University of Wisconsin–Madison

Who are the “Ruling Class” Today?

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Online via Zoom

This event was presented in collaboration with CONTER.

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Doug Henwood is a journalist, economic analyst, podcaster and the author of “Take Me to Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class”. Henwood is the host of Behind the News. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, Grand Street, The Village Voice, Newsday, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and Jacobin. He is a contributing editor at The Nation. Doug Henwood’s prepared remarks, “Scattered speculations on the US ruling class”, can be found at LBO News from Doug Henwood.

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Ho-fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of several books: China and The Transformation of Global Capitalism (2009), Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011), and The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World (2016). His analyses of Chinese political economy and Hong Kong politics have been featured or cited in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, BBC News, The Guardian, Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), The Straits Times (Singapore), Xinhua Monthly (China), and People’s Daily (China), among other publications.

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Göran Therborn is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. His pathbreaking book, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? is a groundbreaking Marxist analysis of the relationship between economic and state power. His other books include Between Sex and Power (2004), The Killing Fields of Inequality (2013) and Cities of Power (2017). He is a regular contributor to New Left Review and other journals, and his works have been published in at least twenty-four languages.