Erik Olin Wright
Analytical Marxist sociologist
Erik Olin Wright was an American sociologist who studied social class and the possibility of egalitarian alternatives to capitalism.
1 summary 28 min of listening
American Born 1947 in Berkeley, United States Died 2019
About Erik Olin Wright
Erik Olin Wright was a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a leading figure in Analytical Marxism, an approach that tried to link classical Marxism with modern social science. He was born in Berkeley, California, in 1947 and earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1976. In 2012 he served as president of the American Sociological Association. His research centered on social class. He split the working class into subgroups holding different degrees of power, and he introduced ideas such as deep democracy and interstitial revolution. Among his ten books are Envisioning Real Utopias and Understanding Class. Our catalog includes How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century. Wright died in 2019.