Matthew Karp, 'Class, Party, and American Politics in 2024'

Political Economy Seminar

Class, Party, and American Politics in 2024

Speaker: Matthew Karp, Princeton University

Time and date: Friday, 2 August 2024, 4-5:30 pm

Location: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 650, The University of Sydney

Abstract: It may be the most pervasive question in twenty-first century politics, all across the post-industrial world: Why have so many working-class voters, the backbone of socialist and progressive struggles across the twentieth century, turned away from parties of the left? Everyone from Thomas Piketty to J.D. Vance seems to have weighed in, but the debate rages on. This talk explores the emergence of what some call “class dealignment” in the United States, focusing especially on the last two decades, and evaluating the current shape of both the Republican and Democratic political coalitions. Drawing on my work with the Center for Working Class Politics, I argue that dealignment represents an existential crisis for the American left and suggest some ways left-wing politicians might push back against these macro trends.

Speaker bio: Matthew Karp is an associate professor of history at Princeton University and a board member at the Center for Working Class Politics. He has written widely on U.S. history and politics for a number of publications, including Harper’s, The Nation, The London Review of Books, New Left Review, Catalyst, and Jacobin, where he is a contributing editor. He is at work on two books: Millions of Abolitionists, about the rise of antislavery mass politics before the American Civil War, and (with Jared Abbott) Blue Collar Realignment, about class and party dealignment in the contemporary United States.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse45/50170212651/

Author: Gareth Bryant

Gareth Bryant is a political economist at the University of Sydney. He works as a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Economy and as economist-in-residence with the Sydney Policy Lab.

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Matthew Karp, ‘Class, Party, and American Politics in 2024’