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"The pivotal issue is not whether material conditions on average have improved in the long run within capitalist economies, but rather whether, looking forward from this point in history, things would be better for most people in an alternative kind of economy."

"Where the real disagreement lies -- a disagreement that is fundamental -- is over whether it is possible to have the productivity, innovation and dynamism that we see in capitalism without the harms."

"Two general kinds of motivations are in play in these diverse forms of struggle within and over capitalism: class interests and moral values."

On the complexities of class interests within modern capitalism: "Highly educated professionals, managers and many self-employed people, for example, occupy what I have called contradictory locations within class relations and have quite complex and often inconsistent interests with respect to capitalism."

"[...] a purely class interest-based argument against capitalism will not do for the twenty-first century, and probably was never really entirely adequate"

"People often act against their class interests not because they do not understand those interests, but because other values matter more to them."

On the importance of clarity on values: "We need a way of assessing not just what is wrong with capitalism, but what is desirable about alternatives."

"Three clusters of values are central to the moral critique of capitalism: equality/fairness, democracy/freedom, and community/solidarity."

On how the desire for a democratic _society_ goes further than a just a democratic state: "it requires that people should be able to meaningfully participate in all decisions that significantly affect their lives, whether those decisions are being made within the state or other kinds of institutions."

The community/solidarity "values cluster" is perhaps the most radical piece in this section. Olin Wright defines this as: "Expresses the principle that people ought to cooperate with each other not simply because of what they personally receive, but also from a real commitment to the well-being of others and a sense of moral obligation that it is right to do so."

This is fundamentally at odds with Western ingrained ideas about competition and "survival of the fittest".

A recent Slate article talks about the flaws in Darwin's theory, and how his thinking was heavily influenced by the ideology of this time and circle (Adam Smith et al): https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/darwin-competition-collaboration-evolutionary-biology-climate-change.html

"[...] we must learn to recognize the impulse to naturalize a given human behavior as a political maneuver. Competition is not natural, or at least not more so than collaboration."

Onwards to Chapter 2: Diagnosis and Critique of Capitalism

Ways in which capitalism violates the equality/fairness value cluster:
- Inequality in income and wealth systematically violate egalitarian principles of social justice.
- Some suffer absolute deprivation of the conditions to live flourishing lives, not simply unequal access.
- Imbalance of power between capital and labor, leading to exploitation ("the rich are rich, in part, because the poor are poor").

(continued)
- It is the nature of market competition for advantages and disadvantages to accumulate over time, amplifying inequalities.
- Economic dynamism often destroys jobs, but displaced workers can't instantly retrain and/or move to places with jobs appropriate for them: new jobs are created along with the marginalization and destitution of displaced workers.

Ok, that was a lot of words to say that capitalism leads to wealth and income inequality, which in turn lead to unequal power and freedom.

On the ways in which capitalism undermines community/solidarity:
- "Capitalist cultures generally affirm two clusters of broadly shared values that are in tension with community and solidarity: competitive individualism and privatized consumerism."
- Capitalist culture narrows the social contexts in which most people see the values of community and solidarity as relevant, and expands the contexts in which competitive individualism operates.

This chapter ends with a section on skepticism of anticapitalist arguments.

According to Olin Wright, there are two main kinds of arguments:
1) Capitalism is not the main or only cause of these problems. He counters: "The diagnosis and critique of capitalism does not imply that capitalism is the only cause of deficits in the values of equality, democracy and community, but only that it is a significant contributor."
2) There are no viable alternatives. The rest of the book addresses this.

Onwards, to Chapter 3: Varieties of anticapitalism.

Which starts with this thought: any project of deep social change has to worry about unintended consequences.

"What we need is an understanding of anticapitalist strategies that avoids both the false optimism of wishful thinking and the disabling pessimism that emancipatory social transformation is beyond strategic reach."

He goes on to detail the five historically important strategies in anticapitalist struggles.

Smashing capitalism:
- Classic revolutionary logic.
- Evidence from 20th century is that these don't produce the kind of new world that revolutionaries envision.

Dismantling capitalism:
- Transition via state-directed reforms that incrementally introduce socialism.
- Preconditions: stable electoral democracy, and broadly-supported socialist party capable of winning power for long enough to introduce robust socialist institutions.

Taming capitalism:
- Significantly regulating capitalism, not to eliminate the harms it creates, but to counteract them.
- This is what happened in the West during post-WWII "golden age of capitalism". (He talks about the specific policies that were used, and how/why this got eroded away in last 50 years.)
- "In politics, the limits of possibility are always in part created by beliefs in those limits."

Resisting capitalism:
- Struggles that oppose capitalism but do not seek to themselves gain state power.
- Protests, generally "raising the costs to elites of their actions".
- Response rooted in civil society, solidarities of work and community.
- Most ubiquitous response to capitalism.

Escaping capitalism:
- Removing ourselves from capitalist web of domination, creating "our own micro-alternatives in which to flourish".
- Typically avoids political engagement and collectively organized social change efforts.
- Sometimes, an individualistic strategy dependent on capitalist wealth.

(I sense Olin Wright doesn't have a lot of sympathy for this strategy.)

Typology for these strategies, across two axis:
1) Is the objective to "neutralize harms" or to "transcend structures"?
2) At what level of the system are we playing? Are we changing "the game itself", or "the rules of the game", or only "moves in the game"?

e.g.
Smashing capitalism: transcend structures, and change the game itself.
Resisting capitalism: neutralizing harms, changing moves in the game.

"A new strategic idea may be emerging that combines the bottom-up, civil society-centered initiatives of resisting and escaping capitalism with the top-down, state-centered strategy of taming and dismantling capitalism."

He calls this strategy "eroding capitalism".

Eroding capitalism:
- Build more democratic, egalitarian, participatory economic relations where possible, in the cracks within the system.
- Alternatives have the long-term potential to eventually displace capitalism from its dominant role in the system.

Plausible objection: Given the immense power of capitalist institutions, won't they fight back and prevent these alternatives from taking over?

The following chapters will address this, in three parts:
- We need more substance in this idea of an emancipatory alternative.
- We need to content with the problem of the state.
- We need collective actors (organizations, parties, movements) to adopt this strategy.

Moving onwards to chapter 4: A Destination beyond Capitalism: Socialism as Economic Democracy

Which opens with a reflection on how it is much harder to formulate unifying demands for positive alternatives, than it is to talk about dismantling existing oppressive bullshit.

Sets the stage by talking about a "power-centered" view, focusing on economic, state, and social power. Defines "social power" as the capacity to mobilize people for cooperative, voluntary collective action.

Posits that this "social power" is central to democracy: a state is democratic if it is subordinate to social power.

Olin Wright writes that "markets would play a role in any viable statist or socialist economy", but doesn't really support this argument. I don't love that he leaves this argument unexamined and unsupported, but I get that this probably seems unquestionable to the book's intended audience.

"The issue is how different forms of power shape the operation of markets, not whether markets exist."

After stating that he believes that the optimal shape of this new economy will be a mix of "diverse institutional forms", he goes on to list what he thinks the basic "building blocks" would be:
- unconditional basic income
- cooperative market economy
- social and solidarity economy
- democratizing capitalist firms
- banking as public utility
- non-market economic organizations

He makes some interesting points about these building blocks, but to my taste the treatment feels fairly superficial.

The chapter closes with a reflection on how it won't be possible to create and expand the reach of these "building blocks" without creating the conditions in which sustained democratic experimentation with these new economic forms is possible.

@anaulin This was really emphasized to me, also, by Italian co-op economists of the Civil Economy tradition, who distinguish hard between markets and capitalism. They argue that Italy had markets long before capitalism came from northern Europe. It's a difference of kind and scale. Wright is clearly urging a serious reduction in the scope of markets while recognizing they have a place.

Thank you so much for sharing as you read! I'm eager to see how it shapes your thinking.