Review of: Inequality and the Labyrinths of Democracy by Göran Therborn (Verso 2020).

“You know what the trouble is, Brucie? We used to make shit in this country. Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.”

That’s Baltimore longshoreman and union treasurer Frank Sobotka, from The Wire’s second season. It is a profound moment in the series, signaling that perhaps something had gone deeply wrong in America well before the 2007–8 crash. And while Sobotka is a fictional character, his lament for America’s postindustrial working class finds echoes across the political spectrum, from Donald Trump’s hard-hat minstrelsy to the Green New Deal’s demand for sustainable manufacturing jobs.