Complex Egalitarianism
Check out Complex Egalitarianism by Erik Olin Wright and Harry Brighouse. Here is a taste:
- [F]ormulating . . . reform strategies and pushing for them within capitalism is essential if the anticapitalist Left is ever to be a credible force within capitalism. For the anticapitalist left to be able to take advantage of even the most favorable conditions, it has to be able to offer well-designed reforms which resonate with the public, which accomplish real improvements in the present, and which show the way forward to the better social structure we ultimately advocate. Public disillusion with the left is deep in Western societies, nowhere more so than the United States. There is no guarantee that when (or if) conditions change in the future the left will be able to take advantage of them; whether we can do so depends on what we have to offer. The left cannot be content with offering revolution and some hand-waving comments about something that has never been tried: it has to be able to point to concrete successes within capitalism and to offer up for scrutiny detailed prescriptions of what it would do as an alternative to capitalism. There is nothing elitist or undemocratic about this – the point is to subject proposals to popular scrutiny so they can be rejected, refined, or embraced.
