I forward this long review & response for the brief discussion of prohibition
movement as a form of populism. * DMF
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (June, 1995)
Michael Kazin. THE POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY. Basic
Books, 1995.
Peter Argersinger. THE LIMITS OF AGRARIAN RADICALISM: WESTERN POPULISM
AND AMERICAN POLITICS. University of Kansas Press, 1995.
Reviewed by Robert Johnston, Yale University, for H-Pol.
--"When reform comes in this country, it starts with the masses.
Reforms do not come from the brains of scholars."
--William Jennings Bryan, cited in Kazin, p. 106
We live in a particularly auspicious time to be
writing about American populism. As the various political
insurgencies--and the companion discussions of them on H-POL--indicate,
we are going through another cycle of popular disgust with at least some
of our leaders. And as usual, intellectuals--their connections with the
masses always fairly tenuous--are having problems figuring out why and
what it all means.
Michael Kazin and Peter Argersinger have written considerably
different books, and each helps us with our task of keeping up with the
people. Kazin's is an elegant synthesis of nearly 200 years of populist
and quasi-populist movements, ideas, and politicians. Argersinger's is
a much more tightly focused series of essays examining the political
limitations imposed upon western populism in the 1890s. Both are
excellent at what they do, although Kazin's THE POPULIST PERSUASION is by
far the more intellectually ambitious.
With a giant leap (although some significant smaller steps occurred
along the way) Michael Kazin has become this academic generation's
foremost historical commentator on populism. He therefore has a
considerable burden, for now Kazin's statements in the press as well as
the substantive content of his book will be open to contentious chatter
from the rest of us. Kazin has put himself on the spot, then, in a way
few historians do. How has he acquitted himself so far?
Overall, quite well. THE POPULIST PERSUASION generally
persuades; it also informs and contributes to public debate in highly
significant ways. The heart of the book is a narrative exploration of
populist LANGUAGE, from Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to Bill
Clinton, Ross Perot, and Jesse Jackson (Newt Gingrich--not to mention
Oklahoma City--missed the publication deadline).
Kazin focuses on language because of his view that a consistent
rhetoric of populism has structured much of American politics
since at least the 1890s, if not before. Populist language has
represented a "persuasion" able to "leap ideological boundaries" (p. 193)
of liberalism and conservatism. Thus there is not one true Populism,
with all else in its shadows, but rather a wide variety of Americans
using the tropes of civil religion to claim that their politics represent
ordinary folks.
Kazin uses his flexible definition to great effect, providing the
first scholarly treatment that connects the People's Party with George
Wallace in a constructive manner (we should not have had to wait so
long). Yet he goes much further than this, bringing in a wide cast of
characters in essay-like chapters. In broadly chronological fashion,
Kazin also analyzes:
--The revolutionary era (briefly) and nineteenth-century
precursors to the grand agrarian insurgency
--The People's Party and the late ninteenth century generally
--Labor and the Left during the early twentieth century (readers
of his previous BARONS OF LABOR will not be surprised that Kazin's AFL is
much less conventional than its common portrayal as a set of staid
business unionists)
--The Prohibition movement, from the WCTU to the Anti-Saloon League
--Father Coughlin
--The CIO during the 1930s
--The anticommunist right wing during the 1940s and 1950s
--The white New Left, of which Kazin was an important participant
--Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the GOP capture of populism
during the 1970s and 1980s, and
--in an epilogue, recent populism, focusing on the 1992 elections.
Kazin is brave in his attempt to bring all this together. Some
chapters sparkle with insight that comes out of his daring
conceptualization of populism. In particular, thinking of
prohibition--with its morality play of grasping elites sullying the
purity of the common people--as "populist" is quite wise. Also, Kazin's
treatment of George Wallace is superb. Here the Alabama governor serves
as a necessary bridge from 1930s liberal/laborite visions of a
multiethnic and multiracial common people to 1980s white working-class
Reagan Democracy.
Kazin's flexibililty and analytical bravery, however, seem to go
a bit too far at times. Kazin states that populism is "more an impulse
than an ideology" and that therefore we should be on the lookout for
those who effectively "employed populism" rhetorically rather than
fruitlessly trying to figure out who "real" populists were (p. 3). The
search therefore produces some unusual suspects, ranging from (may Tom
Watson rest peacefully in his grave) William Jennings Bryan, to Samuel
Gompers, to Billy Sunday, to Philip Murray, to Richard Nixon, to Bill
Clinton. And John Fitzgerald Kennedy dominates the dust jacket! I agree
that it is useful to view such individuals as having, at critical times,
spoken in a populist idiom. Kazin's approach, however, threatens to
obscure the ways in which all these figures spoke within a broad liberal
consensus that did not generally raise, in any fundamental manner, issues
of who has held economic, cultural, and political power
in America.
At the same time, Kazin's multidimensional approach allows him to
return (accurately, in my mind) Joe McCarthy to the populist pantheon.
This is a brave move indeed, given the intolerance of most anti-Richard
Hofstadter revisionists to thinking of any even indirect ideological and
rhetorical links between the junior senator from Wisconsin and the
original 1890s Golden Boys. While properly castigating the
anti-democratic dismissal of the People's Party by Daniel Bell,
Hofstadter, and their comrades, Kazin properly insists that both the
Populists and McCarthy "appealed to the will and interests of a
self-reliant, productive majority whose spiritual beliefs, patriotic
ideals, and communities were judged to be under attack at the hands of a
modernizing elite" (p. 192).
Kazin's most original ideas come through his explanation of the
evolution of populist language. Since 1945, populism has moved from Left
to Right--no surprises there. But how, if not "why"? Kazin deftly
insists that MORAL concerns have been central to populism from its
beginnings. Frances Willard and Ignatius Donnelly married economic and
ethical issues; the main story of twentieth-century populism is their
sundering. The strength of organized labor kept economic populism on the
table through the New Deal, but after World War II the right wing has
been able to latch on to orphaned moral concerns and build a majoritarian
movement that detests the godless cultural elites who insist on
condescending to and controlling the common people.
*******************************
In some ways it is unfair to compare Peter Argersinger's THE
LIMITS OF AGRARIAN RADICALISM to Kazin's book, if only because
Argersinger is much more focused. Along with an original introduction,
his book brings together essays published over a quarter of a century
that concentrate on 1890s Populists in Kansas, the Dakotas, and
Washington, D.C. Yet the quality of Argersinger's scholarship in many
ways matches that of Kazin. In particular, Argersinger is an
indefatigable researcher who knows the politics of western populism
probably better than anyone.
Argersinger is especially attentive to specific elections,
ranging from the 1890 and 1891 balloting in Kansas to the 1897 Iowa poll
to the 1902 election in South Dakota. Argersinger's purpose in examining
such rituals is to demonstrate the powerful political forces opposing the
Populists, above all in the form of anti-democratic election laws and
legislative rules that favored the major parties--who were perfectly
willing to legislate the Populists out of existence before the electorate
had a chance to express a preference.
Argersinger's major achievement in the study of Populism--and
late nineteenth-century politics generally--is to focus our attention on
such mundane matters as the form of ballots, statutes relating to third
parties, and the right to be recognized in the halls of Congress. For in
determining the basic rules, "Those who controlled the state thus gained
the power to structure the system in their own behalf" (p. 136).
One of his most vivid examples involves the constant attempt by
Republicans to interfere by law with fusion efforts between Democrats and
Populists, often the only opportunity the latter had to have their voice
heard. His studies also illustrate very convincingly that the American
system of winner-take-all single-district elections is inherently
undemocratic. Although Argersinger refrains from advocacy, his is
clearly a voice in tune with the call of many Populists, Lani Guinier,
and others for some form of proportional representation in the United States.
Argersinger also reminds us that the People's Party was a PARTY.
For example, he examines the process by which relatively unprincipled
"practical": political leaders took over the organization and turned it
away from broad-minded reform. Also, he warns us against thinking of
Populist legislators as a monolith; in fact, much of the failure of the
Populists in state capitals was caused by a powerful faction of
relatively conservative Populist lawmakers who had more loyalty to
economic development than to the "producing classes."
Argersinger is at his best when he serves as a kind of muckraker,
decrying the anti-democratic nature of the (too often celebrated) late
nineteenth-century polity. He asks us to reflect on just how free the
ballot was then--and by extension, now. In the end, though, it is
important to question how critical were the forces that Argersinger
emphasizes. Concerning the failure of the Populists, he writes that
"structural limits were more important and influential than ... cultural
barriers: By helping establish the two-party system they underlay (and
could further exploit) the cultural limits and imposed serious
constraints of their own" (p. 8).
The problem is that Argersinger does not engage other historians'
thinking about Populism much at all, with the exception of an attack on
Karel Bicha. To claim that election laws and legislative rules were this
important, though, should have meant considering other causes of western
Populism's downfall, including a liberal and individualist economic
culture, the regional limits of Populist strength, and the presence of
effective competition within some states' two-party structure (here the
work of Jeffrey Ostler in PRAIRIE POPULISM is especially important).
Even as ardent an admirer of the Populists as Robert McMath states that
they never really had any chance of success at all (see AMERICAN
POPULISM: A SOCIAL HISTORY). Argersinger's failure to engage these
larger questions unfortunately represents the limits of THE LIMITS OF
AGRARIAN RADICALISM.
**************************************
If THE LIMITS OF AGRARIAN RADICALISM and THE POPULIST PERSUASION
are a good indication--and I think they are--studies of Populism have
reached a new level of maturity. With maturity comes insight, wisdom, a
sense of complexity, and caution. I wonder, though, whether Peter
Argersinger and Michael Kazin display too much caution, too much balance,
too much evenhandedness. For Populism was about, and populism is still
about, righteous anger--directed against corrupt elites, against the
oppression of ordinary Americans, against the promise of America betrayed.
Many--probably most--liberal, conservative, and multicultural/radical
intellectuals would have us turn our back on such righteous anger. This
is certainly what Thomas Bender advocates in what promises to be an
influential review of Kazin's book. Bender argues the populism is
inherently parochial, Manichean, anti-intellectual, racist, sexist, and
excessively moralistic. (THE NATION, March 13, 1995, pp. 350-352).
Better "democracy" than populism, according to the cosmopolitan
intellectual historian.
Kazin, though, would appear to be somewhat paralyzed in responding to
Bender's argument because of his own rhetorical structure. Certainly
Kazin issues a forceful defense of populism, despite its blemishes--which
he discusses in copious detail. He reminds us that, in any case, the
cursing of "the people" by intellectuals will not help produce a more
progressive politics.
Yet THE POPULIST PERSUASION disdains to engage in political
polemics or intervene in historiographical debates. Above all, Kazin has
written a smooth narrative. Kazin's approach has its benefits, certainly.
His book is not only far and away the best treatment of the American
populist tradition available, it is also one of
the best surveys of twentieth-century American political history that we
have--in fact, possibly THE best.
Kazin's book lacks passion, though, in an age of increasingly
passionate politics. THE POPULIST PERSUASION is not the work of an
activist like Lawrence Goodwyn, alternately hopeful and despairing in
DEMOCRATIC PROMISE. Nor is this the work of a social critic like
Christopher Lasch, who shares his subjects' intensity and anguish in THE
TRUE AND ONLY HEAVEN and THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES.
Yet Kazin has written differently about populism in previous
contexts. Indeed, one of his most important intellectual accomplishments
has been to argue, in quite controversial essays, that labor historians
have to give up on the category of "class" because American workers
themselves have always embraced "populist," as opposed to class, thinking.
Such
reasoning has opened up extremely productive areas of intellectual debate
even while earning Kazin the reputation of a traitor among many
Marxists. (1)
THE POPULIST PERSUASION eschews controversy, however, and few
scholars will get truly upset reading it. Kazin's book is gentle--a
quality of grace in a mean-spirited intellectual age, to be sure, but
possibly one that takes Kazin out of the game too much. Perhaps in
writing for a general audience Kazin has unintentionally limited the
appeal of his book. In contrast to the work of Richard Hofstadter, who
could write beautifully AND propound an unforgettable argument, "the
Kazin thesis" will in all likelihood be fuzzy a decade from now.
In the end, Michael Kazin's excellent book raises a number of
critical questions for us to think about. In the spirit of cyberspace
openness and democracy, I will close my review by stating some of them in
anticipation of a response from both Kazin and the general H-POL
audience.
1) What proper role is there for the passionate (and gentle!) politicized
historian in our discussions of populism? Hofstadter and Lasch are dead
and Goodwyn has been marginalized. Perhaps intellectuals should consider
giving up our much vaunted self-image as distinctively engaging in
"critical discourse." After all, the American public seems much more
critical these days than many intellectuals.
2) Is populism an American political tradition comparable in
influence, say, to the liberal and conservative traditions? Here Kazin's
reliance on language and his contention that populism is not an ideology
seems partially suspect. How can a mere "impulse" and idiom have such
power? And just what are the differences between an impulse, a
persuasion, and an ideology anyway?
3) Is Kazin's definition of populism the best available? He states
that populism is "a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people
as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite
opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the
former against the latter" (p. 1). Instead, a more essentialist
definition might insist that populism is a set of political ideas and
practices that emphasizes the radical democratization of political,
economic, and cultural life in order to restore rule to "the people."
4) Is it, therefore, completely arbitrary, to insist that it is proper
to label some people "true populists" and others not? I recognize,
though, that here I tread on dangerous ground.
5) How do we link up populist language and populist politics with
American visions of class? Here Christopher Lasch's insistence that
populism is fundamentally a democratic movement of a LOWER MIDDLE CLASS
antagonistic to both the professional/managerial class and the capitalist
elite is much more promising in my mind than Kazin seems to indicate. (2)
6) What would a renewed "left populism" of the kind that
Kazin advocates really look like? What class hostilities--and
affinities--would it
express? What racial policies might it adopt? Since ethical concerns
are of the essence to effective populism, what kind of crusading morality
would be at its heart? Would it operate primarily within the reigning
two-party
system, or would it seek other political expression? When might it
occur? (3)
7) Finally, are WE the enemy? What role are there for scholars who
consider themselves populists? How connected can intellectuals ever be
to the common folk?
Perhaps, in the end, we can only be "firmly equivocal," Michael
Kazin's nice phrase about his attitude toward populism. Let us
equivocate, however, with many different voices.
===================================================
(1) Kazin, "A People Not a Class: Rethinking the Political Language of
the Modern US Labor Movement," in Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker, eds.,
RESHAPING THE US LEFT: POPULAR STRUGGLES IN THE 1980S (Verso, 1988),
257-286; Kazin, "Struggling with Class Struggle: Marxism and the Search
for a Synthesis of U.S. Labor History," LABOR HISTORY 28(Fall 1987):
497-514; and particularly in response Bryan D. Palmer, DESCENT INTO
DISCOURSE: THE REIFICATION OF LANGUAGE AND THE WRITING OF SOCIAL HISTORY
(Temple, 1990), pp. 122-124 and p. 252, where we learn that Kazin is
"intent upon establishing himself as the Arthur Koestler of the New Left
labor historians."
(2) For Kazin on Lasch, see Kazin, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Lasch,
"Current Debate: The Politics of Populism," TIKKUN 6(Sept.-Oct. 1991): 37-44.
(3) For some of Kazin's current political views, see Maurice Isserman and
Kazin, "As Bill Goes, So Do We; The Left and Clinton," THE NATION, May 30, 1994.
===========================
Robert Johnston is at work on a book on lower middle-class populism, THE
RADICAL MIDDLE CLASS: POPULAR DEMOCRACY AND ANTICAPITALISM IN PROGRESSIVE
ERA PORTLAND, OREGON. Many thanks to Glenda Gilmore for her excellent
comments.
Copyright (c) 1995 by H-Net, all rights reserved.
This work may be copied for non-profit educational
use if proper credit is given to the author and the
list. For other permission, please contact
[log in to unmask]
H-NET BOOK REVIEW RESPONSE
Published by [log in to unmask] (June, 1995)
Response to Johnston by Michael Kazin, American University, for H-Pol
<[log in to unmask]>.
Robert Johnston has written an extraordinarily generous review, for which I
thank him. It's also a perceptive one, cognizant of what I didn't do and of
the costs of that neglect. Johnston wants us to pay attention to the big
issues, both historiographically and politically, that swirl around the
study of U.S. populism -- and his questions are both essential and difficult
to answer. But I'll take a stab.
First, a confession. I did write the book more out of a desire to
change the sensibility with which historians (the overwhelming majority of
whom lean left -- as do I) regard social movements and political language
than because I wanted to make an Argument about populism in the U.S. I have
long thought that we secular liberals and radicals failed to take seriously
the religious wellsprings of much political talk -- and that the abiding and
sometimes dominant conservatism of Americans (particularly white ones) was
going largely unstudied. The left demands that the past do its duty, some
British historian once wrote. And, in the 70s and 80s, it wasn't acquitting
itself too well -- or so a lot of American historians seemed to think.
Anyway, I wrote the book to underscore the flexibilities, often
ironic ones, of what is probably our major language of discontent -- and
certainly our major language of class. And, as Johnston knows, I also wanted
to discuss how the organized right learned to talk in populist ways -- an
alarming development from which we of the liberal to radical bent have still
not accustomed ourselves (thus we continue to call it all a smokescreen for
big business -- which may be effective as propaganda -- but doesn't explain
why and how it happened).
So I wasn't really trying to substitute a Kazin thesis for a Hofstader
or Goodwyn thesis (and it's flattering even to be compared unfavorably to
the former). I don't think one bite size argument can make sense of 200-odd
years of a political discourse. All I can claim is that I tried to identify
that discourse and to describe and incompletely explain how politically
active Americans created and made use of it.
Turning to Johnston's fascinating questions:
1) I'm all for passionate history (in fact David Oshinsky in the NY Times
did call me "passionately liberal" -- so there!). I recommend Michael Lind's
new book (previewed in this month's Harper's), if you want to see a
brilliant, historically informed mind who's trying to resuscitate class
politics of the left populist variety, But it can also be useful to tell the
stories of left and right clearly and fairly -- as long as the reader knows
your principles and vision, knows how you would have liked the story to come
out. That's what Hofstadter did, I think, and what Alan Brinkley does now.
Goodwyn, I believe, hurt his cause by constructing barricades of his own
device and firing away at opponents and bystanders alike. Lasch is a
different matter -- he was perhaps the most brilliant historical mind of his
generation (at least on this side of the Atlantic) writing in English. As
such, he was right (that is, he had a good deal to teach) even when he was
wrong -- as I think he was in his penultimate book when he tried to
substitute the white lower-middle class for the bygone proletariat.
2) Yes, I didn't say enough about populism as a tradition. When it
comes to big ideas, I like to make little suggestions and then move on to
the story. All I can say here is that populism has been a way white
Americans (and a few of other races) voiced their suspicion of the national
ideals betrayed, and reclaimed democracy -- as vision and as process -- from
the powerful. It's so powerful an idiom because (here I'm going to sound
like Gordon Wood) because the ideals are so powerful, even revolutionary. I
am continually astounded by the way Americanism, in its populist meanings,
whips up disgruntled unionists, Militiateers, etc. The value of the French
Revolution has always been contested in that nation -- and recently went
through another round of disillusionment and defense. And socialist
revolution has, of course, fallen from grace nearly everywhere. But that
Declaration of Independence goes on and on.
3) on the problem of definition: of course, you could define populism as
radical democraticization. But then where's the place of anti-elite
resentment? In his review, Tom Bender saw radical democracy as an
alternative to populism. I think he's right -- populism should connote an
angry, betrayed form of democratic discourse -- and I think should contain
some notion of a producer ethic (so central to the People's Party).
4) So, yes, I don't think it's helpful to argue about "true" populists and
"phony" ones. The term has long ago left its cradle of creation in order to
swim in the turbulent waters of post-modern politics and wrap-around media.
It's too late to claim it for the good guys and gals now -- remember David
Duke was the first one since the 1890s to start a Populist Party!
5) Here, on the matter of class, Johnston is fingering the crux of the
issue. Yes, populist talkers gesture at a middling sector as the typical,
ordinary, average Americans. But, though he may be successful at identifying
that as a class onto itself in Prog-era Portland, I don't know what the
lower-middle class means in contemporary America -- salaried people with
little chance to rise to management? Folks who own houses, but in
working-class suburbs? And where does race and recent immigrant status come
in (and it always does)? Lasch wanted to elide racial conflict from his
vision -- but that's not the country I know. Lind is making a mighty effort
to substitute class for race (in affirmative action, for example) as the
only way to get "the people" to stop fighting amongst themselves in the
so-called cultural war and to focus on the professional rich and the gaping
chasm in wealth and resources that's opened up over the past two decades. I
want to cheer him on (he's a lot less cranky than Lasch, and much less
despairing). But the largely segregated culture we live in will make it very
hard to move from manifesto to movement.
I'll skip the rest of 6) for another time.
7) No, intellectuals are not the enemy -- did Johnston mean that
seriously? Every social movement that has ever existed has included
intellectuals -- call them "organic" ones, if you'd like. In fact, the right
is less afraid of its thinkers than we are of ours -- even though the left,
as we know it, is strongest on and around campuses. After all, where would
the modern right be without James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, William F.
Buckley, Jr., and Kevin Phillips? And, not to be forgotten, Newt is a former
historian who likes teaching class and giving out reading lists.
I don't think Americans are opposed to ideas; most just don't like
people who talk about ideas condescendingly. One way to put it is that
intellectuals are all right one by one; it's intellectuals as a class who
are under suspicion. Hofstadter's weakest book is the self-defensive one
about anti-intellectualism.
So populism can be and probably must be a potent means to the end of a
more democratic polity -- and more resources and power for wage-earners and
potential wage-earners of all races. But it can't be the end itself and
shouldn't become an anchor for those understandably fed up with tired-out
Marxists and dead-ended advocates of identity politics.
Carry it on--
Michael Kazin
[log in to unmask]
Copyright (c) 1995 by H-Net, all rights reserved.
This work may be copied for non-profit educational
use if proper credit is given to the author and
the list. For other permission, please contact
[log in to unmask]
|
