transformation, Wright—in contrast to Dylan Riley and other thinkers he engaged in argument—was skeptical that capitalism could be smashed in a way that would engender full emancipation. He was critical of the Soviet Union and other states forged by revolution. For Wright, a socialist state is realized when social power—rather than economic power (capitalism) or state power (statism)—dominates. In socialism, individuals have a say to the extent that something affects them. A corporation, for example, cannot build its chemical plant in a neighborhood, unless the people living there agree. And the government cannot subordinate the interests of its constituencies to the interests of its politicians. The so-called socialist states of the twentieth century, like their capitalist counterparts, never achieved this form of political justice.

Wright also believed that socialismThose ideas pushed against Robin Hahnel and other utopian thinkers, and opened Wright to criticism from more orthodox Marxists. Nonetheless, he never abandoned a position because it was unfashionable. But he also was willing to change his mind. Wright revised and discarded his own ideas when he felt that they no longer held water.

Before Real Utopias was published, Wright introduced his ideas in over fifty talks across eighteen countries. His ideas were debated and refined in the kind of open, deliberative forums that he championed. He continued that work after the book’s publication as president of the American Sociological Association. Under his leadership, the ASA’s international conference convened hundreds of sociologists from around the world to build on Wright’s work.

Wright also ran the A. E. Havens Center for