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The New Populist Reader Edited by Karl G. Trautman Westport, CT Praeger Publishers 1997 256 pp. $65 hardcover, $22.95 paper
Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute Suite 1200 1660 L Street, NW Washington, DC 20037 202-775-8810 202-775-0819 (fax) maxsaw at cpcug.org
As for other political crusades, dispute surrounds the meaning of populism. Editor Karl G. Trautman begins his anthology well enough by explaining populism as "the claim that there is illegitimate power operating against the American political creed, and this power is exercised by self-serving, out of touch elites that apply it against the will of the majority of the people."
The editor goes on to point out that the multiplicity of American creeds is matched by a diversity of populist currents. We have populisms of left and right, each divisible into disparate subcategories. In The Populist Persuasion, Mike Kazin makes the case that although not all marched under a banner proclaiming ‘populism,' all U.S. insurgency worth the name, including our own beloved CIO movement of the 1930's, wore the populist mantle.
The flexibility of the populist framework permits a variety of ideas to be clothed in populist garb. What's required is the construction of a suitable reference point in the past: some tangible movement; an intellectual, cultural, or political tradition; a noteworthy historical interlude; or better, some combination of these. A second key feature is that such a reference point serves a majoritarian interest--the many against the few. Populism gains currency in our public debate because it kindles a positive, possibly idealized memory of something lost but worth recovering.
Marxists are prone to be suspicious of populism. Populism rejects Marxist taxonomy and formal analysis. It is reformist, not revolutionary. The bourgeois state is something to be reformed or reclaimed by the people, not destroyed. Private ownership of capital is not rejected in principle, only narrowly-defined abuses of such ownership. Finally, the habit of finding some bright spot in the American past offends many who see nothing but unrelieved tyranny and oppression. In short, populism at its best doesn't go far enough for some. At its worst, populism can be sufficiently muddled or wrong-headed to lend itself to overtly reactionary purposes.
Populism has come in for rough treatment at the hands of elite, mainstream historians and economists as well. Populism's original adversaries included the Southern post-Civil War plantocracy and Northeastern capital (particularly banks and railroads). Its original allies included the Knights of Labor. Such a line-up suggests that populists deserve another look from the left. Trautman's book is helpful but incomplete in this respect. He is more interested in providing a modern sampling of populist ferment in the fields of economics, culture, and government. My purpose here is different: to judge whether the selections do justice to the tradition at its best.
The economic section includes articles on commodities speculation, telecommunications deregulation, and corporate welfare. The most important items are on trade, health care, and the Fed, but the selections chosen dwell on secondary issues.
The trade piece deals with the issue of national sovereignty, not without salience for populism but clearly secondary to the fundamental concern driving the debate: footloose capital driving down wages. Congressional testimony on the Fed by the redoubtable Ralph Nader is also off the mark. Nader dwells on democratization of the Fed and its regulatory functions, rather than tight money, historically the leading concern of populism.
Speculation is germane to a critique of high finance, but it is secondary to the more egregious sin of blocking independent enterprise, wage increases, and economic growth by virtue of enforcing an inelastic money supply. Whether or not you believe a distinction between finance capital and industrial capital is appropriate, for populism to gain a fair hearing its critique of finance deserves an airing.
Nader's interest in consumerism and the democratic process are reflected in the book as a whole. They are more in keeping with a turn-of-the-century progressivism or bourgeois liberalism, not historic populism. The latter is more about producers, specifically the ability of workers, farmers, the self-employed, and small business owners to earn a living.
We do get offerings of interest on media concentration and corporate welfare, but secondary to my way of thinking. The health care selections treat consumers' fates in the hands of HMO's, an incrementalist health care reform bill, and health care supplied by the Salvation Army. One would have expected something on national health insurance.
The shortcomings of the economics section are partially redeemed by the inclusion of a speech from Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota that provides a clear but lamentably brief excursion through the left-populist tradition.
The cultural section begins on a promising note with Christopher Lasch's observation of a crucial question--where do community rights properly override individual rights and property rights? Selections are offered on the content of mass media, university speech codes, gambling, sports team franchises, the amorality of markets, and the alleged "end of work" (by, you guessed it, Jeremy Rifkin).
It is left for the culture section to treat producers through Rifkin's well-known, highly problematic story of "the end of work" and a succeeding piece on "new work." Employment is alleged to be disappearing, but according to the latter piece we will see new forms of work based in the home and in social service to communities, not unlike the world of the Whole Earth Catalog. Not for these writers the world of poorly-paying service jobs, the progressive loss of leisure time to multiple job responsibilities, and the stagnation of the public sector! The inadequacy of this treatment of the working class almost goes without saying.
The pieces on media content are appropriate in topic but predictable, such as the Bob Dole speech on Hollywood. They also tend to imply that such criticism is intrinsically conservative in origin, which could be taken to suggest that the left is content with the likes of Jerry Springer, misogynistic rap music lyrics, and movies featuring improbable heros who single-handedly wipe out small armies of heavily armed assailants.
The selections on gambling, speech codes, and sports franchises are worthwhile. More to the point is an account of a conflict between local citizens and suburban developers. As before, the best piece of the section, although it embodies a negative example, is another political speech, this time from Pat Buchanan. In the first section, labor is conspicuous by its absence. The topic most important to the cultural section is also missing: religion, a gigantic force in all populisms.
The third section aims to display what the editor calls "governmental populism" with articles on campaign finance, term limits, ballot access, presidential debates, the jury system, and welfare reform. This is a reasonable selection of subjects. I do have near-violent objections to the book's treatment of welfare reform, a single-sided gloss in support of the abolition of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. An alternative view should have accompanied the apologia for such a craven political act. Similarly, the section closes with an ignorant screed from Governor Richard Lamm on Social Security but lacks any populist defense of the program.
The government selections reflect current concerns about political process but raise a deeper issue. The original populists of 1890 viewed government as their salvation, a bulwark against the depredations of capitalist robber barons and small-time commerce founded on sharp practices. In Trautman's anthology, the implied countervailing force wielded by the many against the few is a notion of decentralized localism. At the very least, this is too narrow a span to capture the variety of contemporary populism. It is also a debatable strategy in its own right.
I think the next populism will look more like the 19th century variety than the present ones. Only in the speeches by Dorgan and Buchanan can one glimpse the seeds of revolt or the makings of a crusade. Cleveland will not rise up against capitalism because their football team was moved to Baltimore. Upheavals will be about basic living standards and how God would have the people defend them. There isn't enough red meat here to feed the lions of revolt.
A number of the selections are from major corporate media outlets. We don't need them. The ideal populist contribution is a raw cry from the wilderness that speaks to a fundamental matter, rather than canned mini-treatises from the usual suspects, including this reviewer. Better the book that would showcase authors who have not been afforded much public exposure, such as Harry Boyte or Ronnie Dugger on the left or James Dobson and Gary Bauer on the right.
In general there is thin gruel here for those interested in radical political economy. The two most important populist causes–the plight of labor and the power of Finance--are ill-served. Omissions and miscues aside, the cultural and political selections are more on point.
What will an authentic populism would look like? Some of the ingredients are on view in this book, but some are missing as well. Not to worry, though, the people will inevitably be heard. It will be all we can do to catch up.