-right Republicans) to be in control of state houses. And in the UK, for some reason people who like to call themselves feminists are obsessed with the genitalia of people in restrooms to the point where they are putting the rights and lives of trans people at risk, often led by their anti-trans queen JK Rowling. (I know the US is horrible on trans issues as well; it’s just wild seeing how it is playing out here in the UK). The UK is also vile in its treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers. Just really invested in fiurther harming those who are already in horrible situations. Meanwhile neither place is doing nearly enough to address climate change, or the cost of living scandal, or racism, sexism, anti-trans hate, religious bigotry, poverty.

So I have a hard time thinking that the state can ever be changed. I know that’s silly and defeatist, and I’m not just giving up on thinking something better is possible. But so many people are so deeply invested in maintaining their own power and so invested in harming anyone who isn’t like them that I have a hard time seeing them willingly take any sort of action that will reduce their power or frankly help anyone who doesn’t look like them.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep
… (més)
 
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ASKelmore | Hi ha 5 ressenyes més | Apr 10, 2023 |
Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity can both provide the basis for a critique of capitalism, and help to guide us towards a socialist and democratic society. In this elegant book, Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into a concise and tightly argued manifesto analyzing the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and a unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible.… (més)
 
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LarkinPubs | Hi ha 5 ressenyes més | Mar 1, 2023 |
Intéressant point de vue sur l'analyse des différents échecs de renversement du capitalisme. Prône de mixer les précédents moyens tout en axant une prise de pouvoir via la démocratie délégative. Ce qui marque aussi la limite des propositions.
Autre point de vue intéressant sur les identités, les intérêts et les valeurs avec l'importance de s'appuyer ou mettre en valeur les identités y compris selon lui les combats personnels autour des discriminations raciales, genres ...A voir mais l'idée étant de construire un acteur collectif visible et avec un pouvoir d'agir et de transformation… (més)
½
 
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AlterHD | Hi ha 5 ressenyes més | Sep 7, 2022 |
this is a collection of essays on how the concept of class is understood by different thinkers and schools of thought, the merits and demerits of each in various contexts.

marxists understand class in terms of a conflicting relationship, with capitalists exploiting workers. the term "exploitation" doesn't always have a warm connotation, but its use in this context is ambiguous in english and in german (one can exploit any resource), and marx himself at least sometimes was using it in a more clinical way. (the labor theory of value is often invoked here, but there are good reasons to set that to one side: even if it isn't defunct/confused, it is normatively inert.)

even still, there is a normative tinge to marxist analysis of class. one reason marxists recommend it is that when the worker sells their labor to the capitalist a special kind of conflict arises that is acknowledged even by contemporary mainstream economics: the worker controls their own level of effort due to informational asymmetries -- enabling not just shirking but also strikes and (they say) potentially revolutionary change if workers of the world were to unite. marxists want to draw particular attention to the class line demarcated by the ownership of the means of production precisely because it is the ultimate political battle-line as they conceive it, pointing out the special power in the hands of the disadvantaged, the control of effort retained by workers. that is the sense in which marxist class analysis is distinctively normative.

for weberians class is more descriptive, more about explaining the common fate among individuals who share economic interests within a capitalist society. weber had an interest in the spread of instrumental rationality under capitalism. wright explains, "The central difference between Marx’s and Weber’s concept of class, then, is that the Weberian account revolves exclusively around market transactions, whereas the Marxist account also emphasizes the importance of conflict over the performance and appropriation of labor effort that takes place after market exchanges are contracted." if you want to pin a politics on this view of class, you could say weber's point of view is more aligned with management and the owners of capital -- but wright notes that it is also attendant to the fate of workers under capitalism.

we get some discussion of the third large school of thought after marx and weber: durkheim. one illuminating table in the book used the society-as-game metaphor to summarize the three big thinkers on class this way:

[begin quote]
Marxist class analysis is anchored in the problem of what game to play. At the very heart of Marxism as a social theory is the idea of emancipatory alternatives to capitalism. The fundamental point in analyzing class relations and both the individual practices and collective struggles that are linked to those class relations is to understand the nature of oppression within capitalism and the possibility of an emancipatory systemic alternative. The critique of capitalism in terms of exploitation, domination, and alienation is intimately connected to the Marxian concept of class, and the normative vision of a democratic and egalitarian alternative to capitalism is grounded in an account of the transformation of those class relations. Sometimes Marxist class analysis is elaborated in terms of a “grand narrative” about how the internal contradictions of the game of capitalism set in motion a dynamic that both makes the rules unstable and creates a collective agent capable of challenging the game itself; at other times the idea of an alternative is framed more modestly as an immanent possibility with a much more open-ended understanding of the collective agents that might strive to realize the alternative. But in any case it is the connections among class, the critique of capitalism, and emancipatory alternatives that animates Marxist class analysis.

Weberian class analysis is situated especially at the level of the rules of the game. Weber, indeed, only used the term “class” to describe inequalities generated through market interactions. For Weberians, capitalism is the only viable game in town, but its institutional rules can vary a lot. At stake in the variation of rules are the ways markets are organized and regulated and the ways in which players with different market capacities enter into exchange. The “big classes” of Weberian class analysis consist of people who are situated in different ways with respect to the possible capitalist rules of the game: rules governing labor organizing; rules governing the autonomy of capitalists in determining working conditions and employment rights; rules governing monopolies and competitive practices; rules governing access to education and job training; and so on. Some of these rules are created by states, others by firms, and still others by associations of various sorts. The purpose of class analysis, then, is to define the relevant categories of people similarly situated with respect to this variability in the rules of the game.

Durkheimian class analysis takes both capitalism and its specified institutional rules as given and focuses on the moves of players within the game. This is the world of micro-classes and fine-grained occupational differentiation. The interests of professors in research universities are different from those in community colleges, given the rules of the game in academic labor markets and the rules that govern working conditions, pay, and autonomy in these different kinds of institutions. Thus, people in these different micro-classes will develop different identities and make different moves for realizing their interests. Autoworkers, coal miners, truck drivers, and oil rig workers all operate under different labor market conditions, work in industries facing different kinds of sectoral competition and challenges, and have different collective capacities, and thus also face a different set of possible moves to realize their interests. So long as there is no real prospect of challenging the general rules of the game, their interests remain largely distinct and fragmented most of the time.
[end quote]

the other chapters felt more like essays, and i believe some were previously published elsewhere. some interesting bits:

* charles tilly's book durable inequalities and its treatment of class gets a chapter. i will try to read this book soon, as it sounds interesting and provided the framework elizabeth anderson used in her book on racial integration in america i reviewed a couple weeks ago.

* michael mann's multi volume work sources of social power gets a chapter. sounds complicated.

* there is a chapter on aage sorensen's theory of class, which sounds wild and interesting, tho wright is quite critical. sorensen agrees with marx that class lines should be drawn through exploitative relationships, but he thinks talk of the labor theory of value and appropriation of surplus value is bunk. instead he defines exploitation in terms of the extraction of economic rents: returns on assets above what would be obtained under perfectly competitive markets. this was very entertaining to read about, because some of the conclusions are wild: elimination of all exploitation of this kind is according to sorenson himself likely to lead to great misery, since the welfare income would vanish.

* the remainder of the book has some interesting odds and ends on piketty, the precariat class, and a substantial essay on class compromise with some nice charts summarizing some of the story in adam przeworski's capitalism and democracy.
… (més)
 
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leeinaustin | May 17, 2021 |

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