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Name: How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century
Rating: 4.2 (109 reviews)
Author: Erik Olin Wright

Erik Olin Wright

A pragmatic strategic guide to building an alternative economic system

4.2 (109 ratings)

35 mins

Brief summary

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century by Erik Olin Wright is a critical analysis of capitalism and offers a roadmap for building a socialist society through democratic means. It emphasizes the importance of class analysis and collective action in achieving this.

Topics

Socialism & Capitalist Critique

Table of Contents

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century
Summary of 12 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? A fresh take on what anticapitalism can mean in the modern era.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the world has witnessed a resurgence of anticapitalist political movements – from Occupy Wall Street in New York to Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. Members of these movements believe that capitalism is not only deeply flawed, but can be replaced by an alternative system.

Of course, their skeptics have questions: Is that really possible? And in light of the twentieth century’s failed experiments in Communism, is it desirable?

The American sociologist Erik Olin Wright thought the answer to both of those questions was an emphatic yes. From the 1970s through the 2010s, he wrote numerous books and articles on the subject. They turned him into one of the most influential proponents of Analytical Marxism – a cross-disciplinary school of thought encompassing history, economics, sociology, and philosophy. Its aim was to take the ideas of traditional Marxism and get rid of the “bullshit,” as one of its practitioners memorably put it.

How to Be an Anticapitalist was Wright’s attempt to make Analytical Marxism accessible to all; he died of leukemia shortly after its completion. These are the blinks to the final work of one of the seminal sociologists of our time.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why anticapitalism needs to go beyond classical Marxism;
why the Soviet Union wasn’t really socialist; and
why socialism is compatible with a market economy.

Although capitalism can claim many successes, it also has many failings.

“How to be an anticapitalist in the twenty-first century?!” a supporter of capitalism might exclaim. How could any reasonable person be such a thing in this day and age?

After all, our pro-capitalist might argue, just look at capitalism’s track record. Since the mid-twentieth century, the developed world has enjoyed massive increases in overall prosperity, economic growth, labor productivity, technological innovation, average life spans, living standards, and the range of consumer goods and services available to ordinary people.

Sure, there’s still poverty and economic inequality – but thanks to capitalism, even lower-income people can enjoy modern conveniences like indoor plumbing, washing machines, and televisions. Meanwhile, all of these benefits are increasingly spreading to the developing world as well. Why would anyone oppose such a successful economic system?

The key message here is: Although capitalism can claim many successes, it also has many failings.

To begin with, the problems of poverty and economic inequality can’t be waved away so easily. Basic modern conveniences aside, millions of people in the US alone suffer from malnutrition, ill-health, unsafe neighborhoods, and other serious issues related to poverty – and all of this despite living in one of the richest capitalistic societies on earth.

Furthermore, poverty and inequality call into question all those material successes our pro-capitalist touted earlier. Sure, capitalism has produced tremendous increases in economic growth, labor productivity, and so forth – but who gets to benefit from these achievements? Mostly the elite. Because of inequality, the majority of people only get to enjoy capitalism’s bounty to a limited and disproportional degree, compared to the wealthiest members of society. And because of poverty, many people struggle to even meet their most fundamental human needs.

Meanwhile, the majority of people also have to pay a heavy price for all these “benefits” that are mostly reserved for the rich. To produce all that prosperity that flows upward, most working adults are stuck in boring, unfulfilling jobs. To make way for all that innovation that boosts the bottom lines of big businesses, many people lose their livelihoods and get thrown into destitution as their jobs become “obsolete.” And to promote all that economic growth that feeds capitalism’s insatiable desire for profit, our current economic system is destroying the environment, causing climate change, and endangering our very ability to continue living on our planet.

It all adds up to a pretty serious list of problems.

Classical Marxism argues that opposition to capitalism should be based on workers’ class interests, not moral values.

Many anticapitalists would argue that issues like poverty and inequality aren’t just social problems that plague our current economic system. They’re moral failings that deserve condemnation.

It's wrong that so many people suffer from want while a small group of elites live in luxury, these anticapitalists would say. It’s even worse that many of those impoverished people are children, who are undeniably blameless for their economic situation. And it’s downright perverse that capitalism perpetuates this injustice while producing more than enough wealth to eliminate it.

To be successful in the current era, anticapitalists can’t rely on appealing to people’s class interests alone.

Are you the CEO of a multinational corporation? Then your class interests are clearly in favor of capitalism. Or do you work in a sweatshop? Then your class interests are clearly against it.

But if you’re like most people in the developed world these days, you’re probably somewhere in between those two extremes. Consider a highly educated professional working in a well-paid occupation. She experiences a mixture of upsides and downsides under capitalism – a good salary but long working hours, perhaps. That means she also has a mixture of class interests both for and against the current economic system.

Anticapitalists need to recognize the importance of people’s moral values and identities.

Why do you do the things you do? What motivates and guides your decisions? Unless you’re an imaginary person straight out of an economics textbook, the answer isn’t your economic self-interests alone. To at least some degree, you’re also influenced by your moral values.

That’s especially true of people’s political activism. Consider Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one. And yet he was also the son of a wealthy capitalist who owned a manufacturing company. According to classical Marxism, Engels’s class interests would have been completely in favor of capitalism. So why did he oppose it? Because he found it morally offensive.

By appealing to moral values, we can connect anticapitalist politics to people’s diverse identities and interests.

Alright, so class interests aren’t the be-all, end-all of anticapitalist politics. Values and identities matter too, and class interests don’t even cover the full extent of people’s overall self-interests.

People can have all sorts of other interests related to their race, gender, and various other aspects of their identities. Meanwhile, class interests themselves are multifaceted and contradictory, thanks to contemporary capitalism having such a fragmented class structure.

Anticapitalism can be based on three pairs of values – equality/fairness, democracy/freedom, and community/solidarity.

If we want to mount a moral argument against capitalism, we can’t rely on claims of fact alone. For instance, we can’t just say that poverty still exists under capitalism. We need to be able to give a reason why this problem is morally unacceptable in the first place.

To do that, we need a normative foundation for our argument – a set of core values we can use to judge the current system and its possible alternatives. For this purpose, the author proposes three pairs of values: equality/fairness, democracy/freedom, and community/solidarity. Each pair is joined by a slash because they’re like two sides of the same coin. Together, they form the moral bedrock on which we can build our anticapitalist politics.

Capitalism fails to live up to our moral values.

With our normative foundation in place, we’re now ready to build our moral argument against capitalism. All we have to do is take our three pairs of values and see how capitalism measures up to them.

Let’s start with community/solidarity. This one is easy to make short work of. As pro-capitalists would be the first to admit, capitalism encourages people to think and act in highly competitive, individualistic, and selfish ways. It’s a system that pits everyone against each other, splits people into “winners” and “losers,” and urges them to just look out for themselves. These behaviors and mentalities are directly at odds with the values of community/solidarity, which are animated by the spirit of cooperation and the sense that “we’re all in this together.”

Democratic socialism provides an alternative to both statism and capitalism.

“All right,” a skeptic might say. “Maybe capitalism does fall short of all those values you’ve set forth. But what’s the alternative? Socialism? Countries like the USSR tried that in the twentieth century, and it failed miserably. Not only were they ruled by oppressive regimes, but their economic systems didn’t even work. That’s why they collapsed. Surely you don’t want to live in a place like the Soviet Union, do you?”

In a word, no. While societies like the USSR claimed to be champions of socialism, they were really examples of an economic system that could more accurately be called statism – a system where the economy is controlled by the state. We don’t want that. But there’s another option: democratic socialism.

Elements of democratic socialism already exist in our current society.

Worker cooperatives would be just one of many possible features of a democratic socialist society.

Participatory budgeting committees could allow residents of cities to decide for themselves how public funds are spent in their own neighborhoods. Peer-to-peer collaborative production networks could allow innovators to link up and build things together on a similar model as Wikipedia. Nonprofits, mutual societies, and a variety of other local community organizations could help people meet their needs for childcare, eldercare, and affordable housing.

Capitalism can be gradually eroded by, and replaced with, democratic socialism.

Imagine you’re walking toward a lake. From a distance, it looks like a single, unified object – just a big body of water. But if you get closer, you’ll see that it’s a complex ecosystem, full of different creatures, plants, and physical elements like rocks and soil.

Economies are like that too. Each of them is a complicated web of diverse enterprises, associations, and institutions. Some of these entities lean more toward the capitalist, statist, or democratic socialist end of the spectrum than others. And many of them lean in multiple directions at once. For instance, a corporation could be owned by private investors but governed by a board of directors whose members are elected by its workers.

Both the market and the state have roles to play in the transition to democratic socialism.

So what should we do? Just sit back and let the process of erosion do its thing?

Not quite. We need to give it time, but we also need to nurture it. Among other things, that means advocating for certain forms of state intervention in the economy, which we’ll look at in a moment.

Anticapitalists should follow a combination of four strategies – taming, resisting, escaping, and dismantling capitalism.

With measures like universal basic income, we’ve only scratched the surface of the possible building blocks of a democratic socialist future. But rather than going through a laundry list of other possibilities, let’s end by stepping back and asking a question that looks at the bigger picture: How do we go about putting these building blocks into place?

Classical Marxism primarily advocated a single strategy: smashing capitalism. Destroy and replace the system in one fell swoop, they argued. But in the twentieth century, this led to many undesirable consequences in countries like the Soviet Union. We don’t want to repeat their mistakes, so we should reject our revolutionary impulses in favor of more gradual approaches to changing the system.

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What is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century about?

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century (2019) is both a moral critique of capitalism and a pragmatic strategy guide to building an alternative economic system. Drawing from Erik Olin Wright’s four decades of work in sociology, it provides a nuanced account of why democratic socialism is both possible and desirable.

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century Review

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century (2018) by Erik Olin Wright is a thought-provoking book that challenges the capitalist system and offers alternative ways of organizing society. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Exploring the practical strategies needed to enact social change, it empowers readers to envision and work towards a more just and equitable world.
Backed by extensive research, it presents a compelling case against capitalism, providing a comprehensive understanding of its flaws and potential alternatives.
Tackling complex ideas with clarity, the book engages readers from start to finish by offering concrete examples and relatable stories that bring the concepts to life.

Who should read How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century?

Anticapitalists looking for new ways of thinking
Pro-capitalists who want to understand their opponents’ views
Skeptics who aren’t sure which side of the debate is right

About the Author

American sociologist Erik Olin Wright was one of the most prominent and influential thinkers of a school of thought called Analytical Marxism. Along with other Analytical Marxists in the fields of history, economics, and philosophy, he sought to bridge the gap between classical Marxism and modern social science. He taught sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for more than 30 years and was the author of 10 books, including Envisioning Real Utopias and Understanding Class. Wright died in 2019.

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