Encore audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): December 29, 2022 historian David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class, on the uses of that term in US politics • economist Ellora Derenoncourt, co-author of this paper, on the US racial wealth gap, 1860–2020 [holiday-season encore presentation of interviews first broadcast in June]
Americans’ class ID shifts down
The USA is the country where everyone feels middle-class, right? No. Gallup is out with the latest edition of a question it’s asked ten times over the last twenty years: “If you were asked to use one of these five names for your social class, which would you say you belong in?” When they did the survey in April, the largest set of respondents said “middle,” 38%—but that’s not much more than a third. Almost as many, 35%, said “working” (a term that has often been pronounced obsolete). Here’s some more detail:… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): June 25, 2020 Nikhil Pal Singh on race, class, policing, protest • Michael Kinnucan of Brooklyn DSA’s electoral committee on left victories in the NYC primary elections
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): October 24, 2019 Gabriel Winant, author of this article, on the professional–managerial class and its decomposition (the 1977 Ehrenreich papers are here and here; their 2013 follow-up is here) • Alan Beattie, author of this paper, on the US-led global order and its decomposition
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 3, 2019 Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough, on the paradox of human rights discourse arising alongside great inequality, and on the difference between poverty reduction and income compression
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): August 24, 2017 Jodi Dean on class vs. identity, and the online life vs. practice • Jason Wilson on Charlottesville and the far right
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (date is link to show): January 26, 2017 Asad Haider, author of this, on the problems of “white privilege” discourse • Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of the new novel Class, on race and class in the world of Brooklyn public schools
Fresh audio product
Just posted to my radio archives: May 22, 2014 Matt Taibbi, author of The Divide, on criminalizing the poor (and dissenters) and letting bankers run free BtN has been fundraising for KPFA all month. This is the first show with original content since April 24—this interview only, less the fundraising. So it’s short. But please contribute to KPFA if you want to keep these shows coming. Be sure to mention BtN when you do.
From the vault: Class
I wrote this for The Baffler back in 1998. A little old, but still full of truth. This is what I submitted; the published version was edited modestly. On the first page of his awful book, One Nation, After All, Alan Wolfe writes, “According to the General Social Survey, at no time between 1972 and 1994 did more than 10 percent of the American population classify themselves as either lower class or upper class.” He says this to prove that the rest, 90%, are middle class. But they’re not. Wolfe forgot to say that… Read More
How to stop worrying about class
Today’s New York Times contains a fine example of how ideology works at the high end: report information that might trouble the established order, but conclude on a tranquilizing note that allows the comfortable reader to turn the page (or click “close tab”) without changing his or her worldview. Both functions are important. Outlets like the Times do report tons of important stuff that one would be hard-pressed to learn otherwise. But, as Alexander Cockburn put it long ago, a primary function of the bourgeois press is reassurance. The piece by Sabrina… Read More
The threat of bigness
You hear a lot of people claiming that a major transformation in the American ideological landscape is underway. Gallup has just published new data suggesting that the shifts are modest, and this country remains pretty conservative. Specifically, over half—55%—of Americans view big government as the gravest threat to the USA, compared with 32% seeing big business as the ogre. Big labor comes in dead last, at 10%. Here’s the historical view: Note that at the peak of the Clinton boom, fear of government had a 40-point lead; that’s since narrowed to a mere… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 