In a recent article, Chris Maisano raises some important questions about the concept of “class dealignment” that many in the Jacobin orbit, including myself, have used to describe the recent shift in American voting patterns. Coming soon after Robert Brenner and Dylan Riley’s speculative essay in the last New Left Review, this suggests an element of dissatisfaction on the intellectual left with the dealignment idea.

I’ve written a longer reply to Brenner and Riley, which I hope will appear soon. But I wanted to respond to a few of Maisano’s points directly.

Maisano’s main critique seems to be about measurement. Using college education to stand in for class, he argues, misses a much more complex reality in America today. This is all true, so far as it goes, and Maisano’s sociological citations are helpful here. It’s one reason why the Center for Working Class Politics has designed our second study — which will appear later this spring — around fine-grained occupational data. (Much of it relies on the concepts and terms developed by Daniel Oesch, who Maisano cites. You can find a preview of the results in Jared Abbott’s essay in the latest Jacobin.)