This is Jack Ben Radio, I'm Suzy Weisman. On today's program we talked to Robert Brenner

and Dylan Riley who published seven Theses on American Politics in the latest new

left review, which is New Left Review 138. It's an analysis of American politics post

midterms that's generated a lot of discussion, responses, further articles, and praise. New

left review summarized their arguments as, quote, Bidenism, analyzed as the outcome of

a bipartisan lurch towards growthless canesiness in a new stage of capitalist accumulation emerging

from the long downturn. Classes and class politics redefined in a strikingly original

intervention, unquote. Well, there's a lot to unpack in that description and we're very

fortunate to have Dylan Riley and Robert Brenner with us to lay out their arguments when

our program returns in just a moment.

This is Jack Ben Radio. I'm Suzy Weisman. I've been absent while recovering from surgery

and will not be back on a regular basis for a few more months, but I just wanted to be

able to do this interview today. In the meantime, the program continues in the able hands

of Melissa Figueroa and Alan Minsky. And on today's program, we have Robert Brenner and

Dylan Riley with us to analyze the results of the 2022 midterm elections when the expected

red wave was in their words more like a ripple. The responses to President Biden stated the

Union address on February 7th further showed the partisan fault lines that are superficially

characterized in cultural terms like identity politics and more. But our guests insist on

rigorous class analysis to explain what is often called the alignment that Republicans

have appealed to part of the working class on racist, nativist, anti-immigrant terms,

Democrats have appealed to what Barbara Aaron Reich and John Aaron Reich called the professional

managerial class on the basis of expertise, diversity, and presumably good governance. Furthermore,

...