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A review by mburnamfink
Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright
3.0
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 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"
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"