Carrol said: Provided that those suffering agrarians were defined as primarily black. Any 19th century movement that did not make the condition of black americans central to its politics was at least implicitly and in most cases aggressively reactionary. Carrol
mbs: suffering agrarians in the U.S. decidedly included whites. there was a black populist movement with an on- again/off-again relationship to the white, but its history is murky since it was forced to operate underground.
don't you think that for a white tenant farmer in the south, surrounded by sectional resentment on the part of people with firearms, and pushed into destitution unto starvation, your imperative is asking a lot?
Perelman said: 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.
mbs: predatory business behavior is definitely a preoccupation of progressive populism. But the old movement was not so in love with markets that it precluded a much more important role for government in monetary policy and public utilities.
>From the Ocala platform:
"We demand the most rigid, honest and just state and national government
control and supervision of the means of public communication and
transportation, and if this control and supervision does not remove the
abuse now existing, we demand the government ownership of such means of
communication and transportation." Sound like Adam Smith?
Christopher said: It's occurred to me that populism fulfills a rôle in the United States rather like what Gramsci said anarchism fulfilled in Italy -- that it is "the elementary subversive position of any oppressed group." With emphasis on the "elementary," meaning shallow and unthinking, just as Doug describes.
mbs: try reading the primary sources some time, particularly in "The Populist Reader," or on the Internet, compare it to other political commentary of the time, and then rethink whether it reflects 'shallow and unthinking.'
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/4275/
http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/populism.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Quad/6460/doct/index187.html
"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days, is to go around repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." --- Charles A. Beard