Acemoglu's Worker-Class Liberalism: From the AKP to the AfD and the Narrow Corridor

The conversation, recorded at the T24 studio with Nobel economics laureate Daron Acemoglu, centers on his new book on liberal democracy. The agenda is broad: the book's core thesis, his sharp dispute with The Economist, the AfD's first-place finish in a German state election, and Turkiye's democracy report card. Published in August 2026, the book calls for redefining liberalism for today's conditions.

Acemoglu's proposal stands on two legs: securing individual rights on one side, establishing income justice on the other. He calls it worker-class liberalism and argues plainly that liberalism needs a new governing philosophy, with no recovery before that dialogue starts. It is presented not as a finished doctrine but as an invitation to debate.

The working class here is deliberately separated from Marx's definition: everyone who lives on wages and holds no managerial role. Blue-collar workers are now below 10 percent of US employment, Europe looks similar, and Turkiye's share is higher but falling. Hence the deliberately inclusive definition: policies meant to carry a broad base, not a single sector.

The thesis has two dimensions. The economic one: in the US, Europe, and Turkiye, the institutions, policies, and technology choices that would raise working-class incomes never arrived. The cultural one: university-educated globalized elites trying to reshape working-class values from above, plus a lack of respect. The left's recent retreat into cultural-rights politics and its rupture with labor is told as part of the same picture.

One of the liveliest passages is on echo chambers. Acemoglu recalls Arthur Miller's 2004 astonishment at missing Bush voters around him, and his own 2016 experience of never seeing Trump supporters in his Boston neighborhoods. Educated circles talk within their own ecosystem and miss what the other neighborhood cares about. Liberalism differs here, he argues, because it offers a frame more open to pluralism than rival philosophies.

On Turkiye, the interview reaches its headline thesis: the MSP's vote gains in the 1990s and the AKP's transformation of politics since 2002 caught wide circles off guard. Per Acemoglu, the AKP's success cannot be read separately from the opposition's failure; until a message that excites the general base is built, the picture will not change. Intra-CHP splits and new-party searches are read through the same lens.

Against despair comes the Hungary example: the Orban order is described as a polarizing regime set against democracy and liberalism, yet once a centrist candidate who grasped people's cultural and economic expectations appeared, the picture flipped. Acemoglu's paper-tiger metaphor makes the point that the quality of the opposition is decisive.

On Germany, the AfD's first-place finish in Saxony-Anhalt, per exit polls, is examined. Founded 12-13 years ago by a few economists opposing the euro, the party later carried the post-Syria-crisis refugee wave to the center of politics. In Acemoglu's reading, top-down migration decisions, the press giving dissenting voices too little room, and a settled feeling in eastern Germany that democracy no longer works prepared this rise. Social media's distorting role is acknowledged but rejected as the sole explanation.

Asked about Elon Musk's interview with and support for the AfD leadership, Acemoglu corrects the thesis: what tech bosses want is not the far right itself but their own control. Two aims stand out: gathering more deference and power, and blocking the public from gaining political power that could slow AI down. He adds that Silicon Valley donations went to Democrats at rates above 70 percent until recent years, so the picture is not monochrome.

The Economist quarrel is the interview's most personal stretch. Acemoglu calls the magazine's piece a personal and amateurish attack, arguing the outlet settled into an unconditionally upbeat line on AI and closed itself to worker-centered objections. Narratives of an AI explosion, such as Yuval Noah Harari's, get accepted, he says, while calls to steer technology toward labor are shut out. The dispute spilled into academic public debate via Eran Yashiv's Project Syndicate piece criticizing the magazine.

The closing stretch joins worker-friendly AI with the narrow corridor. Technology has no single direction: since the Industrial Revolution, automation has erased jobs while new ones emerged; about 60 percent of US jobs did not exist in 1940. The defended direction is AI that expands workers' expertise and their capacity to start new work. Per the Narrow Corridor idea, democracy thrives on the balance between society and the state-elite; Turkiye has moved markedly away from that corridor and ranks among the fastest-democracy-eroding countries since the 2000s in international indices. Ending with Frederick Douglass on free expression, the interview points double standards over Gaza and Ukraine to the same door: first repair the legitimacy of national institutions.