How to be an anticapitalist in the twenty-first century
Book - 2019
What is wrong with capitalism, and how can we change it? 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 provide both the basis for a critique of capitalism and help to guide us toward a socialist and democratic society. Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an un...paralleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible. Included is an afterword by the author's close friend and collaborator Michael Burawoy.--
- Subjects
- Published
-
London ; Brooklyn, NY :
Verso
2019.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- xiv, 157 pages : 22 cm
- ISBN
- 9781788736053
- Preface
- 1. Why Be Anticapitalist?
- What is capitalism?
- Grounds for opposing capitalism
- Normative foundations
- Equality/fairness
- Democracy/freedom
- Community/solidarity
- 2. Diagnosis and Critique of Capitalism
- Equality/fairness
- Class and exploitation
- Competition and risk
- Disruptive economic growth
- Democracy/freedom
- Community/solidarity
- Skepticism
- 3. Varieties of Anticapitalism
- Strategic logics
- Smashing capitalism
- Dismantling capitalism
- Taming capitalism
- Resisting capitalism
- Escaping capitalism
- Strategic configurations
- Eroding capitalism
- 4. The Destination beyond Capitalism: Socialism as Economic Democracy
- A power-centered concept of socialism
- Building blocks of a democratic socialist economy
- Unconditional basic income
- The cooperative market economy
- The social and solidarity economy
- Democratizing capitalist firms
- Banking as a public utility
- Nonmarket economic organization
- State provision of goods and services
- Peer-to-peer collaborative production
- The knowledge commons
- Back to the problem of strategy
- 5. Anticapitalism and the State
- The problem of the capitalist state
- Internal contradictions of the state
- Contradictory, contested functionality
- Prospects
- Democratizing the state
- Democratically empowered decentralization
- New forms of citizen participation
- New institutions for democratic representation
- Democratizing electoral rules of the game
- 6. Agents of Transformation
- Collective actors for eroding capitalism
- The problem of collective agency
- The concept of "agency"
- Identities
- Interests
- Values
- From identities, interests and values to collective actors
- Overcoming privatized lives
- Fragmented class structures
- Competing sources of identity
- Real politics
- Afterword