Editor’s Introduction: Utopias and the Politics of Dispossession

The survival of the global capitalist order depends upon its ability to convince people who are disempowered and dispossessed by this system that there is no alternative. Thus, utopias are defined as impossible and nonexistent. Yet Erik Olin Wrights Real Utopias project upends this dominant logic and highlights actually existing alternatives to capitalism that have been essential to the very survival of many. The deepening global financial crisis heightens the urgency that these real utopias become more widely known and practiced