Confronting Capitalism: Who Counts as a Worker?

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

News, Politics, History

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the midst of Graham Platner’s high-profile senate race in Maine, several media commentators jumped on whether he would fit within his own definition of the working class. Do we know how to pick out workers from other classes? And what bearing does this have for socialist politics?

On the latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek offer a full definition of who’s in the working class, how to understand the modern US class structure, and why workers are central to left political strategy.

The latest issue of Catalyst is out, and you can subscribe for just $20 using the code CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM: https://catalyst-journal.com/subscribe/?code=CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM

Have a question for us? Write to us by email: confronting.capitalism@jacobin.com

Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Confronting Capitalism. I'm Melissa Nashek, and I'm here, as always, with Vivek Chipper,
0:24.4	a professor of sociology at NYU and the editor of Catalyst, a journal of theory and strategy.
0:30.2	If you like what you hear on today's episode, please like and subscribe wherever you get your
0:35.3	podcasts. We also publish all of our transcripts of our episodes
0:39.5	on Substack, so you can subscribe there as well. So, V, you're heading into a pretty busy summer.
0:46.2	It's going to be extremely busy, which I guess is a good thing, but it means that every day,
0:51.5	all I think about is what I haven't yet done for the day. So it's very demanding.
0:55.5	Yeah. I mean, you have some cool political-related travel coming up if you want to kind of tell the
1:00.7	listeners about where you're going and where you're speaking. Well, I'm going to South Africa to give
1:04.7	a series of lectures on this idea of what's called the National Democratic Revolution, which
1:09.4	was a framework and a strategic
1:11.2	framework in the colonial world in the 1920s and 30s. It played a big role in organizing the
1:17.8	anti-colonial movements, but it also had some very serious downsides. And so I'm giving
1:22.1	lectures in South Africa to the African National Congress and the Communist Party over there on
1:27.2	what this meant
1:28.2	and how it still structures the politics of the far left and some of its downsides.
1:33.7	Then I'm going to Indonesia to give a lecture at Development Studies Conference on industrial
1:38.7	policy and the social conditions that gave rise to it, which then dismantled it and why we're seeing it come back again now. That's interesting that you're giving a talk about industrial policy over there in another context. You know, industrial policy here has been so in the news. Yeah, it's everywhere. You know, my first book was on industrial policy 25 years ago, and I was like, well, okay, now that's gone. That'll never come back. And
2:02.3	some of our first episodes were on tariffs and industrial policy. So yeah, it's absolutely coming
2:06.7	back, but it's coming back under very different conditions and the politics of it and the design
2:11.3	of it, therefore, will be very different this time around. Yeah. Well, the focus of the news cycle
2:15.6	right now is not on tariffs and industrial policy, but is very
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 6 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jacobin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jacobin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.