One of the criticisms of A Conservative History of the American Left involves my inclusion of the populists, a problematic bunch to be sure. The Left Conservative blog states, "Flynn repeats the popular myth that the Progressives were the natural offspring of the Populists.... the Populists were actually about taking power away from the state and putting it in the hands of the citizenry in order to slow down 'progress.'" Similarly, Bill Kauffman, author of Ain't My America, wrote in his First Principles review, "For the populists were old American types who took seriously their Jefferson and picked up any weapon at hand to fight off the plutocrats and predators who were dispossessing rural America and making a go at oligarchy."
Understanding that populists and Populists, i.e., members of the People's Party, were not synonymous, it is nevertheless worth noting that a political party arose to express the political wishes of populists. They left a record, and, however much current writers might be taken by a mythologized view of populists as the last gasp of Jefferson's gentleman farmer, the record they left was far left. Among the first to effectively demand an activist state, the self-interested populists bequeathed a political legacy to the do-gooder progressives that resulted in a larger, more centralized, and instrusive federal government.
Read the party's 1892 platform. It calls for a graduated income tax, an inflated currency, banks operated by the post office, expropriation of lands from railroads and foreigners, political mechanisms that shift from republicanism to democracy, and the nationalization of the railroad, telegraph, and telephone industries. They failed to enact their program. The unfinished business of the Populists was taken up by the progressives. The progressives nationalized the railroads, established a graduated income tax, inflated the currency through the Federal Resere, and instituted the Australian ballot, initiative, and referendum.
There are several reasons why the populists continue to confuse writers and defy labels. They appealed to faith and flag. Their golden age existed in the experienced past rather than the imagined future. They wanted to preserve the state, not overthrow it. They didn't want to divide the land, but instead wanted to own it. And when the sun had set on their day in the sun, many populists shunned radicalism as heartily as they had once embraced it.
But as Ignatius Donnelly, the most colorful of that most colorful pitchfork-mob known as the populists, demanded, "We have to expand the powers of government to solve the enigma of the world." This is not the cry of one interested in "taking power away from the state" or of an old-stock American "who took seriously...Jefferson." It's the familar cry of the Left, even if those making that cry in the 1880s and '90s would soon rue the day that they had made it.
Very astute of you to notice this "populist" problem Dan. For the most part you're absolutely right, populism and "leftism" are siblings. I wrote this during the height of the Republican Primary:
Populism: The Resurgent Political Cancer
Posted by JINGOIST on Saturday, February 02, 2008 10:48:11 AM
An all-to-familiar sickness is sweeping the Republican primary this campaign season. It's called Populism. Ronald Reagan temporarily vanquished this green-eyed monster with his cheerful and patriotic optimism, but it's made a comeback. Populism has a natural home in the class-warfare rhetoric of the Democrat Party. Democrats have perfected the dark art of pitting the "haves" against the "have nots", corporations vs. "workers", blacks vs. Latinos, blacks vs. whites, "patriarchal" men vs. "victimized" women, gay vs. straight, straight vs. transgender, ambulatory vs. handicapped, humans vs. the environment, and on and on.
This form of political warfare is meant to divide us into warring factions and Balkanize the electorate. After all if a candidate is NOT a conservative, but needs to win Republican votes, first he must DIVIDE us into opposing camps based on economics. How do you do that? ENVY! Envy is the chief ingredient in populist rhetoric. It appeals to our basest instincts. It tells us that our troubles and our struggles are not the result of our own repetitive bad decisions and errors in judgment, but are the direct result of that "corporate CEO who makes 30 times more" than we do. Envy and economic ignorance are identical twins.
Populism is class warfare and it's completely dishonest and divisive, but it works amazingly well for the politician who has little else to offer in the form of conservative ideas and optimism. Mike Huckabee and John McCain are the chief practitioners of this dark art which pits neighbor against neighbor, employee versus employer, and rich versus poor. Neither are conservatives, but they think they can buy your vote and distract your focus by being staunchly anti-abortion and making you hate your boss. If this Pavlovian rhetoric appeals to you, you need a swift kick in the rear!
True conservatives want the best for you! Stop buying the fools gold Lotto tickets, push away from the bar, stop smoking the expensive and mind-numbing weed. Wake up early in the morning and go to work shaved, showered, with clean clothes and a smile, ready to give your all to the company you work for. Take the jewelry out of your nose, lips and cheeks. Cover the ugly red and green painting on your neck and arms with a long-sleeved shirt. Make yourself that company's most valuable employee! If you truly are in a bad work situation that won't improve, LEAVE that company and go elsewhere to work hard and thrive where you are appreciated. Be a fully vested American and achieve what you are capable of!
You are the one most responsible for your lot in life and only you can improve it, no matter what John McCain or Mike Huckabee says!
Morgn Orlins
Dan,
As you state the People's Party is not now, and was not then, a synonym for populism at-large. Furthermore that the populists favored an activist government is not seriously in doubt, it is the reasoning behind this that is interesting and does not fit the model of Progressivism.
The Progressive Movement was a movement led by intellectuals who wanted to expand the size and scope of government and business.. It was trickle down statism, designed to create bureaucracy after bureaucracy, that would tell people how to live their lives, run their businesses, et.
Populism was a movement led by Middle Americans, who generally had traditional, localist views. They rightfully saw the incursion of the railroad monolith as a land grab and corporate/state duel powerplay to disposses their towns and communities and were believed Washington plutocrats could not be trusted to stop this giant from destroying their culture and way of life.
If anything Populism was a direct opponent of the early Progressive mindset.
Dylan
P.S. despite my criticisms, the book is very good Dan and I have already recommended it to several friends
Concepts are not static, they can be rather fluid. It is possible in any movement to find a self-titled group that co-opted the movement and/or gave a foothold to opposing forces. The People's Party, with it's accent on nationalizing the industries and promoting inflation to allow farmers to pay back what they borrowed with cheaper dollars, arguably promoted a class awareness and a "whatever is good for our side" type of spoils mentality that the Democratic partly was actively trying to absorb. Bryan's Cross of Gold speech is demonstrative of the type of bombastic, idealistic, villain-izing rhetoric so characteristic of the left that today wants to call our one-time "first Black President" a racist.
Thank you, Dylan--for the kind words and the review. (Dylan blogs at the "Left Conservative" site that I link to in the main post.) I found your review's postscript, the accompanying link, and the reader comment objecting to Henry George's placement on the Left strange. I understand why the populists might inspire conflicting interpretations, such as the ones you and Bill Kauffman hold in contradistinction to mine. I think George, being essentially a single-tax monomaniac, bequeaths a rather unambiguous legacy. For the uninitiated, George's central (only?) idea was the abolition of private ownership of land. "We did not abolish slavery when we ratified the Fourteenth Amemdment," George wrote in his uber-best seller "Progress and Poverty," "to abolish slavery we must abolish private property in land!" I don't think it at all controversial to place such sentiments, or the ones holding them, on the Left.
I agree (who could disagree really?) that George was a monomaniac, but George is one of many historical figures that I think doesn't fit neatly into either the "left" or "right" camp.
Once again the issue here is not so much what George proposed, but why he proposed it. George, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that man could not be totally free unless he had a place to settle and call him. His single-tax argument, was primarily an argument against land speculation and was an argument based on principles nearly identical to the ones used by modern conservatives to argue against the massive size and concentration of power in unaccountable government bureaucracy. Furthermore George, as you note in the book, was in no way an anti-capitalist. Anti-capitalism is of the course the one thing that the left has been historically united on.
George (who wanted to get a rid of all taxes, excluding the land value tax, something that would be considered radically conservative by everyone this side of Frank Chodorov) doesn't fit into either category, because the time period in which he proposed his theory was drastically different from ours. Lumping him in with left or right is as difficult as trying to find a home for Chesterton, the Luddites, and the Loco Focos. It's also part of the reason why "left v. right" can be a poor conflict to buy into.
Either your explanation of George's motivations, and/or perhaps George's intentions juxtaposed with his plan, does not make sense. You state that George's intention was to give every man a place to call his own. But under George's plan, every man who already had a place to call his own would no longer have such a place and every man who had no such place would still have no place to call his own. The state would own all of it. The expropriation of all private land is very easy to categorize. It's a leftist idea.
George was not calling for the expropriation of land. He was calling for user fees on land, which he argued was by its nature public. One can easily argue with that, but that is indisputably different than suggesting that all land be seized from all land owners and then redivided based on "need" or some other such scheme.
I think "expropriation" can be used here, but I grant that George's plan was certainly more nuanced than, say, Mugabe's or Lenin's. To pay a "user fee," as you put it, or "rent," as George stated, is another way of stating you don't own the land that you purchased or inherited. Private property is one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization, and George's plan was one of many offered by radicals through the centuries that sought to tear down Western Civilization and the traditions it is based on.
Because there are differences in the motives and methods of the expropriators, does not make them less deserving of that epithet. Marx, Lenin, Mao, and all of the great radical crackpots would have agreed with George in his central point: "Historically, as ethically, private property in land is robbery."
You mention George's motivation for the single tax as having to do with allowing every man the freedom to have a place to settle and call his own. As I have shown by contrasting this with George's idea of centralizing ownership in a monopoly called the state, making men rooted to the land had very little to do with George's plan.
For stated motivations, George was pretty clear. He believed the single tax would hasten "the common sense proposition of Bentham to abolish all laws for the collection of debts and the enforcement of private contracts." (455) "Government could take upon itself the transmission of messages by telegraph, as well as by mail; of building and operating railroads, as well as opening and maintaining common roads.... we could establish public baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dancing halls, theaters, universities, technical schools, shooting galleries, play grounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, and motive power, as well as water, might be conducted through our streets at public expense; our roads be lined with fruit trees; discoverers and inventors rewarded, scientific investigations supported; and in a thousand ways the public revenues be made to foster efforts for the public benefit."
No thank you to all that.
