Thursday, March 19, 2015
Tony Wikrent — The Philosohy of Populist Change
Important history lesson.
And a message for MMT — There is a pressing need is for a populist alternative to economic liberalism and socialism.
The US predecessor was the Greenback Party, but it quickly lost influence after the Civil War and the resumption of the gold standard and resurgence of the predator class and economic liberalism.
Ian Welsh
The Philosohy of Populist Change
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10 comments:
I am an admirer of the American populists but not so much of Tony. :-)
The populists were of the working class. That's missing from today's movements. Even Occupy was not a working class movement, being primarily urban, white, and college educated.
In theory, if you could unite the working class in both red states and blue states by making them see that they have common economic interests, you'd have a very powerful movement. It's tough to do, though, because the elites know how to play the "divide and conquer" game, particularly using social issues and identity politics.
Also, once the economy improves, people become complacent and forget how they had to struggle to create a good economic environment in the first place.
The American populist/socialist movement (I lump them together even if Tony rejects socialism) was mortally wounded by WWI. They were divided on whether or not to support the war. Then the war was used as an excuse to crack down on "dissidents" and unions and lefties.
Huey Long essentially re-invented the populist movement, not so much as a grassroots movement but more of a movement built around Huey himself, but directed at the working class. After Huey was assassinated, no one was able to fill his shoes, and his movement died at a national level, though "Longism" lived on for many years in Louisiana.
I agree with Tony to the extent that I think we can learn some lessons from the Populists.
The 1892 Populist Platform holds up very well today. While Tony disses Marxism, the populist platform was all about class warfare.
While Tony insists that socialism doesn't work (someone forgot to tell Scandinavia), the populists called for some socialism, i.e. nationalizing the railroads. "We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teaching of experience shall justify"
The US is not going to transition to any form of socialism in one jump. Too big a hurdle for a country based on individualism.
Right now the US is headed toward economic liberalism and away from a mixed economy. We need to turn that around.
BTW, the Scandinavian economies have turned right, too. They were never socialist in the first place, but mixed economies.
As far as uniting workers both left (Democratic) and right (GOP) based on economic interest, people don't necessarily vote base solely or chiefly on economic interest. Minds don't work that way. Value and interest form a complex web in which "morality" is foundational.
Recipe for an American populist ticket:
Anti-corporatist, anti-statist, and pro apple pie. Add a huge dose of charisma and let simmer over a long, hot summer.
Grassroots movements are a different phenomena that do not attract, and are usually ignored, by the media. When they are given attention, it tends to be counter-productive. A recent example would be "The Most Dangerous Woman in America" article.
The idea of the working classes on the left and right teaming up is a pipe dream for one reason. People on the right are far too racist, religious and discriminatory. These are implacable issues that cant be overcome. The working class right hates HATES unions, blacks, browns, gays, secularists, progressives, etc so they are never going to work together. Furthermore, the right is ideologically anti-Govt which is the only institution capable of counteracting corporate oligarchs. So this will never happen.
What @Bob said.
Well Auburn, as I said it is "tough" to unite the working class, but it has been done, at least for periods of time.
Huey Long did it, and he did it in one of the most conservative and racist states. T. Harry William's bio of Huey should be a "how to" manual for progressive politics.
To some extent FDR did it -- yes he did have to form a tenuous alliance with the racist Dixiecrats, and that alliance was its eventual undoing.
Most election day exit polls show that the number one issue is economics (or issues related to economics, like immigration).
While some say that red states vote against their economic interest, they ignore the fact that neither party represents the economic interests of the working class. Lacking a compelling economic narrative, electoral politics tends to deteriorate to social issues, which is fine with the 1%.
As for the ideologically anti-Govt, they actually love socialism as long as you don't call it "socialism."
The so-called "left" in the US digs its own grave by embracing controversial social issues like gun control, immigration, and a carbon tax. I observe a similar dynamic in other countries.
Even if a modern day Huey Long were to come along and succeed in gaining power, eventually the voters would become complacent as the economy improved and their attention turned to other issues. As Minsky would say, stability breeds instability.
The most recent populist figure in the US has been Ron Paul.
As someone who fits into the rather obscure political philosophy of western Canadian prairie populism, I would suggest looking at the history of those movements. Unlike other populists in a lot of other countries, western Canadian populists got what they wanted, and then went home. The movements reappeared whenever westerners got miffed.
These movements did not fit into the left/right axis of other countries. The CCF helped the push to building the Canadian welfare state (the Liberal Party took credit), while the latest wave was the right-wing Reform party that wiped out and absorbed the Progressive Conservative Party.
I discussed some of this history on my site in my comparison of Alberta and Greece.
The populist alternative that could be successful in the US, and if in the highly individualistic US, elsewhere also, would be MMT-based, showing how populist reform is fiscally sustainable.
I have been suggesting for some time updating John Kenneth Galbraith's The Good Society: The Humane Agenda (1996) with MMT rationale. He hits the high points and in most ways the book is still current. It's not like there isn't good thinking that already been done by people like Keynes, Lerner, Kalecki, Robinson, Lowe, Vickrey, Boulding, etc. The groundwork has been laid. The case needs to made now in today's social, political and economic terms.
Thanks for the reminder, @Brian Romanchuk. I think I found your article on the prairie populists. What little I know about them is that they were influenced by C.H. Douglas, but sorta corrupted his idea for the social credit (Douglas advocated a credit that was carefully calculated to offset demand leakages, while the Canucks advocated a flat $25 credit).
Wikipedia paints the Canadia Social Credit movement as highly fractious. I was briefly acquainted with one of them on Facebook, John Turmel, and if he is representative then I can understand why the movement was so divided. :-)
Dan,
The Albertan party was the first Social Credit government elected. They had only a limited grasp of what Douglas' theories were. They basically as-lined, but they were up against a central government that wanted nothing to do with their reforms. Social Credit was dominant in provincial politics in Alberta and British Columbia, up until the 1980s (?).
The populist parties had a lot of organizational issues, which is why they tended to burn out. Preston Manning, son of one of the original Albertan Social Credit politicians, studied the history of the various movements and did a good job of building a cohesive party (the Reform party).
It is unclear whether the particularities of Canadian prairie politics can be translated to work in other countries. One key difference is that the tribal right-left divide is less well defined.
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