Argument: On Envisioning Real Utopias

Argument: Barnes v. Jacoby

The following is another response, by Bill Barnes, to Russell Jacoby’s review of Envisioning Real Utopias.

Russell Jacoby dismisses Michael Burawoy’s recent response to Jacoby’s review of Erik Olin Wright’s book Envisioning Real Utopias, saying Burawoy’s comments don’t address what Jacoby said about the book. A month earlier, on January 12, I had emailed Dissent the following: “What did Erik Wright do to Russell Jacoby to bring this on? Jacoby’s piece is the most over-the-top, over-extended hatchet job I have ever seen in a serious venue. If Wright’s book is really that bad (it’s not), why bother to write about it at all—much less to publish such drawn-out, repetitive mockery? Regardless of the merits of the book, Jacoby and Dissent embarrass themselves.” On January 24, I resent that message, copying it to Jacoby at his university email, in response to Dissent’s decision to headline the Jacoby piece on its website. I added a few specifics about how Jacoby had misrepresented Wright’s book—no response from Jacoby.

Here’s an expansion on those specifics: Jacoby charges that Wright is highly self-referential, citing almost exclusively his own publications and his own research. But that’s simply untrue. The book contains 311 footnotes, many containing multiple source citations. Only nineteen of those citations are to works authored or coauthored by Wright. The bibliography contains 184 sources, only sixteen of which are works authored or coauthored by Wright. And Wright doesn’t just reference fellow Marxist sociologists, but a wide range of people, many of whom even Jacoby would have to acknowledge as interesting scholars. The only part of the book that is really self-referential is the short preface, wherein Wright mentions some personal history and the different venues in which he’s presented the book’s ideas. For some reason, Jacoby finds this common authorial practice offensive in this case (and Jacoby ridicules Wright for crediting his wife with having inspired certain insights). Jacoby’s main line of attack claims that the book is unrelentingly formulaic and diagrammatic, highly idiosyncratic, and basically empty of real substance. Sociological gibberish, as he says in response to Burawoy. A much more restrained and discriminate version of that kind of critique would carry some weight with respect to some parts of the book (though not as much weight as it would if directed toward, say, the American Political Science Review). But there is much real substance in Wright’s book, and most of it is not written in that highly diagrammatic idiom; a good deal of it is quite straightforward description of particular institutions, practices, and literatures. Virtually all of the diagrams are confined to pages 130-144 and 304-360.

Clearly, Jacoby went into the book unwilling to give it a chance, simply looking for targets to mock and ridicule, relishing an opportunity to trash academic Marxism. Why would Dissent go along with this agenda and give this kind of personal vendetta a platform?

-Bill Barnes
Oakland, California

Russell Jacoby replies

What did I do to Bill Barnes to bring this on? I don’t know Erik Olin Wright from Adam—or Bill Barnes. Barnes embarrasses himself by his footnote count aiming to demonstrate that Wright is not self-referential, as if such a count shows anything. I’m pleased Barnes can count to 311, but my point was not merely that Wright refers obsessively to himself, but also that he “lives in a bubble of like-minded sociologists and political theorists.” Barnes differs, but offers no specifics. He does state that only Wright’s preface is self-referential. Let’s see. Page 100 footnote seven refers the reader to an article by Michael Burawoy and Erik Olin Wright called “Sociological Marxism”; and for discussion of the Marxist tradition to Erik Olin Wright, Interrogating Inequality. Page 103 footnote ten refers, for “extended discussions” of class locations, to books by Erik Olin Wright, Classes and The Debate on Classes. Page 104 footnote 11 refers to Erik Olin Wright’s Class Counts, chapters 2 and 3. Page 105 footnote 13 cites an article by one Erik Olin Wright. To look elsewhere, chapter one opens with a footnote to Wright’s own enterprise, the Real Utopias Project. Chapter Two opens with a footnote to a “personal communication” received by Wright. Get the picture?

-Russell Jacoby