- Charles Postel, “The American Populist and Anti-Populist Legacy,” in Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and Recent Tendencies, John Abromeit, et al, eds. (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2015).
- Lawrence C. Goodwyn, “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights- East Texas as a Case Study.” The American Historical Review 76.5 (1971): 1435–1456.
- Leon Fink, “The Great Strikes Revisited,” in The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order (Philadelphia, 2015), Chapter 2.
- (optional/supplemental) Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Champaign, 2000 abridged version), Chapters 2, 4, 6-12.
In Leon Fink’s Chapter, “The Great Strikes Revisited* from his book *The Long Gilded Age — American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order*, he aims to put the reader back in the historical moment of what he calls “The Long Gilded Age” and have us question if and how different outcomes for American labor could have been reached had the pivotal actors of “The Great Strikes” took different approaches given the larger patterns of development they were subject to. In doing so, he rejects the dominant binary historiographies of the Gilded Age that he delineates as “historical distance” (the exceptional horrors of the inequality of that era were conquered and are no longer relevant today) and a sort of nihilism (the forms of the inequality and exploitation of the Long Gilded Age may have changed but the social conditions are essentially the same) (p. 34). Fink invokes three major moments of the Gilded Age in order to transcend this dichotomy and understand the “open-ended possibilities in real time” of this “decade of confrontation.” (p. 35) These Great Strikes that he lays out are the Homestead lockout of 1892, the Pullman boycott and strike of 1894, and the Anthracite strike of 1902. While acknowledging that the bulk of the power lay largely with the Robber Barons and union-busting corporations, he tries to surmise any lessons that could be ascertained by labor in examining the motivations and deceivingly complex identities of the Robber Barons and as well as examining how labor could have optimized it’s strategies. Questions he repeatedly raised in this historiography: What did dissident contemporaries understand that the pivotal actors in these strikes didn’t? Which alternate routes for labor were obscured in the historical moment, but now clear in retrospect?
I found Fink’s larger goal of transcending the dismissive and fatalistic interpretations of Gilded Age history to be extremely useful. In my view, history is a weapon, and in order to wield it for revolutionary ends, we must face the uncomfortable and difficult questions that it poses. But when Fink starts to get into the weeds of those questions in this chapter, I found myself mostly unconvinced of the lessons Fink took from these Great Strikes, with some notable exceptions. Fink spent a hefty portion of this chapter challenging the villainous caricatures of the industrialists of the era: in this case, Andrew Carnegie, George Pullman, and George Baer (along with their corporate lackeys in industry and government).
It was very difficult to read Fink’s humanizing portrait of Andrew Carnegie, as I was incensed that an ounce of credit could be given to his “Anti-Imperialist” political adventurism. In reality, Carnegie was a eugenicist, selective non-interventionist. Even though he sprinkled in some Republican musings about political freedom for people in distant lands, above all, he was concerned with the interests of what was best for him, his class, and “the race.” I recommend reading the primary source that Fink was drawing from in discussing Carnegie’s dabbling in “Anti-Imperialist” politics, his essay entitled “Distant Possessions: The Parting of the Ways” (an excerpt can be found here: https://web.viu.ca/davies/H324War/Carnegie.Distant.1898.htm) I could go on about why Carnegie was not by any stretch a genuine Anti-Imperialist, but I think that Fink actually understands this, as the following parenthetical statements indicate:
“Whereas he had happily supported a U.S. naval buildup (which also happened to rely on armored plate from his mills) and also joined the rush to ‘‘free Cuba’’ in 1898, Carnegie soon after refurbished his liberal, anti-imperialist principles in adamant opposition to the Philippines campaign. Opposing ‘‘distant possessions’’ (except where a colony could be expected to ‘‘produce Americans’’ as in Hawaii), Carnegie asked defiantly ‘Are we to exchange Triumphant Democracy for Triumphant Despotism?'”(p.43)
Although I don’t believe that Fink is necessarily doing apologia for Carnegie, as I initially surmised on a first read, I do believe he is greatly overestimating the power of appealing to an oligarch’s moral and political sensibilities. Fink brings up Carnegie’s “Anti-Imperialism” as well as his connections to liberal-radical politicians in the U.K. because he argues that if there was anything the Homestead strikers of 1892 could have done differently, it would have been appealing to Carnegie’s sense of political morality by pressuring his liberal-radical associates to condemn his repressive breaking of the strike. I am not convinced Carnegie’s political identity was so coherent and powerful that it would have had an effect on anything. It seems that Carnegie saw himself as a Master of Industry and an upstanding Philanthropist – that self-righteous view of himself was fractured with a wave of bad publicity. But his actions in the realm of labor did not change in any meaningful way. For all the supposed regret and moral turpitude that Carnegie faced, he continued acting in the interest of his bottom line. To use Fink’s example: Due to the post-lockout tensions, Carnegie replaced Frick as chairman of the board with Charles Schwab, a man who had nice things to say about what he would have done differently at Homestead. However, this same man went on to break the Bethlehem Steel Strike in 1910 with the help of the PA State Police. I disagree with the suggestion from Fink that Schwab’s words were significantly meaningful (p.42).
Fink went on to conduct a similar analysis with Pullman and Baer, the main capitalist protagonists of the Pullman strike of 1904 and the Anthracite strike of 1902, respectively. I found these analyses to be similarly uncompelling. Where Fink’s analysis did resonate, however, were in areas of pure tactic and strategy. He did this quite thoroughly in the case of the Pullman strike. Weighing the actual power held by the American Railroad Union, the resources held at their disposal and how they could have been best leveraged, and how the ARU missed the opportunity to form crucial cross-industry alliances, was far more convincing to me than any consideration of how the labor movement could have targeted individual Robber Barons’ and their lackeys’ moral sensibilities. In the case of the Anthracite strike of 1902, Fink drew an interpretation of the importance of political alliances and emphasized the cunning strategy of George Mitchell, of the United Mine Workers of America, who played a “double game” in the anthracite strike: publicly denouncing talk of solidarity action from the bituminous miners and “insisting to his middle-class allies like [Ohio Senator Mark] Hanna that he was trying to keep a lid on an all-out suspension of work” while at the same time whipping up support and the organizing prowess of mining labor’s “fiercest partisans” like Mother Jones (p.57).
I wish Fink spent more time on these larger questions of power, the political landscape, and organizing tactics on the side of the labor movement because they raise important questions and translate well to the strategic quandaries labor must face today. But I also do not want to dismiss the importance of considering the enemy – the contexts they grew up in, the motivations that drive them, and how to push them to meet workers’ demands. After all, PR campaigns to humiliate and expose the hypocrisy of today’s Robber Barons form a milestone of strategic research and campaign strategy. But these campaigns are successful because they target the capitalists’ bottom lines which includes the reputations of their businesses’ brands. Even if we could assume today’s billionaires are guilty about their many crimes against humanity, we shouldn’t count on that being a feeling that changes anything – it hasn’t yet.
Charles Postel’s piece “The American Populist and Anti-Populist Legacy” is a convincing look at the American populist movement of the late 19th century, its efforts crystallized in the People’s Party, and how its supporters as well as opposition have laid the groundwork for political movements to come. The People’s Party was originally formed as a network of farmer and labor organizations, and not originally as a means to seek political office as our country’s predominant two political parties were. They boasted a progressive political platform that had four demands: 1. federal farm subsidies in the form of a nationalized system of credit 2. a flexible national currency 3. public ownership of railroads, telecommunications and banking and 4. a progressive income tax to redistribute wealth for public goods (p 118). As the case with all third party challengers to the two-party system, the People’s Party of the late 1800’s faced numerous forms of opposition, including from Theodore Roosevelt, then as commissioner of the NYPD famously calling for the Populists to be lined “against a wall to be shot” (p 119).
The idea of anti-Populist conservative opposition is really where Postel’s piece gets interesting, as he is able to trace the conservative ideologies of the early 1900’s to those of the post-Tea Party era today. Generally speaking, conservative ideology seeks to keep in place racial, gender, and economic hierarchies. The Progressive movement threatened these hierarchies, especially economically where their ideology was based around equalizing economic power from financial and industrial elites. Postel identified the issue of currency reform as one that became an animating force for politics to come, as so-called “Gold Bugs” fervently called for American currency to be tied to the gold standard while the Populists called for “soft money” (i.e. financial reform.) This political issue became of use on the 1896 campaign trail, where William Jennings Bryan allied himself with the Populists on the issue of “soft money” and William McKinley became a “hard money” proponent. His case is that the fights between the Populists and their various forms of opposition, most notably during the 1896 election, created archetypes that would be exploited for political gain in the century to come. Even Populism as an idea would eventually get decontextualized to suit whatever political agenda feels it has the most to gain by identifying with the common man. Going even further, the general idea of the working class fighting for policies and reforms that suited their own class interests would become muddied with Richard Hofstadter’s book The Age of Reform, painting the Populists’ political will as an unsophisticated mass hysteria and “represented an American version of intolerant mass politics or protofascism.” (p 120) Although many of Hofstadter’s ideas would later by discredited by the end of the 1960’s, his writings had influenced a generation of political thinkers who saw the working class as lumpenproletariats who could not think independently and would serve as the base for fascism.
Postel does an excellent job at making the necessary links between conservative and progressive thinking of the turn of the century and their contemporary iterations today. The Tea Party of 2009-2010 took liberal America by surprise with their anachronistic imaginings of revolutionary America and Koch-funded front groups, but Postel surmises that the use of Populist language and libertarian economics should surprise no one. He believes that since the days of Andrew Jackson, American politics “have been marked by appeals to the common voter: variously known as the plain people, the producers, the laboring man, the forgotten man, the silent majority, the middle class, or some variation of the same.” (p 126) The Tea Party was merely the latest reimagining of this bit of American political theater.
I am fascinated by this topic of the use of Populism in a dehistoricized sense to suit both Left and Right politics. What is interesting about the Tea Party backlash to the presidency of Barack Obama is that they were mostly railing against a fictional version of Obama, painting him as a radical communist who wanted to socialize the health care system, when in reality he was the new face of American neoliberalism who created his own political myths to suit his own needs. I think Postel needed to reckon in a deeper way with the idea of political spectacle, of which American politics has no shortage, versus actual political willpower. He talks about the ways in which political fights are staged to pit one side against the other, such as the case with hard vs soft money in the 1896 elections, but at least in the case of the Populists, there really were material stakes to currency reform. It would have been helpful to know which of these political fights of then and now were mostly spectacle and which were actual expressions of hard political agendas. I understand that contemporary politics are a mixture of both, and a 24/7 news cycle does one no favors in determining what matters and what doesn’t, but I think in linking the past to the present, he would do better in disentangling the myth from reality a bit more.
Another thing I found a little uncharitable was Postel’s waffling on characterization of “the masses.” He found it necessary to set the record straight on Richard Hofstadter’s characterization of the Populists as unsophisticated and base, but writes about contemporary American conservatives as mere racist subjects within which the Koch brothers have laundered their hard right libertarian ideology. Postel writes that “In 2008, white conservatives mobilized in fear of the threat that the election of a black president posed to the racial order” (p 130) and how they were “voicing rage against the prospects that the Obama administration might dare to provide economic stimulus to aid the unemployed…” (p 131) Now, I find myself in the strange position of defending the characterization of the Tea Party, because I DO believe that it was a faux populist movement that animated conservatives’ reaction to the first black president in order to push through voter suppression, GOP-favored gerrymandering, and libertarian economic policy. But, Postel did make a big point to prove that the Populist movement was complex and involved many different types of political actors, so it seems strange that he’s painting one movement as defensible and the other as purely reaction-driven purely solely because the Pops had better politics. He could have found an accurate way to portray the Tea Party without being sort of hypocritical in his comparison to the original Populist movement. All in all though, I found this piece immensely interesting to read and re-read as we wade through the horror of contemporary American politics. It’s comforting when you read something that helps you make sense of and understand the current moment with regards to the past, and I think that’s when historical writing is at its best.
Postel’s history of the populist movement and the related conservative response was well-crafted and dynamic, breathing air into a part of political history that often dismissed (at least in my experience). As Jordan pointed out, Postel links this history to today’s progressive and conservative movements. However, I think it’s clear that this lineage is far more robust with regards to the history of conservatism than progressivism. Conservatism has proved far more victorious, in part because if its political success, and in part because it is defined as in opposition to “progressivism” in any form. Whereas the DNA of populism is visible through through mid-century, but largely marginalized by the century’s end.
I’m interested in the ways in which Socialism in America took on its uniquely “American” form, while still being influenced by the politics of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, so I appreciated Postel’s look into this political marriage. Socialism in the early 20th century would then go on to influence the politics of the New Deal, carrying through to the Great Society. Postel’s argument that LBJ’s politics are rooted in this rural populism casts his politics in a new light for me.
There is a certain wistfulness in reading this piece though, especially alongside Goodwyn and with Dubois in the background, as it makes clear that certain cross-racial coalitions were not only possible but happened. It makes clear just how effective conservatism has been at fracturing this coalition.
1) Did the influence of populism on the New Deal Democrats come through the socialism movement of the early 20th century, or were socialism and progressivism two competing outgrowths of populism that developed their politics in conversation with one another?
2) Despite the language around “business” in which the populists claimed to be rooted, was populism an anti-capitalist movement? Could we argue that the this was simply how anti-capitalism took form in rural America?
I agree with Jordan’s analysis of Charles Postel’s piece “The American Populist and Anti-Populist Legacy.” Postel gives a solid background to the origin of the People’s Party and the term “populism” which has been so twisted and misconstrued by history that it is difficult to assess its true meaning at all and it has come to be an incredibly loaded term in our political arena. I feel like I have a much clearer understanding of the term now, its origins in farmers and laborers looking for soft currency and some social welfare policies so that they could live better lives, and it’s eventual corruption through the writings of Hofstadter and his contemporaries to mean something more akin to facism. While reading this piece as well as Lawrence Goodwyn’s piece, “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study,” it has become increasingly clear that throughout history when people try to redistribute power or destroy existing institutions that serve only a certain part of society they are met with fear which can quickly turn to violence. To me it seems that the power of populism at the time, which was clear from Postel’s definition and Goodwyn’s storytelling, is that it is broadly community based. And not community meaning race, but community meaning group of people with the same needs. That was the early power of populism and I think why it is an easy term to corrupt.
I couldn’t help but think of another term that has been used so frequently and in such varied circumstances as to be void of meaning, neoliberalism. And it seems to me that the two terms have almost switched places over time. Populism of course started out as a progressive platform of economic fairness and equality through government regulation. Neoliberalism, historically, is an ideology that upholds free market ideals and maximizes individual freedom. However, now populism is closely tied with people like Trump and other authoritarian conservative leaders because it is, as Postel says a “short hand for hostility to elite and centralized power.” And conservative politicians starting in the 70’s did a really good job of defining Democrats as centralized power, even as conservatives controlled the government. And neoliberalism, a form of conservatism, is now used widely as a bludgeon against more moderate Democrats who still uphold governmetn regulation and social welfare policy.
I appreciated all the readings this week and found that I was able to connect much of the content to things going on today. I found it interesting reading The Great Strikes Revisited because these figures like Carnegie and Pullman are much like business titans of today, who deny workers fair wages and other benefits. Likewise in the Goodwyn piece many of the tactics the White Man’s Union used to prevent people from voting, are just more violent versions of the same things we do today.
Questions:
1) What factors prevented the emergence of a national US Labor party?
2) Does populism still exist today? Could the term be reclaimed from media overuse to reflect a modern day People’s Party?
Jordan’s analysis of Charles Postel’s piece really tracks closely with mine. I think Postel’s analysis of Tea Party populism needs to be more nuanced and critical in making the linkages between the populism of the 1890s and the populists of today. Is it true that a large degree of Tea Party organizing was the result of astroturfing from the Koch Brothers and their far-right libertarian network of nonprofits and think tanks? Yes. Does that mean that all Tea Party organizers were gullible, intolerant schmucks itching to embrace far-right ideas? I don’t quite think so. If anything, the Tea Party’s rise is an indictment of the Left and of labor. Instead of channelling popular frustrations produced by the Great Recession toward both the “free” market and government the Left stuck closely with neoliberal economic policies long embraced by New Democrats. In many ways, I see the rise of the Tea Party as preventable as long as the Left had been willing to embrace populism in order to build a multi-racial working class coalition.
The embrace of mass discontent by far-right libertarians, in many ways, seems like an interesting twist on earlier efforts by mainstream politicians and political parties to adopt populist ideas. For example, Postel mentions Theodore Roosevelt’s severe call to have Populists lined “against a wall to be shot” (Postel 119). However, during the 1912 presidential election, Roosevelt would adopt several populist policies as the candidate for the Progressive Party. Elites in power have tremendous power when it comes to adopting popular ideas for their own personal electoral gain. Roosevelt was able to go from being an NYPD commissioner calling for the execution of populists to a storied (but overrated and terribly racist imperialist) progressive reformer. Today, however, elites such as the Koch Brothers take mass discontent and funnel it toward their own personal gain through anti-government, pro-market policies.
How can this reversal be reckoned with? Personally, I think it has to do with the power of the working class and of broad popular movements. In the early 1900s, the Populist Party (through their Omaha Platform) and the Farmers’ Alliance were able to push the conversation in a more radical and populist direction. Such radical attempts to reshape the national conversation ran rampant through this time period. Think of the Sewer Socialists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota (check out Michael Lansing’s *Insurgent Democracy* on this organization), or the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to the north in Canada. From the 1890s to the 1930s these organizations were able to radically alter political attitudes both regionally and nationally. This was the result of popular mobilization and radical discontent.
Currently, however, populism does not evoke the populists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Instead, the name evokes the Tea Party movement along with the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. Part of this is due to the collapse of the Left starting in the 1970s, the rise of neoliberalism, and decreasing union density. This has led to a shrinking of public discourse. Radical left-wing ideas do not have the same currency (no pun intended) as they did during the first Populist movement in the United States. Anger and frustration on the part of the people has been co-opted by astroturfing elites for ultimately undemocratic ends.
Ultimately, I believe that populism can best be described by political scientist Cas Mudde’s contention that it is a “thin ideology” that can be paired up with a “thick ideology” such as conservatism or socialism. How populism is employed ultimately depends on what ideas, arguments, and mass movements have influence over the discourse. When the Left is weak and mass discontent is widespread then there will arise the kind of populism you see with the Tea Party. Meanwhile, such as during the early twentieth century, a strong Left can produce the kind of populism you see with the Populist Party, the Sewer Socialists, progressives, and other organizations/factions/coalitions. That is why I cannot necessarily say that populism is a binary good or bad thing. I believe populism’s merits ultimately depend on who employs it, for what ends, and why.
Questions:
1.) Is populism a style of politics or is it a coherent ideology?
2.) Is there a relationship between populism and socialism? Can one be a socialist and not be a populist (or vice versa)?
3.) What does it say about American politics that many populist demands are still unheard or unaccomplished?
In general, this week’s readings covered both the labor struggles of the Gilded Age and the rise of populism concurrent at the time. In reading the Fink and Dubofsky works, seen through the lens of labor struggles, and the Goodwyn, Postel, and The Omaha Platform, which address populism and the People’s Party, we see how the two converge and intersect. I found it interesting that the viewpoints of Postel’s Gold Bugs and Fink’s industrialists were given. They were often the same people or of the same class, and both authors did a fine job of describing their motivations and viewpoints of several big players. (I agree with Alyanna that Fink gave Carnegie too much of a pass.) I also found it very interesting how the Populists (and the IWW, for that matter) transformed politics by through education and the expectation that voters had a voice and power to transform their lives through political means. Where much of this education included indoctrination and propaganda, it still had the effect of offering an ideological viewpoint that could be debated, accepted, or rejected. By the Populist’s use of detailed policy positions, which were later adopted in some form or another by the two main parties, gave people clearer choices when voting, whether or not, once elected, leaders have the will or way to follow through on their promises.
1. I understand why hard money could be more advantageous to soft money for the wealthy, but why do Gold Bugs feel so strongly about using gold over silver?
2. In Goodwyn’s essay, how were the Democrats, through the White Man’s Party, able to pull white support from the People’s Party?
I agree with Jordan’s take on the Postel article, in terms of describing the ideology of the Populist Party and the base that they were trying to reach, which in compared to the other articles assigned, wasn’t as clearly defined but nonetheless were interesting reads. This was a forward thinking party in terms of not just reaching out to the farmers and labor organizations but having some racial unity in some instances and having the inclusion of women. As the author stated “Populism challenged the existing hierarchy , especially in term of race and class.” (which Jordan also noted in his analysis). Postel stated “..North Carolina White Populists and mainly Black Republicans formed a fusion government that built schools and took other measures sought by the African American community that were perceived as a threat to white power.” This “working in concert” between blacks and whites was also discussed in the other reading “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study “ by Goodwyn, which was such a great read on how Populism affected Grimes County and how effective disenfranchisement (and also intimidation, and eventually murder ) played a role in breaking it down. . The fear of blacks and even women having a voice and having a say on is almost equivalent to the mailroom clerk elevating himself to a CEO. Some may be for it, but many will be against it and have reasons why they weren’t “qualified enough” or not “smart enough” and only the people that are speaking against are the ones that are competent. As the author also noted, women “ could be empowered with education and , property rights, employment opportunities and the right to vote”, which was frowned upon during those times because it wasn’t a woman’s “place”. I also find it interesting to read through these essays on labor and politics or as Jordan described “wading the horror of contemporary American politics” which is quite accurate especially when it comes to what Dana Bash described last night a “sh*tshow* of a debate last night. One question that keeps on going on in my mind is why can we up until this day we cannot get over the hump of race and class in America and why as the labor class we are still allowing the 1 percent to dictate what happens in this country?
Fink criticizes viewing the Gilded Age as a singular event, and not in context of broader American history. Criticizes the opposite approach, that the similarities in results between contemporary labor-capital relations mirror those of the Gilded Age precisely. Basically, his take is that history is complicated, and should be evaluated without emotional connection. In his attempt to identify the layers of the past, I found value in Fink’s approach.
However, I agree with Alanna’s response to the reading. The difference between rhetoric and action, the actions of the robber barons were exploitative in the name of self-interest, and some focus on “Anti-imperialist” rhetoric may give insight into the personal feelings of the character (and it is important for anyone antagonistic to understand the character of their adversary), but don’t change the effects of his actions. Fink seems to believe that the responsibility of labor is to acquiesce to management, and appeal to their broader senses of personhood, whereas I can’t help but feel they remained focus on their pocketbook, rather than sentiment. I don’t buy the idea that Robber Baron’s regret for their actions is materially significant, though it may reflect a change in public opinion or perspective and a positive societal development towards notions of equality. If the employers sought to atone for their actions, they wouldn’t be so inclined to drastically cut wages in a time of economic downturn. I’m very intrigued by the invocation of “property-rights” as a philosophy that Fink alludes to on page 37, and though we didn’t read Chapter 1 where he explores this idea, it suggests that the employers concern was primarily with power, and their right to it. Philanthropy doesn’t alter this material goal, and was a self-professed way to garner public sympathy. Moreover, through the construction of libraries, Carnegie had the power to construct the narrative of his actions for historians in the future. Fink describes how Pullman sought to use his company town model to liberate workers from poor urban conditions. It seems like Pullman was mostly concerned with having power over his workers.
1. What is the effect of media/propaganda in labor/capital relations? Today, we see so many fawning profiles of modern-day robber barons, and they are often perceived as people to aspire to, who are also often liberal-minded politically.
2.How does the industry of charity/philanthropy serve to cement labor/capital relations in contemporary USA?
3. (Question for professor Suarez) Can you talk a little about how the Sherman Anti-trust act was used to break the Pullman strike?
Charles Postel’s essay provides us insight into the contemporary moment through his historical analysis of populism In the United States. What I find interesting about the text is how Postel’s historical analysis of populism is characterized by the reactionary movements that have accompanied moments of a populist upsurge in the country. According to Postel conservative movement not only arose in reaction to slave abolition, women’s rights, and labor radicalism but “also emerged in response to populism.”
He helps us understand the populist upsurge in the country by providing an analysis of populism in the 1890s. A decade that experienced a pivotal and innovative development in American politics. Academics of the 1960s believed that this populist upsurge represented a mass politics of intolerance with proto-fascist tendencies. Postel refutes this perspective by identifying the populist movement of the 1890s as having a “cleared-eyed interests based politics, with a high-level education campaign, that held both inclusive and tolerant appeals.”
Considering that populism in the United States, “serves as a shorthand for hostility to elite and centralized power. This political project was threatening to economic and establishment interests because it sought to address income inequality, improve the negotiating power of organized labor and agriculture. Modern conservatism developed as a reactionary movement to such populist upsurge which called for state-centered reforms in national politics with a force not seen before. It also developed to undermine the reform projects of the early 20th century like the New Deal and the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
Although the populism of the People’s Party was complex and attached itself to varying ideas of nationalism, radicalism, and liberalism, the relative absence of certain prejudices within politics built a foundation where solidarity could be built, a threat to the hegemonic powers of the day. Reformist populist rhetoric encouraged policies that extended freedom from the few to the many, yet conservatives understood it as a sacrifice of individual freedom for equality.
Postel helps us understand this recurring theme in American politics by building parallels with the anti-populist reaction of the 1890s and that of the 2010s by the Tea party. The reaction to Obama lies in the interpretation of a sacrifice of individual freedom for racial and economic equality. The fear of new demographic realities has encouraged anti-populist and reaction to economic and social gains. This can be seen by the election of Trump in 2016. Trump was a reaction to both progressive neoliberal reforms, and the election of America’s first Black president. What I find particularly shocking is how populism has shifted since the late 1890s. We are living in a weird situation conservative ideology is being used to mobilize reactionary movements, but by employing leftist rhetoric. This has played a role in shifting the political paradigm to the right in the United States.
How does European populism vary from American populism? Why do these differences exist?
Do you think populism can be an effective tool for mobilizing for progressive reforms? Why or why not?
How did the populism of the 2016 election connect to the history of conservative reaction in the contemporary moment? Are we experiencing such today?
After reading Postel’s “The American Populist and Anti-Populist Legacy” and then reading Jordan’s summary, I was struck by historical parallels and how something a movement I knew so little about could have reverberations still today. The ties between the populist/anti-populist period and the democrat/tea party period are stark and have helped me understand the resistance to reform or enfranchising populations now. Postel had me convinced for the reason that he did go into the generalization and oversimplification of the populists to suit counter-ideology, but as Jordan pointed out, it’s easy to fall into the same space. I hadn’t even thought of that as I was agreeing with Postel on the matter of Tea Party supporters. (It did feel like a smaller radical group at the time, but I was also not critically pursuing politics in middle/high school.) Maybe this brings me to my first question, because I need help working it out:
1. How should we consider history regarding the lines of generalization and specification? (Is it impossible to understand history with every nuance or would we be driving ourselves crazy getting lost in every weed. Maybe this is what keeps academics in business- there’s always an unconsidered point of view, a generalization that skews our understanding…) What’s the “right” balance?
2. Why is enfranchising populations seen as a threat? (I’m asking for answers that aren’t wholly based on those in power being selfish.)
This week’s readings were quite interesting in particular the Populist Dreams and Negro Right East Texas as a Case-Study. What I found particularly interesting about this article is how blacks were finally evolving in a country that never intended for blacks to be great. What disturbed me is how parties like the lily-white party and other racially divisive parties went out of their way to keep blacks below them and how relevant these tactics are today. Blacks will vote democrat however the democratic party only appears to care for blacks when it is time to vote. The republican party doesn’t really care to appeal to black voters because they don’t need to. When I think of populism as discussed in the other readings, I see it as the average man trying to get leverage in a captalistic world however I know this populism has never included blacks. Poor whites til this day will vote for individuals like our current president although it is clear he does not have their interest at heart. As long as they feel more invited to the table than minorities they could care less the elite see them.