January 7, 2016

Envisioning Utopias

An Anticapitalism That Can Win
We should engage with and update the revolutionary Marxist tradition — not reject it.
Dylan Riley 1-7-16

Today’s left boasts many brilliant students of capitalism, the state, culture, and geopolitics. But its strategic thinking is woefully underdeveloped. There are two obvious explanations for this: the chasm between the injustices of global capitalism and the sorts of social agents that could potentially transform it, and skepticism about the project of a scientifically informed radical politics.

Whatever the reason, the Left still awaits a figure who could plausibly claim the mantle of Gramsci, the early Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, or Trotsky. Erik Olin Wright’s “How to Be an Anticapitalist Today,” which is a pithy summation of the main political message of his 2010 book Envisioning Real Utopias, focuses precisely on the questions of socialist strategy that were at the core of the revolutionary Marxist tradition. If only for this reason, his courageous and clearly stated position deserves close attention.

The specific problem of Envisioning and “How to be an Anticapitalist Today” is how to develop a radical politics in a context where”no existing social theory is sufficiently powerful to even begin to construct . . . a comprehensive representation of possible social destinations, possible futures.” This theoretical failing creates a “gap between the time-horizons of scientific theory and the time-horizons of transformative struggles.” ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/olin-wright-real-utopias-socialism-capitalism-gramsci-lenin-luxemburg/

And the back-up article written by Erik Olin Wright: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/

January 2, 2016

Over 50, Female & Jobless

(TBF note: when even the NYTimes notices, it is likely a trend with even larger ramifications than they are stating)

“Older displaced women are less likely than displaced men of the same ages to be re-employed and more likely to have left the labor force,” she noted in a recent analysis.

The latest signs of an improving economy were good enough to help persuade the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. But the better job market is not good enough to land Chettie McAfee a job.

Laid off at the start of the recession from the diagnostic testing firm in Seattle where she spent more than three decades, Ms. McAfee, 58, has not worked since 2007. “I’ve been applying and applying and applying,” said Ms. McAfee, who has relied on her savings and family to get by as she fights off attempts to foreclose on her home. At interviews, she said, “They ask, ‘Why has it been so long?’”

At 5 percent, the jobless rate may be close to what economists consider full employment, but that headline figure doesn’t capture the challenges still facing millions of Americans who have yet to regain their footing in the workplace.

Ms. McAfee is part of a group that has found the postrecession landscape particularly difficult to navigate: women over 50 ...

Much more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/business/economy/over-50-female-and-jobless-even-as-others-return-to-work.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news