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.

This short book is more than just a type of 'self-help' or 'how-to-do something' book. Sociologist Erik Olin Wright distilled some of the ideas from his previous book in 2010, Envisioning Real Utopias, with a comprehensive and accessible explanation to all kinds of readers. There are also changes in his thoughts that have developed through times and followed the current era.
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He showed all of the more complex problems within capitalism and provided the glimmer of hope to reduce it at the same time. He proposed 'eroding capitalism' as a new strategic idea, combining the civil society-centered (bottom-up) strategies, such as resisting and escaping capitalism, with a state-centered strategy (top-down) of taming capitalism. ⁣
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Wright also shared the same argument about Unconditional Basic Income with David Graeber in Bullshit Jobs, that UBI would allow people to reject exploitative work and capitalist labor market. With UBI that is funded from taxes paid by higher earners, people could do work that does them and the society good in any sector.⁣
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I’d recommend this book to anyone with or without a background in sociology or economics. This book is an accessible primer to the anticapitalist ideas that we need in the current social climate.⁣ ( )

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 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. ( )

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2020-02.html#wright ( )