Chris Wright

This is the nearly-final PDF of my book that was published in June 2022. I'm providing it here for free, but it would be great if you could spread the word on social media etc. and encourage friends, colleagues, and libraries to buy the book.

Here's the blurb:

"In a time when mass joblessness and precarious employment are becoming issues of national concern, it is useful to reconsider the experiences of the unemployed in an earlier period of economic hardship, the Great Depression. How did they survive, and how did they fight against inhumane government policies? Americans are often thought to be a very conservative and individualistic people, but the collective struggles of the supposedly 'meek' and 'atomized' unemployed in the 1930s belie that stereotype.

"Focusing on the bellwether city of Chicago, this book reevaluates those struggles, revealing the kernel of political radicalism and class resistance in practices that are usually thought of as apolitical and un-ideological. From communal sharing to 'eviction riots,' from Unemployed Councils to the nationwide movement behind the remarkable Workers’ Unemployment Insurance Bill, millions of people fought to end the reign of capitalist values and usher in a new, more socialistic society. While they failed in their maximal goal of abolishing economic insecurity and the disproportionate power of the rich, they did wrest an incipient welfare state from the ruling class. Today, their legacy is their resilience, their resourcefulness, and their proof that the unemployed can organize themselves to renew the struggle for a more just world."

[From 2014.] Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the global popular protests of 2011, more people have begun to wonder and speculate: what's next for civilization? The economic, social, and political status quo seems unsustainable, but what can emerge to take its place? In this book, a historian examines the past and present to argue that the seeds of a more humane society are already being planted, on local and international scales. Whether they will bear fruit depends, ultimately, on grassroots initiative.

Focusing on the new worker cooperative movement in the West, this study not only contains the first systematic discussion of the solidarity economy in the light of Marxist theory; it also introduces a major revision of Marxism that both updates it for the twenty-first century and illuminates our historical moment. It includes an analysis of the history of cooperatives in the U.S., showing where they went wrong and how we can correct their past mistakes. It has a case-study of the successful new worker-owned business New Era Windows in Chicago, which has been celebrated internationally for its defiance of conventional paradigms. And it shows a way out of the age-old conflict between Marxism and anarchism, arguing that both are more relevant now than they have ever been. Which is to say: a gradualist "revolution" is, for the first time, within the realm of possibility.

[From 2014.] "There's a time when the operation of the Machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part." So said Mario Savio in 1964; so say millions of the disenfranchised now. As the apparatus of elite institutions grinds on, pushing society to the brink, protesters across the world are putting their bodies upon its gears and its wheels, to open up space for freedom and creativity unconstrained by institutional strictures. It's time we all followed their lead.

In a series of freewheeling reflections and summaries of historical scholarship, this book reinterprets history and culture along anarchist lines. From a rationalistic and Marxian point of view it illuminates capitalism, economics, U.S. history, popular culture, gender relations, and human psychology, even the nature of the fascinating concepts "genius" and "greatness." Its agenda is that of the seventeenth-century Levellers: deflate the pomposities of elite authority, and bring the world down to the level of democratic reason. In the process, one hopes, we will find our way out of the crisis of the present and into a more just civilization in the future.

[From 2013.] This book touches on most of the important questions that arise in life. Somewhat in the manner of Nietzsche, it presents provocative perspectives on topics ranging from morality to politics, from art to religion, from capitalism to socialism. What is the "meaning of life"? What does it mean to act morally? What are the sources of modern unhappiness and social ills? How has Western society evolved to its present state, and what is its future? What is the future of capitalism itself? Such questions, and many others, are addressed. The book is also intended as literature, though, and as such contains poetry, fiction, and even satire. Ultimately its purpose is simply stated: it is meant to contribute to the collective project of dragging "humanism" out from the underground.

In light of Martin Scorsese's popular movie "The Irishman," it is a good time to reassess Jimmy Hoffa. He's probably the most famous union leader in American history, but the only thing most people know of him is that he ran the Teamsters and was closely connected to the Mafia. He is often seen as nothing but a corrupt, evil, greedy sellout. The reality is a little different. In this article I discuss his record as a labor leader, the attacks on him by the McClellan Committee and Bobby Kennedy, and his ties to organized crime. I try to contextualize the Teamsters union of Hoffa's era, while at the same time providing a corrective to the public's overwhelmingly negative views of him.

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 a (Marxist) theoretical grounding for activism in the solidarity economy, and thus partially reconciles Marxism with anarchism; fourth, it accounts for the long-term failure of all attempts at socialist revolution so far. In serving these functions, the revision I propose finally “modernizes” and corrects Marx’s conception of revolution.

These are some brief reflections that defend, but with qualifications, both reductionist and non-reductionist views of personal identity. But they largely reject Derek Parfit's ideas, and in the end they have more in common with so-called non-reductionism.