populism

Michael Perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Sat Aug 25 08:46:27 PDT 2001


Doug, in a sense, Adam Smith is the father of populism -- although it dates back much further than him. What galls them is the "unfairness" of particular markets. They look to the "fair" markets of perfect competition.

On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 09:17:57AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Lawrence wrote:
>
> >From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> >> By the way, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a populist.
> >
> >Is that because of the threat the majority constantly poses, in any society,
> >to the civil rights of minorities, or for some other reason?
>
> I'm no scholar of populism, but it's mainly struck me as deeply petty
> bourgeois politics - not against capitalists, just big capitalists;
> not against money, just big money; not against a system of private
> property enforced by money, but just for easy credit. Sometimes it's
> pro-worker, sometimes it's not; and it's often xenophobic and
> anti-urban. It denounces finance, without noticing the connections of
> finance to ownership, or the fact that the whole end of capitalist
> production is not the satisfaction of needs or the making of neat
> things, but the accumulation of capital. It's a shallow form of class
> politics that can often see poor people as being just as parasitic on
> virtuous producers as Jewish bankers in New York.
>
> Doug

-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



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