An attempt to resolve long-standing problems in contemporary class theory. The text brings together major critics of the author's work, and Wright's own responses and reformulation in the light of the criticisms.

Class Counts constitutes one of the few attempts to use systematically the concept of class from the Marxist tradition of social theory in quantitative research. The research in the book covers a wide range of topics, including the class character of friendship patterns, class mobility, the sexual division of labor in housework, gender differences in managerial authority, and class consciousness. What unites the topics is not a preoccupation with a common object of explanation, but rather a common explanatory factor: class.

In the labor market and workplace, anti-discrimination rules, affirmative action policies, and pay equity procedures exercise a direct effect on gender relations. But what can be done to influence the ways that men and women allocate tasks and responsibilities at home? In Gender Equality, Volume VI in the Real Utopias series, social scientists Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers propose a set of policies--paid family leave provisions, working time regulations, and early childhood education and care--designed to foster more egalitarian family divisions of labor by strengthening men's ties at...

Rising inequality of income and power, along with the recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet there has been a global retreat by the Left: on the assumption that liberal capitalism is the only game in town, political theorists tend to dismiss as utopian any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations. As Fredric Jameson first argued, it is now easier for us to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism.

Erik Olin Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias is a...

One of the fruits of the revival of socialist economic theory over the past decade has been a wide-ranging debate about the validity of Marx's labour theory of value. At the heart of the discussion stands the theoretical work of Piero Sraffa and the conclusions drawn from it by such economists as Ian Steedman. Initially confined to a relatively narrow circle of specialists, the controversy about value theory has since spread to wider circles of the left. But although general awareness that the stakes of the dispute are of concern to all socialists is now extensive, understanding of the issues...

"Reconstructing Marxism"explores fundamental questions about the structure of Marxist theory and its prospects for the future. The authors maintain that the disintegration of the old theoretical unity of classical Marxism is in part responsible for what is commonly called the crisis of Marxism. Only a reconstructed Marxism can come to terms with this disintegration.
Addressing a range of problems in historical materialism and class analysis, the authors compare historical materialism with Darwinian evolutionary theory, and identify what is distinctively historical in Marx s theory of...

What would a viable free and democratic society look like?

Leading sociologist examines how different readings of class enrich our understanding of capitalism

Few ideas are more contested today than "class." Some have declared its death, while others insist on its centrality to contemporary capitalism. It is said its relevance is limited to explaining individuals' economic conditions and opportunities, while at the same time argued that it is a structural feature of macro-power relations. In Understanding Class, leading left sociologist Erik Olin Wright interrogates the divergent meanings of this fundamental concept in order to...