Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019)
Author of How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century
About the Author
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 show more 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) show less
Series
Works by Erik Olin Wright
Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (2003) — Editor — 47 copies
Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Cornerstones for an Egalitarian Capitalism (2006) — Editor — 23 copies
Class Structure and Income Determination (Institute for Research on Poverty monograph series) (1979) 5 copies
REPENSANDO LA DISTRIBUCIÓN. EL INGRESO BÁSICO CIUDADANO COMO ALTERNATIVA PARA UN CAPITALISMO MÁS IGUALITARIO (2008) 3 copies
CLASE,CRISIS Y ESTADO 2 copies
Associated Works
Omistus 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Wright, Erik Olin
- Birthdate
- 1947-02-09
- Date of death
- 2019-01-23
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of California, Berkeley (PhD - Sociology)
University of Oxford (Balliol College)
Harvard University - Occupations
- sociologist
Sociology professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison - Organizations
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Cause of death
- acute myeloid leukemia
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Berkeley, California, USA
- Place of death
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
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 show more 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 show less
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 show more 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 show less
Hey goodpals. Been on goodreads for a while now, but I'm trying to completely expunge Amazon from my life. Haven't bought anything on there in a couple years, but they own so much stuff now it can be difficult to avoid. Luckily in the case of goodreads, it's actually extremely easy, especially because there is a much better option now freely available to all! I'm moving over to LibraryThing . It's lighter on the social media aspect, but you can still see and engage with what friends are show more reading. It lets you actually find, catalog and organize books with an intuitive interface and it doesn't make me feel like I'm browsing the Home Shopping Network's website. It doesn't constantly try to trick you into accidentally signing up for Facebook or Prime or track you around the internet. You don't even need to give them an email, if you don't want. And, it doesn't help line the pockets of the worlds richest and increasingly cartoonishly evil man.
Anyways, I'll leave this up for a little while before I delete my account, but if you switch over too, my name on there Jetztzeit. Add me as a friend!
This book is good and makes a clear and compelling case for a multi-teared approach to collective action, challenging simplistic distinctions between "our individual consumer choices/actions don't matter" and "we must build a working-class movement to overthrow the capitalist state." etc. etc. Decades of thought distilled into an easily digestible treatise, there are few wasted words and no wasted sentences. ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE. SEE YOU THERE. show less
Anyways, I'll leave this up for a little while before I delete my account, but if you switch over too, my name on there Jetztzeit. Add me as a friend!
This book is good and makes a clear and compelling case for a multi-teared approach to collective action, challenging simplistic distinctions between "our individual consumer choices/actions don't matter" and "we must build a working-class movement to overthrow the capitalist state." etc. etc. Decades of thought distilled into an easily digestible treatise, there are few wasted words and no wasted sentences. ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE. SEE YOU THERE. show less
I'm pleased that this was the last book I finished in 2019. It was another Christmas present and I found it an excellent train read. There is a definite sadness to 'How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century', though, as Olin Wright died of leukaemia very shortly after finishing it. He'd intended to support this short, accessible primer with a longer, more academic work exploring the issues in much more detail, with references. Sadly, he never had the chance to write this latter show more work, which I would very much have liked to read. The book he did write provides a very clear and well-structured summary of what's wrong with capitalism, forms of anticapitalism, forms postcapitalism could take, and how change might come about.
The calm and reasonable tone belies the wonderfully radical content. I found Olin Wright's concepts of a mixed economy in which capitalist elements might eventually form the minority uplifting and encouraging. His arguments that capitalism could be eroded into something else are thought-provoking, although his mentions of technology underplay the effects of surveillance capitalism in my opinion. That is perhaps more detail than is appropriate for such a book, though. Olin Wright talks about the importance of deeper democratic involvement to the erosion of capitalism, while acknowledging that the opposite is taking place. Nonetheless, I found his calm, hopeful, and convincing writing made me feel a little happier about the prospects of something beyond capitalism. Most importantly, he rejects unhelpful dichotomies, such as absolutely capitalist vs absolutely socialist, instead embracing complexity and nuance. An impressive feat in such a short book.
My favourite paragraph concerned libraries. I'd never quite realised what anticapitalist institutions they are before! No wonder I love them so.
'How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century' whetted my appetite the book Olin Wright did not get the chance to write. I found the structure enlightening, although the content was not new to me. It seems like an excellent thing to lend to friends who listen to me complain about capitalism and dare to appear interested. Such quick and accessible introductions that avoid reductive oversimplification are unusual and valuable, given the academic jargon that can dominate this topic. show less
The calm and reasonable tone belies the wonderfully radical content. I found Olin Wright's concepts of a mixed economy in which capitalist elements might eventually form the minority uplifting and encouraging. His arguments that capitalism could be eroded into something else are thought-provoking, although his mentions of technology underplay the effects of surveillance capitalism in my opinion. That is perhaps more detail than is appropriate for such a book, though. Olin Wright talks about the importance of deeper democratic involvement to the erosion of capitalism, while acknowledging that the opposite is taking place. Nonetheless, I found his calm, hopeful, and convincing writing made me feel a little happier about the prospects of something beyond capitalism. Most importantly, he rejects unhelpful dichotomies, such as absolutely capitalist vs absolutely socialist, instead embracing complexity and nuance. An impressive feat in such a short book.
My favourite paragraph concerned libraries. I'd never quite realised what anticapitalist institutions they are before! No wonder I love them so.
Some things, of course, could be effectively provided by both state and markets, and so the issue becomes the mix between the two. Consider access to books. Bookstores and libraries readily provide both. Commercial bookstores distribute books to people on the basis of their ability to pay; libraries distribute books to people on the principle 'to each according to need'. In a library, if a book is already checked out, the person wanting the book is placed on a waiting list. Books are rationed on deeply egalitarian principle that a day in every person's life is of equal value. A well-resourced library will then use the length of waiting list as an indicator of the need to order more copies of a book. Libraries often also distribute other important resources: music, videos, access to computers, tools, toys, meetings rooms, and, in some libraries, performance spaces. Libraries thus constitute a mechanism of distribution that embodies the egalitarian ideal of giving everyone equal access to the resources needed for a flourishing life. In a democratic socialist economy, there would be an expansion of nonmarket, library-like ways of giving people access to many resources.
'How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century' whetted my appetite the book Olin Wright did not get the chance to write. I found the structure enlightening, although the content was not new to me. It seems like an excellent thing to lend to friends who listen to me complain about capitalism and dare to appear interested. Such quick and accessible introductions that avoid reductive oversimplification are unusual and valuable, given the academic jargon that can dominate this topic. show less
With all thew uproar these days about how "NObama is a Socialist-Kenyan-Marxist-Nazi-Muslim", reading what an actual socialist believes is a vital antidote. Wright simply wants radical socialist democracy; the People empowered to make collective decisions over their own lives, with Capital and the State reduced until they can provide necessary services, but they no longer threaten the common welfare. While this is an admirable goal, this book is not quite up to the task. It feels musty, and show more set up bold claims and analytic frameworks while flinching away from the ultimate conclusions of what it would mean to live in a world of radical egalitarianism.
The Marxist analysis of the structural flaws of capitalism, and the way in which economic competition select for bad behavior is remains deadly accurate, but in many other respects, even this modernized Marxism fails to explain how capitalism will develop, and how it will develop given the admitted failure of the homogenization of the working class and the labor theory of productivity over the 20th century (two traditional Marxist keystone theories).
Society remains the most important actor in the book, and the least-well defined. Mutual solidarity and discussion is all well and good, but Wright doesn't quite develop the differences in society between the scales of say, a small worker-owned collective, a town, a nation, and the entire world. Ambitious plans for universal living wages and social ownership leave aside the massive inequalities between the 1st and 3rd world, and the 99% and the 1%. Finally, Wright has the typical Marxist valorization of the Worker, without considering how essentially non-economic activities fit into his utopian framework. This relentless materialism is both the strength of Marxism, and also its weakness, as it leaves a hollow "sociality" to battle against the Right's ideology of "liberty" show less
The Marxist analysis of the structural flaws of capitalism, and the way in which economic competition select for bad behavior is remains deadly accurate, but in many other respects, even this modernized Marxism fails to explain how capitalism will develop, and how it will develop given the admitted failure of the homogenization of the working class and the labor theory of productivity over the 20th century (two traditional Marxist keystone theories).
Society remains the most important actor in the book, and the least-well defined. Mutual solidarity and discussion is all well and good, but Wright doesn't quite develop the differences in society between the scales of say, a small worker-owned collective, a town, a nation, and the entire world. Ambitious plans for universal living wages and social ownership leave aside the massive inequalities between the 1st and 3rd world, and the 99% and the 1%. Finally, Wright has the typical Marxist valorization of the Worker, without considering how essentially non-economic activities fit into his utopian framework. This relentless materialism is both the strength of Marxism, and also its weakness, as it leaves a hollow "sociality" to battle against the Right's ideology of "liberty" show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 29
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 1,116
- Popularity
- #23,017
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 10
- ISBNs
- 88
- Languages
- 7