Design After Capitaism - Matthew Wizinsky (2022)

This book is about ________

Students discussion posts said ________ 

Wizinsky, M., 2022. Design after capitalism: transforming design today for an equitable tomorrow. The MIT Press.

“Wright calls this logic the “erosion” of capitalism - transcending structures and neutralizing the harms inflicted by government - to create new forms of economic and social functioning that can collectively grow and permeate social relations more broadly” (p.30).

“Translating [Erik Olin] Wright’s work on social institutions, we can begin to formulate similar models and strategies specific to design.  The first step is to position “design practice” as “institution making...In the particular ways that designers do designing, design practice becomes an economic and social institution that operationalizes relations between labor, materials, property, and value” (p.30).

“...’after capitalism’ names moving toward a new and as-yet-undefined system that we can’t yet fully see or think - or maybe even appreciate - because it is in a state of becoming.  It is a new system of economic and social organization that will bring with it new forms of social relations and economic relations, new symbols of social and economic life, and new logics for existing together on a crowded and warming planet.  While we may not be able to see its entirety, we can sketch the basic contours of this undefined new system and begin creating it today” (p.32).

“The notion of ‘after capitalism’ does not suggest a specific form of socialism or communism or a ‘return to’ any precapitalist structure. It means moving past or beyond the structure we have now, in ways that build upon and transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities that capitalism has created” (p.32).

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