Review: Confronting Capitalism by Vivek Chibber (2022)

I failed and did not read the Odyssey before it was released in theaters. Instead, I opted for a lighter (weight) read, sociologist Vivek Chibber's Confronting Capitalism. June's book, The Socialist Manifesto, ended with an acknowledgment to (I guess) Sunkara's mentor — Chibber. Where the Manifesto illustrates what a democratic model of socialism could look like and dives into its past failures and triumphs, Confronting Capitalism — well, does that.

Confronting is a fast read. Under 150 pages, the book has been stripped of all dense theory and history. I feel like if you were an alien who'd never experienced living under capitalism, Confronting would be sufficient to get a grip on the system. Born into and existing under capitalism for all of our lives, which describes the situation of most people on earth, I'm not sure how different we are from the alien. It's hard to see the game board when you're a player on it and when it is everywhere. Reading this book, in its being so concise and analytic, feels like stepping outside the system for a moment. It's like going to the top of a tower and seeing the layout of a city, and having delineated its basic workings: traffic flows, policing, ports, recreation, sewage. You're still in the city, but you can see for a moment how all the gears spin together.

The part where I learned the most was understanding the limits of the state in constraining or converting capitalism. He went through the details of revolving doors, campaign finance, etc., but the idea that any politician is limited in terms of how far they can challenge capitalism, by the dependence of government on taxes raised from capital, was sobering. Chibber takes this to be the most intractable problem when it comes to the state's role in transitioning to socialism.

On that note, the book is not without prescriptions, though it's not exactly optimistic. It holds that both a labor movement and a labor party are needed for a transition from capitalism to succeed. As he points out, the USA currently has neither. It's clear (as I wrote about in this article on Hopecore) that revolt is currently inconceivable given both (A) the weapons of the elite and (B) the capacity of democracy to metabolize class frustrations. Most critically, as he discusses in this interview, for social progress along any strata, Chibber argues that the working class needs to be the sword's edge, and this is simply because of their capacity to disrupt profits. The book does not exactly have a call-to-action for confronting capitalism, but if it did, I feel like it'd go something like this: if you have money and are progressive, donate to socialist candidates and strike funds. If you're poor and progressive, form / join a union and build solidarity through left-organizations.

You can buy the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/2705-confronting-capitalism?srsltid=AfmBOorHGLzCsdvBNNEw4V6mJtxCTeaZoKisIZhAZ26MJH4J3SiGP8gb

5 / 5