Challenging (and maybe Transforming) Capitalism through Real Utopias
Abstract
While capitalism has become more destructive both to the lives of people and the health of the environment, it seems to most people an unalterable force of nature. Social democratic hopes of taming capitalism by neutralizing its harmful effects through decisive state regulations have been undermined by the globalization and financialization of capital. Revolutionary ambitions of smashing capitalism through a ruptural seizure of state power, a coercive dissolution of capitalist institutions and their replacement by an emancipatory alternative, lack credibility. Are these the only logics of transformation? There may be a different route that points beyond capitalism: transcending capitalism by building emancipatory alternatives to capitalism in the spaces and cracks within capitalist economies and struggling to defend and expand those spaces.
About the speaker
Prof. Erik Olin Wright received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976. He joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison since then, and is currently Professor of Sociology.
Prof. Wright’s research focuses on social stratification from a class-based Marxist perspective. He has authored or co-authored 93 articles and 13 books, including American Society: How it Really Works, Envisioning Real Utopias, and Approaches to Class Analysis, etc.
Prof. Wright has received awards including the Distinguished Publications Award from the American Sociological Association, the University of Wisconsin Distinguished Teaching Award, the Outstanding paper in Social Stratification from Cornell University, etc. He was the President of the American Sociological Association from 2011 to 2012.
