Erik Olin Wright - Understanding Class

Luxembug Lecture by Erik Olin Wright, Analytical Marxist Sociologist, Wisconsin
This talk explores a new way of integrating Marxist, Weberian, and Durkheimian approaches to class analysis. All three of these strands of theory and research attempt to identify central lines of cleavage within economic systems that define people with common economic interests in potential conflict with others; but they differ in how they specify the causal mechanisms that generate such commonality and conflict of interests. I argue that all three kinds of mechanisms exist. The question is how best to understand their interconnection. One way of sorting this out is through the metaphor of society as a game. Conflicts of interests can be specified over what game to play, over the rules of a given game, or over the moves within a given set of rules. Marxist approaches identify classes with the first of these, Weberian with the second, and Durkheimian with the third.
Erik Olin Wright is Vilas Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin. His academic work has been centrally concerned with reconstructing the Marxist tradition in ways that attempt to make it more relevant to contemporary concerns and more cogent as a scientific framework of analysis. He was president of the American Sociological Association in 2011-12.
His most recent books include Envisioning Real Utopias (2010); American Society: how it really works (with Joel Rogers 2011 and 2015); Understanding Class (2015); and Alternatives to Capitalism (with Robin Hahnel, 2016).
isconsin/USA (in English)
Website: www.rosalux.de/event/56728

[@christophersmith2581]

In my opinion Wright is the best intellectual/teacher on class. Rest in peace and power. Comrades, we have a torch that needs to be carried.

[@EclecticSceptic]

Let's carry it

[@tuckerteague1917]

I'm not a big sports fanatic, but an intellectual who can effectively use sports analogies that both make sense and demonstrate they actually know something about sports is a level above in my opinion.

[@nnekababy]

RIP...Your work here is done.

[@chihuahuels]

Rest in peace Erik

[@trienos3040]

Sleep well brother x

[@RedRosa]

Rest in Power

[@omkz8888]

Very helpful and relevant

[@DillPhobia]

A rich man cannot exist without someone else paying for it!

[@EclecticSceptic]

Thanks for the upload.

[@Dayglodaydreams]

I was scared no analytical Marxists would still be alive today. It seems possible that Wright might still be alive; compared to G.A. Cohen.

[@nnekababy]

He is dead.

[@nasanka7428]

Vivek Chibber continues the tradition of precise analysis.

[@jamesladwig4852]

Many of us studied with Erik in Madison -- the torch remains lit

[@BurnigLegionsBlade]

@@nasanka7428 I second this. So glad we still have Vivek with us

[@jama8045]

market capacities vs means of production.

[@empireofpeaches]

The Other Others podcast brought me here

[@_ata_3]

The interpretation of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant is clearly wrong. The difference in wealth between the ant and the grasshopper in this case is not because of their "attributes," "dispositions" or "individual responsibility" it's because of the real consequences of their actual activities. If the ant works by gathering food for winter it clearly gets that food because it has actually got it and stored it. If that applies to particular human societies is another story but one must not deny that actions have consequences in any society. For the audience that this lecture is directed to, you may better understand it like this: If you don't make the revolution things aren't getting better.