Michael Lind is a political theorist, historian, and one of America's most rigorous independent analysts of class, democracy, and political economy. He is a Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, a co-founder of the New America think tank, and a visiting professor at the University of Austin. He has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins and previously served as an assistant to the Director of the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs at the US Department of State.

His books include The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite, Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States, The Next American Nation, and among more than a dozen works of non-fiction, history, and political theory. His writing has appeared in UnHerd, Tablet, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, American Affairs, and The New York Times, among many others.

This is the first episode in a four-part Thinking Class series on social class in Britain and the West.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

What the managerial class actually is and how it displaced the old bourgeoisie
Why Brexit and Trump were intra-capitalist conflicts, not working-class revolts
How Britain's failure to properly industrialise shaped its class settlement
Why AI will automate the credential class before it automates the working class
What the working class once had — and what was taken from it
Whether anything can dislodge the managerial settlement in Britain or America

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Buy Michael Lind's books: https://amzn.to/4tkJFHB
Follow Michael Lind's work at UnHerd: https://unherd.com/author/michael-lind/

About Thinking Class: Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world. Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, legal scholars, economists, theologians, and public intellectuals — concerned with long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes.

If you value serious conversations about Britain, the West, and the forces shaping our future, why not subscribe:

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