Erik Olin Wright was this era’s greatest class theorist, whose work combined clarity with a deep moral commitment to human emancipation. His posthumous book How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is the perfect capstone of a career dedicated to deepening Marxist theory and socialist politics.

In a brief compass, Wright makes a case for both the injustice of capitalism and the basic principles that might guide the pursuit of a more humane social order. He persuasively argues that even though many of the institutional features of contemporary capitalism are very different from those that oversaw the rise of socialism a century ago, the core of the system — which motivated the search for a more just arrangement — remains much the same, and hence, the case for transcending capitalism remains compelling.

But how might a more free society be achieved? Wright observes that there have been a number of strategies embraced by the Left. But they can be broadly amalgamated into two — a revolutionary strategy, which seeks to replace capitalism in a decisive break, and a more gradualist one. The bulk of the book is devoted to unpacking these, and then to recommending how their lessons might be used to transcend capitalism in our time.