Political Science Commons^™

Eleven Theses On Socialist Revolution, Chris Wright

Class, Race and Corporate Power

It is an open question whether socialism will ever exist on a national or international scale. But if it will, it will come about in ways different from what both Marxists and anarchists have traditionally thought. In this article I present eleven "theses" regarding how it might be possible for the world to achieve an economically democratic civilization in an era of unprecedented crisis. In the process, I try to explain what has gone wrong with attempted socialist revolutions in the past.

This is reprinted with permission. The article originally appeared in Counterpunch, August 27, 2021.

Marxism And The Solidarity Economy: Toward A New Theory Of Revolution, Chris Wright

Class, Race and Corporate Power

In the twenty-first century, it is time that Marxists updated the conception of socialist revolution they have inherited from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Slogans about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” “smashing the capitalist state” and carrying out a social revolution from the commanding heights of a reconstituted state are completely obsolete. In this article I propose a reconceptualization that accomplishes several purposes: first, it explains the logical and empirical problems with Marx’s classical theory of revolution; second, it revises the classical theory to make it, for the first time, logically consistent with the premises of historical materialism; third, it provides …