Irish Journal of Sociology (2013)

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Transforming capitalism through real utopias: a critical
engagement
CONOR McCABE
School of Social Justice, University College Dublin
Abstract
This article argues that Wright’s work poorly understands the frameworks and
organisational structures necessary to confront class power. Taking Wright’s
symbiotic strategies, it makes the point that if those strategies start to make
gains, capital will react – and with force – but that Wright fails to build this into
his argument. This leaves unaddressed the changes in class power in the past
forty years and the implications of these for viable counter-capitalist strategies,
avoiding any mention of trade unions or political parties. It states that the missing
element in Wright’s proposals is class power. Identifying financialisation
as being at the heart of the changes in class power, it sees the state and state
services as a crucial battleground as any democratic gains here are losses for
finance capital. As the drive to dismantle the welfare state places more pressure
on women, the article ends by focusing attention on the importance of women’s
struggles against cutbacks and privatisation of state provision.
Key words: capitalism, labour movement, utopian strategies, sustainability,
financialisation
It is not possible to leapfrog transitions. Humanity has yet to invent a way
to transport entire societies into the future and avoid the challenges and
contradictions, the blind alleys and compromises that come with deep structural
change. The fact that change is linear, that it can only happen within the steady
pace of real time, lies at the heart of Erik Olin Wright’s proposals for an actually
existing utopia. The challenge for those seeking to transform the world is to
hold on to their emancipatory ideals ‘without embarrassment or cynicism’
while remaining ‘fully cognizant of the deep complexities and contradictions of
realizing those ideals’ (Wright 2013: 3). The process of building a new society
is a dull revolution, incremental in nature, requiring incredible patience. It also
© Copyright Irish Journal of Sociology ISSN 0791 6035, EISSN 2050 5280, Vol. 21.2, 2013, pp. 51–61
http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/IJS.21.2.4

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Irish Journal of Sociology52
requires a plan. This is the task that Wright has set for himself: how to build a
world of equality while working in the world of today.
The purpose of Wright’s article, however, is not to provide a final blueprint
for change. This is not a political manifesto, a collection of theses statements
for consumption and repetition. Wright lays out certain fundamental principles
regarding equality, democracy and sustainability that need to frame any real
utopia. These are seen as non-negotiable. After that, he makes the case for
certain tactics and strategies which may be useful in achieving the full realisa-
tion of those guiding principles, but it is done in a discursive way, with room
for adaption, improvisation, and amendment. This is the strength of the article.
Wright presents us with a strategy for change that is logically robust while still
retaining the elasticity needed for practical adaptation.
The following will give a brief outline of Wright’s analysis and strategy,
followed by a discussion and evaluation of that strategy alongside proposals
for resistance and transformation. The critical engagement presented below is
therefore done within the spirit of the original article – that is, it is presented as
a small contribution to the ongoing and dynamic conversation on real utopias.
Transforming capitalism
What, then, are the fundamental principles that underpin Wright’s strategy?
First of all, he is concerned with establishing alternatives to capitalism itself,
not just alternatives within it. There is a tension at play here, as according to
Wright the pathway to the former lies with the latter. There is also a danger that
the alternatives may not act to transform capitalism but to compensate for it,
to take the edge off its inequalities. Despite this seemingly reformist approach,
Wright makes it clear, though, that the types of real utopias he has in mind
are impossible without the transformation of capitalist ‘power relations within
the economy in ways that deepen and broaden the possibility of meaningful
democracy’ (Wright 2013: 2). This is the end goal, and it is within this context
that the moral principles used to evaluate present institutions, and frame future
ones, are laid out: namely, equality, democracy and sustainability.
Given these guiding principles, Wright concludes that there are serious
deficits within capitalism. It allows private wealth to affect political power;
it excludes crucial economic decisions from public discourse; and it allows
workplace dictatorships. It also generates huge societal inequalities and
threatens sustainability through its relentless pursuit of profit-seeking growth.
Not all societal problems are reducible to capitalism, of course, but Wright
believes that ‘exploring real utopian alternatives to capitalism is an especially
pressing matter in this historical period’ (Wright 2013: 6).
Wright puts forward some examples of counter-capitalist institutions and
practices. These include participatory budgeting; Wikipedia; public libraries;
solidarity finance; worker-owned cooperatives; urban agriculture; internet-based

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Transforming capitalism through real utopias 53
reciprocity economies; randomocracy; and an unconditional basic income. He
lays out a general framework for analysing real utopian alternatives with seven
basic configurations, putting forward participatory socialism as the one which
stresses ‘the transformation of power relations over economic activity, both in
terms of how social power is directly involved in shaping economic activity
and how it indirectly shapes economic activity through the democratization of
the state’ (Wright 2013: 19). His article ends with a brief discussion on the
problem of transformation which requires, he says, an ‘understanding of how
strategies of transformation have long-term prospects for eroding capitalist
power relations and building up socialist alternatives’ (Wright 2013: 20).
These strategies of transformation he divides into three broad categories:
ruptural, interstitial and symbiotic. Wright explains that ‘ruptural strategies are
most closely associated with revolutionary socialism and communism, inter-
stitial strategies with some strands of anarchism, and symbiotic strategies with
social democracy’ (Wright 2013: 21). He envisages a scenario whereby inter-
stitial and symbiotic strategies interact with each other pushing social change,
‘with perhaps periodic episodes involving elements of ruptural strategy’(Wright
2013: 21). He is quite clear that the purpose of ruptural – that is, revolutionary –
events is not to overthrow capitalism but rather to open up space for interstitial
and symbiotic strategies to take root and grow. As to whether the revolutionary
actors would see it this way and brush themselves down and step aside once
they have done the heavy lifting, on that Wright is silent.
The radical left, Wright concludes, should broaden its view of power, par-
ticularly political power, and embrace interstitial strategies as these strategies
show that ‘another world is possible by building it in the spaces available, and
then pushing against the state and public policy to expand these spaces’(Wright
2013: 22).
Critical engagement
Given the ideas that Wright himself has put forward, it is clear that it is in the
realm of the interstitial that he himself feels most comfortable. The centring
of sustainability as an arena of genuine contestation between capitalist and
counter-capitalist is an essential part of any strategy of transformation.
It is in the arena of class power, however, and the frameworks and organisa-
tional structures necessary to confront class power, that Wright is found wanting.
He writes that any advances by symbiotic strategies which appeared to threaten
the core power of capital were massively resisted, and cites the example of
Sweden in the 1970s to bolster his case. This is all true, but what can be said
of trade union advances and capitalism can also be said of solidarity finance,
worker-owned co-operatives and an unconditional basic income. Power that can
be sidestepped so easily is not power. No matter what is used to undermine the
power of capital, if those strategies start to make gains, capital will react, and

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Irish Journal of Sociology54
with force. This confrontation cannot be avoided, and needs to be built into the
equation. And this is something that Wright fails to do. Similarly, the changes
in class power in the past forty years, and the implications of these changes in
terms of viable counter-capitalist strategies, are unaddressed in Wright’s real
utopias.
In 1989 the Marxist geographer David Harvey noted that ‘something signif-
icant has changed in the way capitalism has been working since about 1970’
(Harvey 1989: 173). He saw this as a move from Fordism to flexible accumu-
lation, a process marked by ‘the complete reorganization of the global financial
system and the emergence of greatly enhanced powers of financial co-ordination’
(Harvey 1989: 160). It was in line with an argument that had been put forward
regularly by Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy in Monthly Review – namely that
within capitalism since the late 1960s there has been a ‘shift in gravity’ in prof-
it-seeking activity ‘from production to finance’ (Foster and Magdoff 2009: 18).
Other authors, including Gerald Epstein, Greta Kripper, and Thomas Palley,
have given the label of Financialisation to this phenomenon. This reconstitution
of profit-seeking activity within capitalism has led to profound realignments at a
social, cultural, economic and political level. It is possible to see these dynamics
in the rise of neoliberalism. At the same time it is important to remind ourselves
that the dominance of capital over labour in advanced capitalist countries, the
withering away of the post-World War compromise and New Deal policies, can
mask somewhat the changes that have occurred within the capitalist class.
The shift in economic power towards finance capital has been achieved not
only in the realm of the workplace but also in relation to monetary policy –
in particular the emphasis on ultra-low inflation regardless of the social cost.
The attack on trade union membership across the private and public sectors
has been a boon to the employer and financier. At the same time the concurrent
shift in economic power within the capitalist class – from producer-employer
to rentier-financier – has been facilitated by the decline of the power of labour.
In an article in the Financial Times, Ian Harnett and David Bowers of Absolute
Strategy Research stated in surprisingly clear terms that the ‘success in beating
inflation has been achieved at the cost of a declining share of labour in national
income’ (Harnett and Bowers 2013). ‘It is not a coincidence that the share of
labour in GDP peaks in the 1970s for the US and the UK,’ they wrote. ‘Given
that the largest element of costs was – and remains – labour, the fight against
inflation amounted to a campaign to squeeze labour incomes.’
This was part of a plan. Writing back in 1968, the Chicago School economist,
Harry Gordon Johnson, argued in a paper on monetary economics that ‘the
avoidance of inflation and the maintenance of full employment can be most
usefully regarded as conflicting class interests of the bourgeoisie and the pro-
letariat, respectively,’ and that this conflict is resolvable ‘only by the test of
relative political power in the society and its resolution involving no reference
to an overriding concept of the social welfare’ (Perelman 2011: 45–6). Johnson

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Transforming capitalism through real utopias 55
is clear as to the arena where the battle will take place: the political field and
the realm of ideas regarding care and social reproduction. In order to weaken
the power of the labour movement to set wages, it needed to be attacked outside
the workplace. And this had to be done in order to strengthen the profit-seeking
strategies of finance. From Chile to Reagan, from Thatcher to the ECB, the
war on inflation amounted to a war on labour and social cohesion. Harnett and
Bowers’ article highlights the relative weakness of the labour movement today.
At the same time however, it also recognises, albeit indirectly, that a strong
labour movement has the capacity to address the power of capital – not only in
the workplace but in the world of finance as well.
Despite this, there is no mention of trade unions or the trade union movement
in Wright’s article save for a brief reference to Sweden in the 1980s. It is a sig-
nificant omission, especially given the dynamics of capitalist class relations. It
is also somewhat understandable, as trade unions appear today to be an anach-
ronism, a side-show to the real business of envisioning real utopias. However,
despite all the problems with the trade unions today, are they really so ineffective
that Wikipedia trumps them in the counter-capitalist stakes? As the last serious
bulwark against full managerial control and exploitation in the workplace, and
as one of the few working-class organisations that finance genuinely fears, trade
unionism has a lot more to offer in terms of carving a more democratic world
than activities such as a randomocracy or internet crowd-funding.
We should always remind ourselves that in discussing the labour movement
it is important to recognise that labour means just that: labour. It does not mean
industrial labour alone. The power of labour comes from unity, not job title.
It is this capacity for social power through unity that offers progressives and
radicals the possibility of creating a space for genuine transformative social
change. ‘Even though the trade unions have been considerably weakened and
driven back onto the defensive,’ writes Asbjørn Wahl, Director of the broad
Campaign for the Welfare State in Norway, ‘they are nevertheless the most
important social force that can mobilise resistance’ against austerity and the
public costs of the financial bailouts (Wahl 2012: 180). This is not to say that the
labour movement is the sole key point to transforming capitalism – only that it
needs to be part of any overall strategy. At the very least the labour movement
deserves our attention: it certainly has the attention of capital, and that should
tell us something.
Political organisation is an essential part of any strategy to counter the power
of capital. As long as a state’s laws are framed by parliament, then progressives
not only need to have a voice there, but also have to have a hand in steering the
focus and direction of legislation. It is within this momentum – the political
momentum – where the compromises and false starts are at their most acute.
Nonetheless, it is crucial. The drive towards social transformation is political as
well as cultural and educational.

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Irish Journal of Sociology56
As with the trade union movement, Wright makes little mention of political
parties or activist-type agitation. It is as if the changes needed to transform
society and the economy will be achieved by lobbying those already in power,
coupled with good intentions. Again, it is possible to see why Wright may
wish to avoid an overtly political dimension to his thesis. There is an over-
whelming cynicism these days with all things political, and save for brief
moments of genuine opportunity, the world of politics is one where radicals
have to compromise the most, and for seemingly little gain. Yet, capital has not
conceded the political to other forces. Indeed, it retains a tight grip on political
power for the very reason that when used as part of a wider strategy, politics can
bring transformative change. It is too important to be left out of the equation.
The retreat into utopian spaces within capitalism has gained currency among
certain progressive and radical circles, and is itself tied up with the myth of
the individual, transformative action. In a recent publication the academic and
author Jodi Dean challenged the assumptions which underpin these ventures,
describing such radical expressions as ‘the artistic equivalent of the 5k and
10k runs to fight cancer’ (Dean 2012: 14). Instead, writes Dean, ‘the power of
the return of communism stands or falls in its capacity to inspire large-scale
organised collective struggle toward a goal’ (Dean 2012: 14). Similarly, for
those who wish to democratise economic power relations, there is a need to be
engaged in the framing of legislation at both national (and international) levels. It
is doubtful whether a strategy built around counter-capitalist spaces can achieve
anything more than enclave status – that is, an alternative, temporary space
within society – while that society continues its forward march towards the
re-privatisation and financialisation of what remains of what is held in common.
Wright correctly positions the issue of sustainability as central to any plan
for transforming capitalism. It emerged as a powerful intellectual argument in
the late 1970s, culminating in the 1987 report, Our Common Future by the
World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Today, its
temporal aspect is part of the green movement and its spatial aspect a critical
dynamic within global justice campaigns. The fact that these alternatives have
been around for so long, however, means that capitalism has had time to absorb
certain aspects of these alternatives, to nullify them and to actually make them
fully fledged capitalist strategies of marketisation and financialisation. Even the
WCED report framed its call for sustainability within an understanding that
this should happen as part of a new era of profit-seeking growth. Furthermore,
it argued that such growth was ‘absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty
that is deepening in much of the developed world’ (WCED 1987: 1). The
growthless economy of sustainability is not part of the plan.
More recently, a publication entitled Entrepreneurship and Sustainability:
Business Solutions For Poverty Alleviation From Around the World was able to
use the language of social justice and sustainability to make the argument that

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Transforming capitalism through real utopias 57
‘economic and social inequality will not be solved until we enable residents of
disadvantaged communities in the developing and developed world to prosper in
the market system’ (Halkias and Thurman 2012: 11). In a chapter on embedded
social franchises in the UK the argument was made that ‘the fatal weaknesses of
the public sector to satisfy social needs have redefined the relationship between
the state and the individual’ and because of this, ‘entrepreneurial activity has
been pulled to the third sector, leading to the emergence of new organisation-
al forms like social enterprises’ (Zafeiropoulas and Woods 2012: 185). Today,
social enterprises are put forward by capitalism ‘as an evolution to public
bodies’ (Zafeiropoulas and Woods 2012: 185). The emphasis is mine as the
authors see this evolution as a natural and socially positive development, one to
be encouraged as beneficial to all.
At the same time, the Royal Society of London, hardly a bastion of radical
socialism, published a report entitled People and the Planet which recommend-
ed both the development of ‘socio-economic systems and institutions that are
not dependent on continued material consumption growth’ and ‘the develop-
ment and implementation of policies that allow both people and the planet to
flourish’ (Sulston 2012: 9). It openly called for the abandonment of GDP as
a measure of growth and laid emphasis on the need to explore ideas around
growthless economies that are sustainable and beneficial to humankind. It
shows that sustainability is an area of genuine contestation – not just between
the Green movement and capitalism of course, but also between market-solu-
tion and growthless activists within that movement. It is that very contestation
which gives the sustainability debate scope for radical societal transformation.
At the moment, the shedding of state services within the social economy –
in effect the mass re-privatisation of that social sphere – is being enabled by
some of the very mechanisms that Wright puts forward as socialist-building
strategies. The retreat of the state from the social economy is being undertaken
in order to free up public money for private capital – and additionally, since
2008, to cover the losses of private capital as a result of the financial implosion.
Social economy councils, co-operatives, an unconditional basic income – these
are all viable dynamics of a post-capitalist world – but it is questionable whether
these initiatives on their own can help us get from today’s world to a socialist
society as finance capital has already developed ways to make them work in its
favour, not ours.
In order for these strategies to operate as spheres of transformation rather
than assimilation, the economic, legal and political dynamics which underpin
capitalist social relations need to be tackled as well. Another front in the
campaign for a counter-capitalist world is needed. The current battle over the
resources of the state needs to be engaged with and factored into the strategy
for real utopias. This means dealing with the dynamics of current economic
power relations; and in that sphere, file-sharing and urban gardens have little to
offer by way of counter-offensive. The missing element in Wright’s proposals

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Irish Journal of Sociology58
is power, and class power at that. And it is on this question that we should focus
our attention.
Counter-capitalist strategies
In his 2012 publication, In Place of Austerity, Dexter Whitfield summarises the
present financial crisis as ‘a failure of neoliberalism that prioritised deregulation,
marketisation, competition, debt-driven consumerism, privatisation, and the
erosion of democratic accountability and transparency’ (Whitfield 2012: 4).
He explores not only the world of alternatives to capitalism but also tactics
and strategies that oppose and weaken the grip that capital – in particular,
finance capital – has on our lives, our communities, our workplaces and our
futures. He argues that we should not assume that anti-capitalist tactics by
themselves constitute an anti-capitalist plan of action. ‘Examples of successful
campaigns elsewhere are important to illustrate what can be achieved and to
give confidence,’he writes, ‘but they are not a substitute for strategy’(Whitfield
2012: 116). In essence this is what Wright presents in his real utopias paper.
He gives us examples as strategy, not examples as part of an overall strategy,
and certainly not one which is willing to confront power directly. His general
frameworks are a poor substitute – an almost technocratic response – to what
Wright himself sees as the most pressing need of our day: the need for a vibrant
and sustainable alternative to capitalism.
Whitfield highlights the work of trade unions and community organisations
across Europe in opposing the public spending cuts and increased charges for
services, as well as outsourcing, job losses and wage reductions. However, he
also makes the point that while resistance is crucial, it needs to be directed
through an understanding of the prime directive of finance capital. He points
out that the policies of marketisation and privatisation ‘are designed to create
markets that lead to the transfer of government functions and service provision
to the private sector’, that they are mechanisms for private capital ‘to gain more
power and control in the economy’, that financialisation and personalisation ‘are
a means of transferring risk, cost and responsibility to individuals as a means of
reducing the scope of the welfare state’, and that ‘these policies are a means by
which capital can radically reduce the role of the state, yet safeguard corporate
welfare, which consists of tax breaks, subsidies, contracts and regulatory con-
cessions’ (Whitfield 2012: 1–2). None of this is by accident. Finance capital
needed to develop corporate welfare in the 1970s and 1980s as profit-seeking
strategies within production began to stagnate. This means that the state and
state services are a crucial battleground in combating financialisation, as any
genuine democratic gains here are actual losses for finance capital.
The type of participatory budgeting called for by Wright, far from being
an anti-capitalist alternative, is being used by finance capital as a cover for its
own plans. ‘Community budgets, participative budgeting, big society, voluntary

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Transforming capitalism through real utopias 59
sector contracting, mutuals and social enterprises … will only be mainstreamed
if they benefit a minority,’ writes Whitfield. ‘They are tolerated because, in
parallel, capital is gaining control of a far larger share of public and welfare
provision’ (Whitfield 2012: 2). These plans are being used today to weaken
trade unions and community and civil society organisations – the very organisa-
tions that carry the potential for counter-capitalist resistance.
According to Whitfield, ‘building alliances and coalitions between trade
union, community and civil society organisations and taking action is essential
to broaden and strengthen support’ (Whitfield 2012: 117). This is a call for a
merging of campaigns and interests; it is not simply about platform-sharing or
shared logos in a leaflet. And here, Whitfield is drawing upon ideas emanating
from Latin and North America – in particular those associated with social
movement unionism. In the words of the American academic and activist,
Dan Clawson, ‘rather than a united front of movements that remain separate
and operate as partners, we need to abolish the distinctions between these
movements’ (Clawson 2003: 195). The labour movement ‘must do more than
build alliances; it must fuse with these movements such that it is no longer clear
what is a labour issue and what is a women’s issue or an immigrant issue’.
The attack on social services and the Commons brings finance capital into
the realm of social reproduction. Work in this sphere is usually carried out by
women in addition to their paid wage labour. When Wright discusses growth
he does so through assumptions which see human activity as a tripartite of
profit-seeking work, consumption and leisure. His proposal to ‘reengineer the
economy in the rich regions of the world in such a way that increases in leisure
would be given priority over increases in consumption’ is one that still remains
chained to the conceptual framework of capital-led analysis. And there is more
to growth than simply positing the absence of profiting-seeking growth.
Drawing on the writings of Camille Barbagallo and Silvia Federici, the
London-based group, Feminist Fightback, argues that ‘over the past thirty years,
despite their being essential to human life, neoliberal restructuring across the
world has privatised, eroded and demolished our shared resources, and ushered
in a crisis of social reproduction’ (Feminist Fightback 2011: 73). The drive to
dismantle the welfare state in its various guises has the effect of placing more
pressure on women in their ‘double shift’ to compensate for the withdrawal of
the state from this arena of social necessity. Feminist Fightback focus on this
aspect of austerity ‘not because we think this is the only feminist issue, or is only
an issue for feminists, but because we see it as a productive way into thinking
about how to build a movement that can mount a much broader challenge to the
austerity drive’ (Feminist Fightback 2011: 75). The need for finance capital to
enclose social reproduction for profit-seeking purposes makes the issue one that
contains the potential for a genuine counter-attack against finance capital. In the
world of Feminist Fightback,

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Irish Journal of Sociology60
An alliance between working mothers and childcare workers has radical potential.
It would require – and therefore constitute – a significant shift in mentalities,
thereby pushing against one of the key divisions from which capitalism has
benefited. Bridging the distinction between waged/unwaged, productive/repro-
ductive workers rejects the artificial distinctions between the two, while also
confronting the very real issues which produce the divisions. This would not be
an alliance to defend the current system, but to call for its transformation; for
something better. Such alliances would also make visible the labour and economic
impact of care work, confronting the logic at the heart of the government’s rep-
resentation of public services as a luxury extra. (Feminist Fightback 2011: 79)
The counter-capitalist strategies put forward by Dexter Whitfield and
Feminist Fightback are ones that are fully cognisant of the fact that capital is
an unequal and highly destructive power relation, and that today finance capital
is the dominant strand of capital within so-called ‘advanced’ economies of the
USA and Europe. In the case of Feminist Fightback, it brings an insight into
the patriarchal nature of capitalism and the discipline of economics which is
generally used to decipher its code.
Cooperation among movements for societal change is nothing new; but the
purpose of that cooperation, and its power, appears to have been forgotten.
Wright’s real utopias project places that cooperation at the heart of the analysis.
Where the present author differs with Wright is in the tactics and strategies
that need to be undertaken to make that vision a truly transformative one. This
comes out of the thesis that the way finance capital seeks profit and maintains
power has an effect on the shape of our resistance to it. The ideas of social
movement unionism and feminist economics serve to shine a light on ways of
thinking and agitational organisation that will complement the project proposed
by Wright: that is, how to transform capitalism through envisioning real utopias.
The political state, far from losing its influence and power, remains a contested
space between capital and democratic ideals. By engaging with trade unions,
community and civil organisations, as well as issues and organisational oppor-
tunities which arise out of the ‘crisis’ of social reproduction, we can start to
imagine how we might be able to counter the plans that finance capital has for
the modern state, and how we can make that journey from where we are to the
type of society in which we want to live.
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