Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine, and returning to the program today is the political theorist and analyst Benjamin Studebaker, recent PhD graduate of the University of Cambridge and the author of the brand new book,

The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy, The Way is Shut.

Benjamin Studebaker, thank you so much for joining us here on Current Affairs today.

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you about this book and hear what you think of it.

Well, I was delighted to get the book because I've followed your work for a long time. You have published in Current Affairs a few times, and so nothing delights me more than the idea of reading a book-length version

of your thought. And you are one of my favorite people to read because I agree with a bunch of

what you say, and I disagree with a bunch of what you say, and you're just so much fun to grapple

with. I think everyone should pick up this book because you will find, I don't think

anyone agree with you on every point you make, but I think everyone will find it like intellectually

enjoyable theory of what's going on that you put forward here. So let's try and explain the argument

that you make in the book. You say, and I will just quote one way in which you summarize

one of the argument, the core arguments of your book, which is you say that economic changes

have driven the United States into a chronic legitimacy crisis. The crisis cannot be solved

with reform or revolution and can only terminate in political

despair. You talk about an unsolvable problem. Your book is about crisis of American democracy,

although you differ in your assessment of what that crisis is from what a number of other people who talk about

crises of American democracy. So let's start with, before we get to the kind of pessimism that

I think run through the book as a thread, let's try and explain first to us what you believe this chronic crisis is that plagues

the United States. Yeah. So in terms of the unsolvable problem, this is, I think, a set of

economic changes that are gradually subjecting Americans of nearly every class and background

to enormous amounts of economic stress.

And I think these changes are really driven by rising capital mobility.

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