Longreads is supported by Pluto Press. Pluto has developed a new list of audiobooks for some of their most popular titles.

One book that's now available is Makeboss's Pay, Why We Need Unions by Eve Livingston.

Henry Chango Lopez, of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, describes it as

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Jacobin.

Hello, you're very welcome to Longreads, a Jacobin podcast where we look in

depth at political topics and thinkers. My name's Daniel Finn, and the features editor

here at Jacobin, and I'll be presenting the show. During the 1980s, Japan seemed like it might

overtake the US to become the world's largest economy. Long before he turns his attention to China,

Donald Trump called for the US to engage in a trade war with its Japanese challenger.

I think a lot of people are tired of watching other countries ripping off the United States.

This is a great country. You let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets and

everything. It's not free trade. If you ever go to Japan right now and try to sell something,

forget about it. Just forget about it. It's almost impossible. They laugh at us.

Behind our backs, they laugh at us because of our own stupidity.

But since a property bubble burst in the early 90s, Japan has become a byword for economic stagnation.

That hasn't prevented the ruling Liberal Democratic Party from maintaining its status as the

most successful political party in the rich capitalist world. Our guest today is Kristen Suraq.

She teaches sociology at the London School of Economics, and she's the author of

Making Tea, Making Japan, Cultural Nationalism and Practice.

What impacted the collapse of the Japanese real estate bubble in the early 90s have on

...