He was a really great scholar, and his definition of social-ism was simply a society where the social needs are primary, as opposed to capital-ism, where the needs of capital are primary. He invited me in the spring of 2016, because he thought our P2P approach was eminently compatible with his own vision of Real Utopias. It is then that we wrote the first manuscript of what would become our new book (with 2 co-authors, and yes, the wheels of academic publishing turn very slowly).

Excerpt from the review/obituary in Dissent magazine (republished below) – See how he beautifully solves the dilemma between equal opportunity and equal outcome:

“Wright also believed that socialism must encompass social justice. Unlike a capitalist society where everyone ostensibly has an “equal opportunity” to flourish, social justice requires “equal access” to the resources that allow people to flourish. Social justice also means freedom from social stigma. Children should not get to attend better schools because of how much money their parents have, and racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression need to be overcome so they do not constrain life outcomes.Wright believed that socialism was compatible with markets, but not the kinds of markets that undermine political and social justice. To work in sync with socialism, markets must be smaller in scale and the power of their participants must be limited. In other words, they should look less like free markets and more like garage sales. ”

Republished from Dissent Magazine:

Erik Olin Wright, a University of Wisconsin–Madison sociologist and former president of the American Sociological Association, died from acute myeloid leukemia on January 23, 2019. He was 72.

Erik Olin Wright (Aliona Lyasheva, Wikimedia Commons)

Wright’s body of work is voluminous. He began in 1973 with a study
of prisons in the United States. From there, he edited and wrote almost
two dozen books on class and capitalism. From the “Utopia and
Revolution” seminar he initiated and led as a graduate student at the
University of California–Berkeley to the book he finished in the
intensive care unit of Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, Wright developed
one of the most sustained understandings of class and capitalism since
Karl Marx. Like his forebear, Wright believed in the moral impetus to
struggle against capitalism and to envision alternatives.

Decades of research culminated in his 2010 magnum opus Envisioning Real Utopias.
For Wright, “real utopias” were democratic and egalitarian “real-world
alternatives that can be constructed in the world as it is that also
prefigure the world as it could be, and which help move us in that
direction.” Such institutions range from Wikipedia to the Mondragon
federation of worker cooperatives in Spain. The short version
of Wright’s thesis is that the left can erode capitalism with these
institutions, while taming capitalism in the political sphere. The
long-term result is socialism.

As he built his theory of transformation, Wright—in contrast to Dylan Riley
and other thinkers he engaged in argument—was skeptical that capitalism
could be smashed in a way that would engender full emancipation. He was
critical of the Soviet Union and other states forged by revolution. For
Wright, a socialist state is realized when social power—rather than
economic power (capitalism) or state power (statism)—dominates. In
socialism, individuals have a say to the extent that something affects
them. A corporation, for example, cannot build its chemical plant in a
neighborhood, unless the people living there agree. And the government
cannot subordinate the interests of its constituencies to the interests
of its politicians. The so-called socialist states of the twentieth
century, like their capitalist counterparts, never achieved this form of
political justice.

Wright also believed that socialism must encompass social justice.
Unlike a capitalist society where everyone ostensibly has an “equal
opportunity” to flourish, social justice requires “equal access” to the
resources that allow people to flourish. Social justice also means
freedom from social stigma. Children should not get to attend better
schools because of how much money their parents have, and racism,
sexism, and other forms of oppression need to be overcome so they do not
constrain life outcomes.

Wright believed that socialism was compatible with markets, but not
the kinds of markets that undermine political and social justice. To
work in sync with socialism, markets must be smaller in scale and the
power of their participants must be limited. In other words, they should
look less like free markets and more like garage sales. Those ideas
pushed against Robin Hahnel
and other utopian thinkers, and opened Wright to criticism from more
orthodox Marxists. Nonetheless, he never abandoned a position because it
was unfashionable. But he also was willing to change his mind. Wright
revised and discarded his own ideas when he felt that they no longer
held water.

Before Real Utopias was published, Wright introduced his ideas
in over fifty talks across eighteen countries. His ideas were debated
and refined in the kind of open, deliberative forums that he championed.
He continued that work after the book’s publication as president of the
American Sociological Association. Under his leadership, the ASA’s
international conference convened hundreds of sociologists from around
the world to build on Wright’s work.

Wright also ran the A. E. Havens Center for Social Justice in
Madison, which brought together scholars and activists devoted to
creating a more egalitarian and democratic future. Mike Davis, Barbara
Ehrenreich, Nancy Fraser, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Tariq Ali, David
Harvey, Theda Skocpol, Noam Chomsky, and grassroots organizers from a
number of countries have participated. Under Wright’s guidance, many of
the emancipatory projects debated in the Havens Center have been
published in Verso’s Real Utopias Project series.

Over the course of his career, Wright advised hundreds of students.
César Rodríguez-Garavito of Dejusticia, Amy Lang of Health Quality
Ontario, University of Michigan associate chair of sociology Greta
Krippner, Columbia University sociology chair Shamus Khan, the late
Devah Pager of Harvard University, and so many others cut their teeth as
Wright’s PhD students. More recently, Wright’s influence can be felt in
the work of New York University’s Vivek Chibber, Peter Frase, and other
writers who helped to build Jacobin and Catalyst. This new wave of socialist intellectuals produce work that is characteristic of the “Non-Bullshit Marxism”
group that Wright was a part of. Alongside Samuel Bowles and Robert
Brenner, Wright emphasized the need for clear, unpretentious writing
that is accessible and relevant to the widest audience.

Like his comrade Michael Burawoy, Wright never abandoned his
commitment to socialism even when the Cold War made his political
stances unpopular in the academy and the general public. He succeeded in
spite of it because of the rigor that undergirded his work. In 1981 a
number of professors at Harvard tried to recruit Wright despite their “bitter opposition”
to his politics. In other years, Wright received calls from Princeton
and other universities. When I asked him why he never left the
University of Wisconsin, he told me that he “wanted to build something
that would last.” He declined higher salary offers and more prestigious
appointments to create a Midwest refuge for radical thinkers. In the
process, he helped to make Wisconsin-Madison one of the most recognized
sociology departments in the world. As Harvard’s Harrison White
observes, Wright never let his political commitments get in the way of
serious scholarship or conclusions that he did not like. The result was
decades of work that pushed forward mainstream sociology and the Marxist
tradition, reshaping both in the process.

When I first reached out to Wright in 2017 while planning to apply to
graduate school, he was one of the few professors who wrote back. He
was the only one who asked me about my work and wanted to know more
about me. That year, we exchanged a number of emails, in which he
offered me feedback on a work in progress and encouraged me to come to
Madison. Someone of Wright’s stature devoting time to exchange emails
with a nobody is close to unheard of. Wright even thought to write me
the day after he was diagnosed with leukemia to let me know that the
future was “more uncertain,” and that he did not want me to accept my
offer of admission to Wisconsin without knowing that he might not be
around to advise me.

This care and concern for the people around him was classic Erik Olin Wright. If you look at the hashtag #EOWtaughtMe trending on Twitter or the comments on his Caring Bridge journal,
you’ll find an outpouring of affection. From his bicycle tours of
Madison to the one-on-one attention he gave to graduate students
whenever he visited a university; from the nature retreats
that ended his seminars to the incredible love he expressed for his
wife, Marcia, his children, and grandchildren; Wright will be remembered
as an iconic thinker who embodied the socialist vision that he worked
so hard to bring forth.

Adam Szetela is a PhD student in the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The post Remembering Erik Olin Wright appeared first on P2P Foundation.