Socialism was a scary word in America for a long time because it got so mixed up and confused with Communism. After the Soviet Union and Maoist China, Communism looked like every American’s worst nightmare. But that’s not today’s socialist vision. In fact, there’s a whole new body of socialist thinking.
One of the major Marxist scholars of the past few decades was the University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist Erik Olin Wright. He died in 2019, but in between treatments for acute myeloid leukemia, he came into our studio to talk with Steve Paulson. It was one of Erik’s final interviews — and his last chance to talk about why socialism matters today.