redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
I'd be up for one.
Reading Populism
- Thread starter redsquirrel
- Start date
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Have you started Frank's book yet Smokeandsteam? I'm just into the first chapter.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Not yet. If you are onto it I’ll push it up the list and start it this week. Be good to discuss as we go. I’ll post up here when I start it later this week.
It looks very good
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Just to add if anyone else wants to read and discuss as we go, the book is available here:
www.whsmith.co.uk
People Without Power: the war on populism and the fight for democracy by Thomas Frank | WHSmith
Order a People Without Power: the war on populism and the fight for democracy today from WHSmith. Delivery free on all UK orders over £30
www.whsmith.co.uk
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I've now read the preface to the book which is both highly accessible and polemical whilst being relatively (and therefore impressively) academically rigorous .
Frank is seeking to achieve 3 things:
1. To historically recover the radical, democratic and pro-working class origins of the word 'populism' and to map middle class/establishment fear of it. Frank wants to uncover how and why the historical meaning of the term has been constantly inverted and why 'populism' is the descriptor reached for by the political class to describe and attach meaning to widely held working class ideas and demands. He borrows Chomsky's term 'democracy scare' to characterise elite/insider/professional middle class responses.
2. To diagnose 'democracy scare' as a class based impulse based on elite understandings of who is fit to hold political ideas and agency. At different times both Democrats and Republicans (and more widely liberals and conservatives) have condemned populism, often simultaneously attacking popular ideas or demands. Frank highlights liberal and conservative academics and commentators variously accusing populism of arraying 'the people against the intelligentsia' and as a 'dance of the dunces'.
3. To identify the dual meanings of the term - populism as understood by the people: a movement demanding democratic reforms; and populism as understood by elites: a dangerous movement of groundless resentments led by demagogues agitating 'the disreputable'. The latter requiring a facilitation of an order based around a 'consensus of the elite' to repel populism and to ensure that elite failure does not lead to its position being threatened by subaltern mobs.
I'll post up Chapter one thoughts once I have read it.
Frank is seeking to achieve 3 things:
1. To historically recover the radical, democratic and pro-working class origins of the word 'populism' and to map middle class/establishment fear of it. Frank wants to uncover how and why the historical meaning of the term has been constantly inverted and why 'populism' is the descriptor reached for by the political class to describe and attach meaning to widely held working class ideas and demands. He borrows Chomsky's term 'democracy scare' to characterise elite/insider/professional middle class responses.
2. To diagnose 'democracy scare' as a class based impulse based on elite understandings of who is fit to hold political ideas and agency. At different times both Democrats and Republicans (and more widely liberals and conservatives) have condemned populism, often simultaneously attacking popular ideas or demands. Frank highlights liberal and conservative academics and commentators variously accusing populism of arraying 'the people against the intelligentsia' and as a 'dance of the dunces'.
3. To identify the dual meanings of the term - populism as understood by the people: a movement demanding democratic reforms; and populism as understood by elites: a dangerous movement of groundless resentments led by demagogues agitating 'the disreputable'. The latter requiring a facilitation of an order based around a 'consensus of the elite' to repel populism and to ensure that elite failure does not lead to its position being threatened by subaltern mobs.
I'll post up Chapter one thoughts once I have read it.
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Thanks Smokeandsteam
I'm about halfway through Chp 2. TBH I'm too brain dead to put up anything coherent today but I'll try and add something over the weekend.
I'm about halfway through Chp 2. TBH I'm too brain dead to put up anything coherent today but I'll try and add something over the weekend.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I’m going to read chapter 1 today and try to catch you up
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
In Chapter 1 Frank traces the origins of ‘populism’ back to 1890’s America and an appeal based on class solidarity bringing together rural workers in the south and west with the proto industrial working class in the north.
The populist impulse and demands of the American working class led to the formation of a party - the People’s Party - that emerged from the mass movement to briefly challenge the Democrat/Republican duopoly.
The People’s Party can be understood in similar - but not exact - terms to Chartism in Britain and the pressure placed on the British ruling class that led to the 1832 Reform Act. It was the moment of entry - with all of the contradictions, mistakes, wrong turns and reliance on middle class reformers - of the working class onto the political stage. An autodidactic culture was central to its development with workers universities, travelling lecturers, lending libraries and radical rural newspapers and books at its core. There were linkages with the emergent American Trade Union movement (Knights of Labour) and the Party and movement represented a key marker in the American radical tradition.
Much of this chapter is an attempt by Frank to recover this tradition and show how much history obscures the agency of working-class people. Like EP Thompson he wants to show how the working class was present and active in the making of its own history.
As Thompson points out “They lived through these times of acute social disturbance and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience”.
One of the most important sections of the chapter deals with how the populists challenged ‘white solidarity’ in the south. Forging alliances with the black farmers and labourers movements. C.Vann Woodward noted that the Populists ‘challenged the cult of racism with the doctrine of common action among farmers and workers of both races. The existence of the third party was, of course, a challenge to the one-party system as well as white solidarity’. The chapter also deals with how the populists has women at the forefront of the movement and in leadership positions.
This process of historical recovery of a tradition, a movement, a set of (limited) demands - which were all grounded in the idea that the working class was capable of both challenging the ruling order and even organising society better - possibly suggests a reason as to why ‘populism’ has become the liberal descriptor of choice for any outcome or issue where the assumptions, ideas and decisions of the PMC elite are challenged or briefly overwhelmed.
The chapter concludes with what is clearly emerging as the central argument of the book. That the recent history of populism has deliberately warped the meaning and history of populism to set up a false binary choice between enlightened elites and well educated experts and the populists now cast as racist authoritarians who celebrate their own ignorance.
On that basis any elite failure (and Frank begins to discuss some of these) still remains a far more palatable option to the civilised and sentient than rule by the racist, stupid mob and those who have been carefully constructed as it’s leaders (Trump, Farage etc). Any rejection or resistance of the professional middle class elites or their ideas must be rejected lest it opens the door to the thick, the racist nativist and the beer swilling bigoted populists.
I’m reading chapter 2 over the weekend and will post more then.
The populist impulse and demands of the American working class led to the formation of a party - the People’s Party - that emerged from the mass movement to briefly challenge the Democrat/Republican duopoly.
The People’s Party can be understood in similar - but not exact - terms to Chartism in Britain and the pressure placed on the British ruling class that led to the 1832 Reform Act. It was the moment of entry - with all of the contradictions, mistakes, wrong turns and reliance on middle class reformers - of the working class onto the political stage. An autodidactic culture was central to its development with workers universities, travelling lecturers, lending libraries and radical rural newspapers and books at its core. There were linkages with the emergent American Trade Union movement (Knights of Labour) and the Party and movement represented a key marker in the American radical tradition.
Much of this chapter is an attempt by Frank to recover this tradition and show how much history obscures the agency of working-class people. Like EP Thompson he wants to show how the working class was present and active in the making of its own history.
As Thompson points out “They lived through these times of acute social disturbance and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience”.
One of the most important sections of the chapter deals with how the populists challenged ‘white solidarity’ in the south. Forging alliances with the black farmers and labourers movements. C.Vann Woodward noted that the Populists ‘challenged the cult of racism with the doctrine of common action among farmers and workers of both races. The existence of the third party was, of course, a challenge to the one-party system as well as white solidarity’. The chapter also deals with how the populists has women at the forefront of the movement and in leadership positions.
This process of historical recovery of a tradition, a movement, a set of (limited) demands - which were all grounded in the idea that the working class was capable of both challenging the ruling order and even organising society better - possibly suggests a reason as to why ‘populism’ has become the liberal descriptor of choice for any outcome or issue where the assumptions, ideas and decisions of the PMC elite are challenged or briefly overwhelmed.
The chapter concludes with what is clearly emerging as the central argument of the book. That the recent history of populism has deliberately warped the meaning and history of populism to set up a false binary choice between enlightened elites and well educated experts and the populists now cast as racist authoritarians who celebrate their own ignorance.
On that basis any elite failure (and Frank begins to discuss some of these) still remains a far more palatable option to the civilised and sentient than rule by the racist, stupid mob and those who have been carefully constructed as it’s leaders (Trump, Farage etc). Any rejection or resistance of the professional middle class elites or their ideas must be rejected lest it opens the door to the thick, the racist nativist and the beer swilling bigoted populists.
I’m reading chapter 2 over the weekend and will post more then.
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
I do think the book is quite good and have a good deal of sympathy for many of Frank's arguments - Smokeandsteam has given a summary already so I'll just mention some parts which particularly struck me.
Intro
I absolutely agree with Frank that populist has become a catch all term of abuse by liberals, and he's right that
Most of those writers on populism I've read recognise groups as populist based on their means of organising, Frank instead appears to want to recognise groups as populist or not based on the politics they are espousing.
I can see why Frank, as a supporter of populism, would like to define populism on the basis of the (most progressive aspects of the) Populist Party. I'm just not sure how strong an argument it is either politically or historically/geographically. Sure the Populist Party might be the first time the actual term 'populist' was used but the same political impulses that lead to the PP had occurred previously, you can see similar themes in both the English Civil Wars and American Revolution. Certainly the politics of the modern Republican Party are very different from those of the PP but even if you redefine populism such that Trump is excluded there are enough similarities in the modes of organising, the anti-liberal ideology that you will have to invent a new word to cover both.
That said while I'm not convinced by Frank's view I do think his intention to redefine US populism* as a progressive, democratic force does have the positive effect of at least challenging that consensus viewpoint on populism.
*from the intro and first two chapters Frank is talking about populism in an entirely US context while that might be somewhat understandable I do think it means he missed the wider picture of someone like Revelli.
Chapter 1
I think Smokeandsteam's post summaries the most important parts of this chapter. My knowledge of the PP is not in depth but Frank's history of the PP agrees with other sources I've read.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 moves on from internal nature of the PP to that of its enemies involved in the Democracy Scare. There are lots of nice stories which parallel the liberals of today's fear of populism, the same calls for protective measures to defend liberalism against the masses.
Frank's outlines one example of difference between the anti-populists of the 1890s and the present - racism. The deep, explicit racism of the Democracy Scare meant that that the PP could not be criticised for its racism. Instead the support of the PP for (limited) racial reforms was used as a means of attack.
(BTW There is a bit of a missed opportunity here IMO, Frank outlines this difference between the modern and C19th Democracy Scares but then does not ask why this difference has arisen when on so many other matters there is a remarkable continuity - but maybe that will be covered in a latter chapter)
Intro
I absolutely agree with Frank that populist has become a catch all term of abuse by liberals, and he's right that
that said I'm not sure how strong his position that populism should be defined from the Populist Party and populist politics of the late 19th/early 20th century US is.
Most of those writers on populism I've read recognise groups as populist based on their means of organising, Frank instead appears to want to recognise groups as populist or not based on the politics they are espousing.
I can see why Frank, as a supporter of populism, would like to define populism on the basis of the (most progressive aspects of the) Populist Party. I'm just not sure how strong an argument it is either politically or historically/geographically. Sure the Populist Party might be the first time the actual term 'populist' was used but the same political impulses that lead to the PP had occurred previously, you can see similar themes in both the English Civil Wars and American Revolution. Certainly the politics of the modern Republican Party are very different from those of the PP but even if you redefine populism such that Trump is excluded there are enough similarities in the modes of organising, the anti-liberal ideology that you will have to invent a new word to cover both.
That said while I'm not convinced by Frank's view I do think his intention to redefine US populism* as a progressive, democratic force does have the positive effect of at least challenging that consensus viewpoint on populism.
*from the intro and first two chapters Frank is talking about populism in an entirely US context while that might be somewhat understandable I do think it means he missed the wider picture of someone like Revelli.
Chapter 1
I think Smokeandsteam's post summaries the most important parts of this chapter. My knowledge of the PP is not in depth but Frank's history of the PP agrees with other sources I've read.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 moves on from internal nature of the PP to that of its enemies involved in the Democracy Scare. There are lots of nice stories which parallel the liberals of today's fear of populism, the same calls for protective measures to defend liberalism against the masses.
You could re-write the above with plenty of modern day examples (leaving the EU for example). Likewise the identification of populism with craziness has continued down to the present.
Frank's outlines one example of difference between the anti-populists of the 1890s and the present - racism. The deep, explicit racism of the Democracy Scare meant that that the PP could not be criticised for its racism. Instead the support of the PP for (limited) racial reforms was used as a means of attack.
(BTW There is a bit of a missed opportunity here IMO, Frank outlines this difference between the modern and C19th Democracy Scares but then does not ask why this difference has arisen when on so many other matters there is a remarkable continuity - but maybe that will be covered in a latter chapter)
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Good stuff Redsquirrel.
I’m also hoping (and expecting) that as the book opens out it will address and discuss this. It would be a major flaw if it didn’t because it’s the critical question posed by the opening Chapter’s historical recovery work (
did we set from there to here?) I can certainly forgive Frank for not going back further to the American Revolution because I think the periodisation is deliberate and Frank wants to start from the entry of the working class into the political fray.
Likewise I agree with you that the America-centric focus of the intro and the first chapter, whilst necessarily overlooking Revelli and others, is a flaw that I hope Frank is aware of and will get into as we proceed.
I’ll post up chapter 2 thoughts later today
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
In chapter 2 Frank further outlines the manner, processes and class nature of ‘Democracy Scare’ and how it has been consistently used by elites to maintain their hegemony of ideas and control over the levers of power. The Chapter focuses on the doomed 1896 Presidential campaign of the Democrat nominee William Jennings Bryan.
I don’t profess to know much about Bryan or his campaign but in Frank’s account he appears to be a left populist with some amusing and remarkably similarities with Corbyn. Bryan was relatively unknown before the nomination and he was able to win the leadership role after a long period of austerity, struggle and frustration with the establishment orthodoxy. Like Corbyn his appeal was reflected at mass meetings and he travelled the country speaking at meeting after meeting.
The demonisation and smears of Bryan touched both on his ideas and personality ‘flaws’. The media, public intellectuals and the strongholds of the professional middle class – academia in particular – ran a series of scares about the economic and social consequences of a Bryan victory. Then as now the aim of the democracy scare wasn’t just about defeating an individual or an idea, it was as Frank suggests in a key section of the chapter “the original Democracy Scare insisted that any politician who uses the language of class-based grievance is probably insincere or demonic, that any scheme for reforming capitalism by enlisting the votes of working people is most likely a fraud, a con game, a rebellion against God Himself”
The Chapter again shows how race was used to divide and crush popular movements and cleave nascent black and white worker movements. The 1898 white supremacy campaign launched by the Democrats in North Carolina is a particularly powerful example of how race has long been manipulated by the elite (then as avowedly racist as it is now energetically performatively anti-racist) to undermine class unity and movements that understand inequality as primarily a class based structural issue.
Chapter 2 suggests Frank is moving, slowly, into similar territory as Revelli who in The New Populism pointed out that European elites have traditionally been both more frightened and more energised by left populists than they are of those emerging on the right. I suspect Frank will develop this thinking in the proceeding chapter which deals with the 1920’s, the growth of American industrial trade unionism, the New Deal and so on.
Redsquirrel has correctly identified that to date that Frank’s definition of populism is a limited one. It’s limited because, so far, we have only encountered populism in the book as a working class progressive mass movement (chapter 1) or as an idea generating leaders who challenge the established order (again from the left). This is fine. It’s also important for those of us on the left seeking to understand how a working class politics – of, by and for the class – might develop and the likely obstacles and challenges that we are likely to face from liberalism and liberals posing as lefts. It’s also impressive as a work of history charting the development of the proto working class left tradition in America and I have learned a lot from the first two chapters in that sense.
However, Frank has yet to touch on populism outside of America. He has not yet discussed populism as an organisational method (a point that dominates much of the literature and well noted by redsquirrel) and he has not yet engaged in any discussion on ‘triadic’ forms of populism (where the elite and a second enemy of the people outside of the main group are the target). Revelli and others have privileged the concept of ‘betrayal’ as a key driver of populist impulse and again this has yet to appear in frank’s account of its development in the USA. Is this because Frank does not agree or because he deliberately wants to present populism in a specific way? Will the book pivot at some point away from left populism to right populism without explaining how such a commonly held temporal shift occurred?
Does Frank take issue with Mudde and others who have argued that populism a “thin” ideology, made up of few core beliefs? On one hand the answer seems to be ‘no’ because Frank has presented the first populists (as would Mudde) as motivated by a simple but widely held view that the most important division in society is an antagonistic one between the working class and the elite and that the elite understood matters (and the stakes) in similar terms. But on the other hand Frank has, so far, presented populism as progressive, anti-racist and sexist, as key to fermenting and propelling rural labourer and industrial working class organisation and much more than Mudde’s view that populism can be reduced to an impulse or feeling that politics should be an expression of ‘common sense’. For Frank a deeper more rounded out meta-narrative underpins the early populists.
I'm very much enjoying the book and Frank's style of writing but I’m off for a cycle now and will start reading Chapter 3 later.
I don’t profess to know much about Bryan or his campaign but in Frank’s account he appears to be a left populist with some amusing and remarkably similarities with Corbyn. Bryan was relatively unknown before the nomination and he was able to win the leadership role after a long period of austerity, struggle and frustration with the establishment orthodoxy. Like Corbyn his appeal was reflected at mass meetings and he travelled the country speaking at meeting after meeting.
The demonisation and smears of Bryan touched both on his ideas and personality ‘flaws’. The media, public intellectuals and the strongholds of the professional middle class – academia in particular – ran a series of scares about the economic and social consequences of a Bryan victory. Then as now the aim of the democracy scare wasn’t just about defeating an individual or an idea, it was as Frank suggests in a key section of the chapter “the original Democracy Scare insisted that any politician who uses the language of class-based grievance is probably insincere or demonic, that any scheme for reforming capitalism by enlisting the votes of working people is most likely a fraud, a con game, a rebellion against God Himself”
The Chapter again shows how race was used to divide and crush popular movements and cleave nascent black and white worker movements. The 1898 white supremacy campaign launched by the Democrats in North Carolina is a particularly powerful example of how race has long been manipulated by the elite (then as avowedly racist as it is now energetically performatively anti-racist) to undermine class unity and movements that understand inequality as primarily a class based structural issue.
Chapter 2 suggests Frank is moving, slowly, into similar territory as Revelli who in The New Populism pointed out that European elites have traditionally been both more frightened and more energised by left populists than they are of those emerging on the right. I suspect Frank will develop this thinking in the proceeding chapter which deals with the 1920’s, the growth of American industrial trade unionism, the New Deal and so on.
Redsquirrel has correctly identified that to date that Frank’s definition of populism is a limited one. It’s limited because, so far, we have only encountered populism in the book as a working class progressive mass movement (chapter 1) or as an idea generating leaders who challenge the established order (again from the left). This is fine. It’s also important for those of us on the left seeking to understand how a working class politics – of, by and for the class – might develop and the likely obstacles and challenges that we are likely to face from liberalism and liberals posing as lefts. It’s also impressive as a work of history charting the development of the proto working class left tradition in America and I have learned a lot from the first two chapters in that sense.
However, Frank has yet to touch on populism outside of America. He has not yet discussed populism as an organisational method (a point that dominates much of the literature and well noted by redsquirrel) and he has not yet engaged in any discussion on ‘triadic’ forms of populism (where the elite and a second enemy of the people outside of the main group are the target). Revelli and others have privileged the concept of ‘betrayal’ as a key driver of populist impulse and again this has yet to appear in frank’s account of its development in the USA. Is this because Frank does not agree or because he deliberately wants to present populism in a specific way? Will the book pivot at some point away from left populism to right populism without explaining how such a commonly held temporal shift occurred?
Does Frank take issue with Mudde and others who have argued that populism a “thin” ideology, made up of few core beliefs? On one hand the answer seems to be ‘no’ because Frank has presented the first populists (as would Mudde) as motivated by a simple but widely held view that the most important division in society is an antagonistic one between the working class and the elite and that the elite understood matters (and the stakes) in similar terms. But on the other hand Frank has, so far, presented populism as progressive, anti-racist and sexist, as key to fermenting and propelling rural labourer and industrial working class organisation and much more than Mudde’s view that populism can be reduced to an impulse or feeling that politics should be an expression of ‘common sense’. For Frank a deeper more rounded out meta-narrative underpins the early populists.
I'm very much enjoying the book and Frank's style of writing but I’m off for a cycle now and will start reading Chapter 3 later.
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Chapter 3
I've got some real issues with Frank's account of New Deal era America in this chapter which I will go through in the first paragraph below. In the second paragraph I will deal with his developing argument about populism. I have got issues with this as well.
On the former, Frank's argument is that the capitalist crisis precipitated by the crash of the US stock market in 1929-33 ushered in a populist era embodied by Roosevelt and reflected in the historic surge of industrial trade unionism and the concomitant social realist shift in culture and society. I'm not going to derail the thread by a long discussion about why I think Franks' arguments here are severely flawed, but a number of the assumptions and conclusions he draws from his analysis need to be addressed because they directly underpin his emerging argument about populism. I do not share Franks' narrative that claims Roosevelt as a 'populist' or as some form of proto left populist. In fact, before the crisis Roosevelt was very much part of the professional middle class elite that Frank has taken issue with in the earlier chapters. There is a substantial amount of academic work that interrogates the motives and limits of his period in office and a which provide a more compelling and reasoned context for the political economy of the New Deal that Frank either hasn't read or more likely has omitted as they challenge the narrative he wants to present here. Under these readings the New Deal was a necessity - not to replace capital or even to mediate its instincts in the long term - but to allow it time to recover from its near death experience.
The reconstruction and public investment in infrastructure under Roosevlet, whilst providing jobs and reconfiguring an economy in a way that lent itself to CIO organising drives, was at root a programme of historic levels of state/public investment and subsidies to private capital. Taxpayer dollars were diverted into the pockets of the elite under the guise of a public works programme. It's aim was to rebuild the economy, get money circulating again and to rehabilitate capital as both the natural form or economy and commonsense and to present it as newly responsible. Consensus, partnership and the new found respect for manual labour were about helping to clea the path for this strategy but also about securing consent for it from a working class that presented a threat to it.
Did Roosevelt not also legislate to promote the growth of the American trade union movement and to protect it from bosses, their neo-fascist armed strike breakers and the so on? Yes, but in creating the National Labour Relations Board he simultaneously limited the legal role of unions into limited concession bargaining and away from nascent ideas about workers control and ownership. He also inserted, via the NLRB, the state into the picture as the arbiter of industrial relations meaning that it could manage wage levels to promote economic growth as necessary. The retreat from this model would occur 10 years later as the steel unions and others would find (completely omitted here). As for the social realist turn and focus on 'ordinary people' in popular culture I think that there are two major problems with Franks' account. Firstly, he glosses over the fact that the depictions he cites were limited and focussed almost exclusively on white America, on men and male labour rather than women and to certain jobs and places. Only a section of the working class were going to benefit from the new order. Secondly, the subtext of the imagery was intimately linked to a specific form of patriotism and a constructed mirage of a classless society where class conflict was magically emptied out of the picture - for obvious reasons.
In respect of the developing argument that Frank is making about populism we begin to see the kernel of an argument in chapter 3. That argument rests signifcantly on the reader accepting the narrative he has outlined about new deal America. He cites Kenneth Burke and writes that Burkes' "key insight was "we convince a man by reason of the values which we and he hold in common" The alternative Burke pointed out, is to scold your audience, to 'condemn the unenlightened'". He goes on to write "In politics, we can choose to apply purity tests to the public, or we can work to spread knowledge. We can embrace the people or we can scold them for not getting it".
This is a fairly good attempt to characterise much of what passes for liberal perceptions of the ordinary people in 2020. A form of politics that assumes demonising people, calling them 'thick' or 'racist gammons' and airily dismissing their views as inarticulate and therefore of little to no value is the way to win them to you. The counter posing of now with the Roosevelt era in that sense does tell us something. Specifically, it tells us that the liberal elite once wanted to convince and build alliances with the working class. Now it drives them into the arms of the right.
Frank shows how the progressive and the positive could be emphasized and could help challenge the negatives or reactionary currents (it also, although Frank does not say this, speaks to an era when organised working class power forced liberals and others to take note). For Frank re-remembering this is 'key to turning our country around'.
What we do not glean from this discussion is a more detailed explanation from Frank of how, why and when triadic populism becomes a major current. He does note the importance, even at this point, of demagogue's but skates over their existence by either showing existing correctives or through charting their latter demise. Again I'm not sure what we are meant to take from this, other than the strong leader is a recurring presence within populism and that we should support those on the left, and in the case of those on the right don't worry as they eventually lose agency.
Finally, and most problematically, Frank seems to suggest that the emergence of more Roosevelt's and a converted attempt by middle class liberalism can steer populist sentiments and ideas into a more positive place. Gone is the self organisation, autodidactic embeddedness and independence of the worker and labourer of the first chapter. We are back to top down considerations of how to manage and motivate the masses and Frank's call for American liberals "to remember how their tradition thought and how it talked when it was strong and vital"
I think we can begin to see where Frank is going here. Whilst I have a large measure of sympathy for his account of the trajectory of elite liberal thought and its relationship with popular thought and culture, the chapter has posed more questions than answers.
I've got some real issues with Frank's account of New Deal era America in this chapter which I will go through in the first paragraph below. In the second paragraph I will deal with his developing argument about populism. I have got issues with this as well.
On the former, Frank's argument is that the capitalist crisis precipitated by the crash of the US stock market in 1929-33 ushered in a populist era embodied by Roosevelt and reflected in the historic surge of industrial trade unionism and the concomitant social realist shift in culture and society. I'm not going to derail the thread by a long discussion about why I think Franks' arguments here are severely flawed, but a number of the assumptions and conclusions he draws from his analysis need to be addressed because they directly underpin his emerging argument about populism. I do not share Franks' narrative that claims Roosevelt as a 'populist' or as some form of proto left populist. In fact, before the crisis Roosevelt was very much part of the professional middle class elite that Frank has taken issue with in the earlier chapters. There is a substantial amount of academic work that interrogates the motives and limits of his period in office and a which provide a more compelling and reasoned context for the political economy of the New Deal that Frank either hasn't read or more likely has omitted as they challenge the narrative he wants to present here. Under these readings the New Deal was a necessity - not to replace capital or even to mediate its instincts in the long term - but to allow it time to recover from its near death experience.
The reconstruction and public investment in infrastructure under Roosevlet, whilst providing jobs and reconfiguring an economy in a way that lent itself to CIO organising drives, was at root a programme of historic levels of state/public investment and subsidies to private capital. Taxpayer dollars were diverted into the pockets of the elite under the guise of a public works programme. It's aim was to rebuild the economy, get money circulating again and to rehabilitate capital as both the natural form or economy and commonsense and to present it as newly responsible. Consensus, partnership and the new found respect for manual labour were about helping to clea the path for this strategy but also about securing consent for it from a working class that presented a threat to it.
Did Roosevelt not also legislate to promote the growth of the American trade union movement and to protect it from bosses, their neo-fascist armed strike breakers and the so on? Yes, but in creating the National Labour Relations Board he simultaneously limited the legal role of unions into limited concession bargaining and away from nascent ideas about workers control and ownership. He also inserted, via the NLRB, the state into the picture as the arbiter of industrial relations meaning that it could manage wage levels to promote economic growth as necessary. The retreat from this model would occur 10 years later as the steel unions and others would find (completely omitted here). As for the social realist turn and focus on 'ordinary people' in popular culture I think that there are two major problems with Franks' account. Firstly, he glosses over the fact that the depictions he cites were limited and focussed almost exclusively on white America, on men and male labour rather than women and to certain jobs and places. Only a section of the working class were going to benefit from the new order. Secondly, the subtext of the imagery was intimately linked to a specific form of patriotism and a constructed mirage of a classless society where class conflict was magically emptied out of the picture - for obvious reasons.
In respect of the developing argument that Frank is making about populism we begin to see the kernel of an argument in chapter 3. That argument rests signifcantly on the reader accepting the narrative he has outlined about new deal America. He cites Kenneth Burke and writes that Burkes' "key insight was "we convince a man by reason of the values which we and he hold in common" The alternative Burke pointed out, is to scold your audience, to 'condemn the unenlightened'". He goes on to write "In politics, we can choose to apply purity tests to the public, or we can work to spread knowledge. We can embrace the people or we can scold them for not getting it".
This is a fairly good attempt to characterise much of what passes for liberal perceptions of the ordinary people in 2020. A form of politics that assumes demonising people, calling them 'thick' or 'racist gammons' and airily dismissing their views as inarticulate and therefore of little to no value is the way to win them to you. The counter posing of now with the Roosevelt era in that sense does tell us something. Specifically, it tells us that the liberal elite once wanted to convince and build alliances with the working class. Now it drives them into the arms of the right.
Frank shows how the progressive and the positive could be emphasized and could help challenge the negatives or reactionary currents (it also, although Frank does not say this, speaks to an era when organised working class power forced liberals and others to take note). For Frank re-remembering this is 'key to turning our country around'.
What we do not glean from this discussion is a more detailed explanation from Frank of how, why and when triadic populism becomes a major current. He does note the importance, even at this point, of demagogue's but skates over their existence by either showing existing correctives or through charting their latter demise. Again I'm not sure what we are meant to take from this, other than the strong leader is a recurring presence within populism and that we should support those on the left, and in the case of those on the right don't worry as they eventually lose agency.
Finally, and most problematically, Frank seems to suggest that the emergence of more Roosevelt's and a converted attempt by middle class liberalism can steer populist sentiments and ideas into a more positive place. Gone is the self organisation, autodidactic embeddedness and independence of the worker and labourer of the first chapter. We are back to top down considerations of how to manage and motivate the masses and Frank's call for American liberals "to remember how their tradition thought and how it talked when it was strong and vital"
I think we can begin to see where Frank is going here. Whilst I have a large measure of sympathy for his account of the trajectory of elite liberal thought and its relationship with popular thought and culture, the chapter has posed more questions than answers.
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Chapter 4
There really isn't much to say about this chapter, which largely deals with elite reaction to the New Deal and the Roosevelt Presidency in the 1930's and again limited to America. For reasons that I have briefly gone into my comments on Chapter 3 I've got some major issues with Frank's account of the period but I'm not going to pursue this in more detail as it risks derailing the thread and thinking about populism.
There are 3 significant points that do emerge in the chapter which are worth touching upon however:
1. The first, and on this I strongly agree with Frank, is that the right and orthodox conservatism learned two critical lessons from the New Deal era (and the post war 'consensus' in Britain for that matter). Number one, was the recognition of the need to assemble an archipelago of intellectuals commentators, media and academic figures and others, to promote, defend and advocate their ideas and priorities. How they did that takes us to Switzerland and to Hayek's infamous Mount Pelerin conference in 1947 attended by Friedman and other thinkers who would become critical to the emergence of neo-liberalism thirty years later. The second was that to win the right would need to develop its own form of populism that allowed its ideas to circulate popularly.
2. Frank also correctly identifies the emergence of two competing elite blocs during the New Deal era. On one hand traditional right wing conservatives working out how to push back against what they perceived to be creeping statist hegemony and to rebuild 'classical liberalism'. The other elite bloc was the emerging, particularly in education and culture but also within capital, of liberal professional middle class.
As Frank puts it an emerging battle between "resentful oil billionaires on the one side and enlightened private-equity billionaires on the other".
3. It is clear, and this is where my problem with Frank lies, that his central message about populism is that the liberal PMC bloc has abandoned its commitment to populism and needs to recover it if they are to counter modern day populism coming from the right. As I have previously written I disagree profoundly with his analysis of the motives for, and the deliberate limits of, the New Deal and the context for the political economy of the New Deal. Far from burying capital and its orthodoxies Roosevelt planned to buy it time to save it. I’m also unconvinced that the PMC - see Biden and Starmer - have any interest in a return to the type of limited liberal populism of the industrial period.
I'll be posting up comments on Chapter 5, which begins to flesh these arguments, out later.
There really isn't much to say about this chapter, which largely deals with elite reaction to the New Deal and the Roosevelt Presidency in the 1930's and again limited to America. For reasons that I have briefly gone into my comments on Chapter 3 I've got some major issues with Frank's account of the period but I'm not going to pursue this in more detail as it risks derailing the thread and thinking about populism.
There are 3 significant points that do emerge in the chapter which are worth touching upon however:
1. The first, and on this I strongly agree with Frank, is that the right and orthodox conservatism learned two critical lessons from the New Deal era (and the post war 'consensus' in Britain for that matter). Number one, was the recognition of the need to assemble an archipelago of intellectuals commentators, media and academic figures and others, to promote, defend and advocate their ideas and priorities. How they did that takes us to Switzerland and to Hayek's infamous Mount Pelerin conference in 1947 attended by Friedman and other thinkers who would become critical to the emergence of neo-liberalism thirty years later. The second was that to win the right would need to develop its own form of populism that allowed its ideas to circulate popularly.
2. Frank also correctly identifies the emergence of two competing elite blocs during the New Deal era. On one hand traditional right wing conservatives working out how to push back against what they perceived to be creeping statist hegemony and to rebuild 'classical liberalism'. The other elite bloc was the emerging, particularly in education and culture but also within capital, of liberal professional middle class.
As Frank puts it an emerging battle between "resentful oil billionaires on the one side and enlightened private-equity billionaires on the other".
3. It is clear, and this is where my problem with Frank lies, that his central message about populism is that the liberal PMC bloc has abandoned its commitment to populism and needs to recover it if they are to counter modern day populism coming from the right. As I have previously written I disagree profoundly with his analysis of the motives for, and the deliberate limits of, the New Deal and the context for the political economy of the New Deal. Far from burying capital and its orthodoxies Roosevelt planned to buy it time to save it. I’m also unconvinced that the PMC - see Biden and Starmer - have any interest in a return to the type of limited liberal populism of the industrial period.
I'll be posting up comments on Chapter 5, which begins to flesh these arguments, out later.
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Again I agree with lots of what you wrote. One thing I'd add that in his haste to define Roosevelt as a populist Frank largely misses out any discussion of other populist currents in the period. He very quickly mentions Coughlin and Long but provides little details about their "flip side of the era's populist hopes". To not consider Long in particular, in more detail seems a very significant omission, even if Frank's story is the populism of the New Deal surely the competition between different populisms (or different strands of the same populism?) is part of that story.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Or what forced them two. It's so very top down, parties decide, capital is just this neutral thing. I didn't like the book. Good writer.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Still got 3 chapters to go so I'm trying to reserve a final judgement until I've finished. I think the idea of analysing anti-populism rather than populism is an excellent one, but I'm convinced by the execution so far.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Chapter 5
It’s at this point that Frank introduces the emergence of a second meta-narrative of anti-populism. The first 4 chapters of the book dealt with right wing anti-populism perused by conservatives and the elite.
Now Frank examines the emergence of anti-populist within liberalism.
The emergence of the interventionist state (under Roosevelt) and the managerial corporation plus the coming of the ‘affluent society’ created a powerful professional middle class (PMC) and ‘liberal consensus’ that took hold in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Frank characterises the liberal consensus as pluralistic and engaged in affluence management and technocratic solutions.
Given their view that the ‘end of ideology’ has been achieved, movements from below (for example, the still powerful trade union movement which would reach an important peak with the 1959 US steel strike which it won but in doing so created the conditions for a long assault on its role in the liberal order) and mass mobilisation were neither necessary or warranted in the age of the ‘knowledge expert’, the lobbyist and the careful calibration of power. Frank discusses Bell and Hofstadter’s seminal books released during the period under discussion.
The key point I’m taking away from this chapter is finally picked up by Frank at the end of the chapter: the 1950’s and 1960’s was the moment of fracture for the, often uneasy, alliance between middle class liberals and the organised working class. Hitherto, sections of the PMC had actively supported, or even participated in, movements from below. Agency was obtained and conferred on these movements and bodies as bulwarks against unfettered capitalism and exploitative relations.
The ‘end of ideology’, the expansion of higher education, the increasing importance attached to the views and role of experts and interest group lobbying and mediation and most importantly of all the emergence of the PMC as a class of and for itself would rupture alliances. Increasingly, the PMC would come to view the organised working class (and anything that resembled popular ideas and aspirations) as at best anachronistic and disruptive to the smooth running of the system. At worst, as a direct threat to their position and interest
- more reading for those interested here: On the Origins of the Professional-Managerial Class: An Interview with Barbara Ehrenreich | Dissent Magazine
Under these processes and developments only a small set of mental gymnastics are required to begin to perceive, describe and understand popular demands as reactionary, racist, backward and overly simplistic due to their innate stupidity preventing them from grasping that the solutions were complex and best left to the ‘experts’
As Frank notes, for the PMC a settled view began to emerge that “low status people hold low status views”. Presented initially as tragedy, albeit one that was an inevitable one, it’s existence required the elite to step in and their authority - and class position - to be strengthened.
As Frank correctly observes, despite the collapse of the managerial state and the affluent society, and despite the careful and overwhelming debunking of Hofstadter, his conclusions would solidify, and his characterisation of the nature of populism the consensus positon of the PMC.
Onto Chapter 6 and 7 now which I’ll write up later where social movements and identity emerge in society
It’s at this point that Frank introduces the emergence of a second meta-narrative of anti-populism. The first 4 chapters of the book dealt with right wing anti-populism perused by conservatives and the elite.
Now Frank examines the emergence of anti-populist within liberalism.
The emergence of the interventionist state (under Roosevelt) and the managerial corporation plus the coming of the ‘affluent society’ created a powerful professional middle class (PMC) and ‘liberal consensus’ that took hold in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Frank characterises the liberal consensus as pluralistic and engaged in affluence management and technocratic solutions.
Given their view that the ‘end of ideology’ has been achieved, movements from below (for example, the still powerful trade union movement which would reach an important peak with the 1959 US steel strike which it won but in doing so created the conditions for a long assault on its role in the liberal order) and mass mobilisation were neither necessary or warranted in the age of the ‘knowledge expert’, the lobbyist and the careful calibration of power. Frank discusses Bell and Hofstadter’s seminal books released during the period under discussion.
The key point I’m taking away from this chapter is finally picked up by Frank at the end of the chapter: the 1950’s and 1960’s was the moment of fracture for the, often uneasy, alliance between middle class liberals and the organised working class. Hitherto, sections of the PMC had actively supported, or even participated in, movements from below. Agency was obtained and conferred on these movements and bodies as bulwarks against unfettered capitalism and exploitative relations.
The ‘end of ideology’, the expansion of higher education, the increasing importance attached to the views and role of experts and interest group lobbying and mediation and most importantly of all the emergence of the PMC as a class of and for itself would rupture alliances. Increasingly, the PMC would come to view the organised working class (and anything that resembled popular ideas and aspirations) as at best anachronistic and disruptive to the smooth running of the system. At worst, as a direct threat to their position and interest
- more reading for those interested here: On the Origins of the Professional-Managerial Class: An Interview with Barbara Ehrenreich | Dissent Magazine
Under these processes and developments only a small set of mental gymnastics are required to begin to perceive, describe and understand popular demands as reactionary, racist, backward and overly simplistic due to their innate stupidity preventing them from grasping that the solutions were complex and best left to the ‘experts’
As Frank notes, for the PMC a settled view began to emerge that “low status people hold low status views”. Presented initially as tragedy, albeit one that was an inevitable one, it’s existence required the elite to step in and their authority - and class position - to be strengthened.
As Frank correctly observes, despite the collapse of the managerial state and the affluent society, and despite the careful and overwhelming debunking of Hofstadter, his conclusions would solidify, and his characterisation of the nature of populism the consensus positon of the PMC.
Onto Chapter 6 and 7 now which I’ll write up later where social movements and identity emerge in society
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Frank has just had a piece published in Guardian on the election result.
Has the same strengths and weakness as much of his book - summarises the turning away of workers from the Democrats well but still sees the solution as an essentially top down process
Has the same strengths and weakness as much of his book - summarises the turning away of workers from the Democrats well but still sees the solution as an essentially top down process
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Even in respect of the Democrat turn away from the working class (and the working class turning its back on the Democrats in return) the piece is a bit sloppy and rushed looking.
It’s debatable how strong, enduring and real that link was in any case. But Chapter 6 of Frank’s own book periodises it better, as does this:
His piece is still better than most of those I’ve read, especially in respect of Biden’s own history and the grotesque consequences of it.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Chapter 6
We can see by now where Frank is going. The first half of the book examined 'Populism' understood here (somewhat problematically) as a specifically American current and via reference to the Populist Party. We have then explored 'Democracy Scare' in its original form: as a conservative elite reaction to movements from below demanding change. From there, we have explored New Deal America and the rise of the managerial state. Frank has now constructed - and I agree with him on this - the existence of two anti-populist elite blocs.
In Chapter 6, the social movements and the new left that emerged in the 1960's in the USA are discussed. I think this is the best chapter of the book so far, although I'm not entirely sure we are discussing anything more than the development of elite anti-populism by this point.
Frank starts the chapter examining the experience and development of the American civil rights movement. MLK is presented as a populist under this reading. Frank is at pains to go into some detail in the chapter about how these emergent movements saw an emphasis on unity and points of mutual benefit (particularly class unity between blacks and whites) at the core of their appeal and work. He charts how the movement developed ambitions greater than disparity correction under the existing order and on its deep links with the trade union movement and other mass participative movements. Frank gives a lot of weight to Bayard Rustin's "The Blacks and the Unions" essay. I read this yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminds us, in case we have forgotten, that mass movements of ordinary people are always more multi-racial and integrated than those which are top down or middle class led. Rustin shows how, even with their faults, the existence of mass popular movement carry social and cultural agency. It's a great read, and an important corrective to much of the debate now propelled by elite identity politics, separatist tendencies and which often take the existence of the neo-liberal order as non-negotiable or inevitable:
2020_18_10 Rustin The Blacks and the Unions – NYQM
Rustin tackles the idea. already gathering ground, that the working class was inherently racist and backward. He presents a sober analysis of the US trade union movement that acknowledges its bureaucratic inertia and top down stalinism but also locates it in a broader historical context and attempts from below to assert rank and file control. Rustin urges the black working class into the unions to tackle the former and build the latter.
I also enjoyed Frank's skewering of the New Left in Chapter 6 where "protest degenerated into 'street theatre'; 'radical style' came to trump 'radical substance'" and where "personal righteousness became the ultimate end of political action". Frank has some amusing stories that reveal the middle class nature of much of the New Left.
But, he is also levelling three important charges against it: 1. That in its search for moral purity the New Left constantly found itself 'let down' by the working class it purported to lead. Over time this led to the New Left turning it back on the WC and seeking liberation through student, minority, national liberation or vanguardist fractions and campaigns. The WC became part of the enemy and one the new left soon began to pity, mock, despise but most of all treat as politically beyond the pale 2. That the New Left, whilst recognising that the managerial state and liberalism were running out of road, also shared its elite distrust of the working class and doubted its bonafides as 'comrades' or placed much value on its ideas, demands or aspirations as a result and 3. That the combination of 1 and 2 helped to embed the social stereotypes of the period, particularly in respect of populist ideas, long after the managerial state, the post-war 'consensus' and so on long after they had been replaced by neo-conservative orthodoxy. In fact the new left, along with the PMC (and a section of the new left was the PMC in waiting coming from the same class background etc) and traditional elites, help form a consensus view on the masses, the rabble, the uninformed that endured and is still dominant 50 years later.
Chapter 7 of the book examines the breakdown of the post war period, the cleavage between the working class and the progressives who were the avowed leadership of it and the capture of social, econonomic and cultural hegemony by neo-liberalism. I'll be posting thoughts on this later today hopefully.
We can see by now where Frank is going. The first half of the book examined 'Populism' understood here (somewhat problematically) as a specifically American current and via reference to the Populist Party. We have then explored 'Democracy Scare' in its original form: as a conservative elite reaction to movements from below demanding change. From there, we have explored New Deal America and the rise of the managerial state. Frank has now constructed - and I agree with him on this - the existence of two anti-populist elite blocs.
In Chapter 6, the social movements and the new left that emerged in the 1960's in the USA are discussed. I think this is the best chapter of the book so far, although I'm not entirely sure we are discussing anything more than the development of elite anti-populism by this point.
Frank starts the chapter examining the experience and development of the American civil rights movement. MLK is presented as a populist under this reading. Frank is at pains to go into some detail in the chapter about how these emergent movements saw an emphasis on unity and points of mutual benefit (particularly class unity between blacks and whites) at the core of their appeal and work. He charts how the movement developed ambitions greater than disparity correction under the existing order and on its deep links with the trade union movement and other mass participative movements. Frank gives a lot of weight to Bayard Rustin's "The Blacks and the Unions" essay. I read this yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminds us, in case we have forgotten, that mass movements of ordinary people are always more multi-racial and integrated than those which are top down or middle class led. Rustin shows how, even with their faults, the existence of mass popular movement carry social and cultural agency. It's a great read, and an important corrective to much of the debate now propelled by elite identity politics, separatist tendencies and which often take the existence of the neo-liberal order as non-negotiable or inevitable:
2020_18_10 Rustin The Blacks and the Unions – NYQM
Rustin tackles the idea. already gathering ground, that the working class was inherently racist and backward. He presents a sober analysis of the US trade union movement that acknowledges its bureaucratic inertia and top down stalinism but also locates it in a broader historical context and attempts from below to assert rank and file control. Rustin urges the black working class into the unions to tackle the former and build the latter.
I also enjoyed Frank's skewering of the New Left in Chapter 6 where "protest degenerated into 'street theatre'; 'radical style' came to trump 'radical substance'" and where "personal righteousness became the ultimate end of political action". Frank has some amusing stories that reveal the middle class nature of much of the New Left.
But, he is also levelling three important charges against it: 1. That in its search for moral purity the New Left constantly found itself 'let down' by the working class it purported to lead. Over time this led to the New Left turning it back on the WC and seeking liberation through student, minority, national liberation or vanguardist fractions and campaigns. The WC became part of the enemy and one the new left soon began to pity, mock, despise but most of all treat as politically beyond the pale 2. That the New Left, whilst recognising that the managerial state and liberalism were running out of road, also shared its elite distrust of the working class and doubted its bonafides as 'comrades' or placed much value on its ideas, demands or aspirations as a result and 3. That the combination of 1 and 2 helped to embed the social stereotypes of the period, particularly in respect of populist ideas, long after the managerial state, the post-war 'consensus' and so on long after they had been replaced by neo-conservative orthodoxy. In fact the new left, along with the PMC (and a section of the new left was the PMC in waiting coming from the same class background etc) and traditional elites, help form a consensus view on the masses, the rabble, the uninformed that endured and is still dominant 50 years later.
Chapter 7 of the book examines the breakdown of the post war period, the cleavage between the working class and the progressives who were the avowed leadership of it and the capture of social, econonomic and cultural hegemony by neo-liberalism. I'll be posting thoughts on this later today hopefully.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Chapter 7 is the last substantive chapter and deals with the collapse of the post-war social, cultural and economic arrangement. In the first section of the chapter Frank traces the political terrain of the period fairly effectively. The managerial state had arrived at a moment of crisis, losing faith in its own narrative in the midst of the oil crisis, rising unemployment, inflationary pressures and the demands of capital for austerity, spending cuts and the abandonment of basic Keynesian economic tenets. Meanwhile neo-conservative's were in the ascendency in both the battle of ideas and meta-narrative solutions facing the country. A third actor - the organised working class - was also in flux with the election of rank and file leaders in some of the biggest unions, millions of strike days taking place (sometimes in defiance of union bureaucrats) and a febrile militancy developing among new section of the working class - women workers, public sector workers and so on.
In terms of populism, Frank suggest that the neo-conservatives were able to reach - beginning with Nixon and culminating with Reagan - a cultural accommodation with sections of the working class by developing a narrative that tapped into popular anger with the media, intellectuals, activist students, lawyers. Put bluntly, they were able to tap into a working class blowback against the liberal elite which had been brewing for a decade and a half. They were also able to use race and gender in the construction of an inverted class war. The liberal elite neither wanted to nor was able to counter this with a popular narrative of its own and increasingly retreated into specious territories. As Rustin put it "The question is not whether this group (working class whites) is conservative or liberal; for it is both, and how it acts will depend upon the way the issues are defined" meaning that if the debate became dominated by issues of race and dissent then the right would win but if liberalism was able to define these issues in terms of progressive economic questions then they might.
I'm with Frank on his understanding of how the neo-liberals were stunningly effective in defining their ideas in populist terms. The need to destroy unions, the need for privatisation and shrinking the state, the case for economic liberalism were ideas that became possible due to the dual crisis of liberalism and the cultural cleavage between middle and working class America. But it was the synthesizing of these ideas into populist language - a language of "common sense'', the real - that made them popular.
I'm far less convinced by his view that liberalism could have presented a popular narrative of its own for reasons discussed in earlier chapters but briefly the contradictions and tensions that underpinned the new deal coalition that ruptured under the collapse of the managerial economy and the crisis of capital.
The remainder of the chapter traces the development of right populism from Nixon to Trump via Bush, Buchannan, Bannon and others. Frank fairly effectively shows how right populism has been able to mimic ordinary people's discontent with the elite and technocrats and has weaponised it and used it as cover for its own agenda. For those interested in how Trump won in 2016 and his appeal in the Rust Belt and among sections of the working class this is a useful summary and starting point.
He is also on the money when he notes that - in response - middle class liberalism still doesn't understand that "technocratic competence isn't enough, especially when that competence somehow means never improving the lives of working people". A point that is eerily prescient after the recent election and the narrow (and underwhelming) Democrat victory.
I'll read and post up thoughts on the final two chapters in due course.
In terms of populism, Frank suggest that the neo-conservatives were able to reach - beginning with Nixon and culminating with Reagan - a cultural accommodation with sections of the working class by developing a narrative that tapped into popular anger with the media, intellectuals, activist students, lawyers. Put bluntly, they were able to tap into a working class blowback against the liberal elite which had been brewing for a decade and a half. They were also able to use race and gender in the construction of an inverted class war. The liberal elite neither wanted to nor was able to counter this with a popular narrative of its own and increasingly retreated into specious territories. As Rustin put it "The question is not whether this group (working class whites) is conservative or liberal; for it is both, and how it acts will depend upon the way the issues are defined" meaning that if the debate became dominated by issues of race and dissent then the right would win but if liberalism was able to define these issues in terms of progressive economic questions then they might.
I'm with Frank on his understanding of how the neo-liberals were stunningly effective in defining their ideas in populist terms. The need to destroy unions, the need for privatisation and shrinking the state, the case for economic liberalism were ideas that became possible due to the dual crisis of liberalism and the cultural cleavage between middle and working class America. But it was the synthesizing of these ideas into populist language - a language of "common sense'', the real - that made them popular.
I'm far less convinced by his view that liberalism could have presented a popular narrative of its own for reasons discussed in earlier chapters but briefly the contradictions and tensions that underpinned the new deal coalition that ruptured under the collapse of the managerial economy and the crisis of capital.
The remainder of the chapter traces the development of right populism from Nixon to Trump via Bush, Buchannan, Bannon and others. Frank fairly effectively shows how right populism has been able to mimic ordinary people's discontent with the elite and technocrats and has weaponised it and used it as cover for its own agenda. For those interested in how Trump won in 2016 and his appeal in the Rust Belt and among sections of the working class this is a useful summary and starting point.
He is also on the money when he notes that - in response - middle class liberalism still doesn't understand that "technocratic competence isn't enough, especially when that competence somehow means never improving the lives of working people". A point that is eerily prescient after the recent election and the narrow (and underwhelming) Democrat victory.
I'll read and post up thoughts on the final two chapters in due course.
Seems interesting.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Latest from Goodwin on why accounts from the liberal centre predicting (hoping) populism’s decline might be wide of the mark.
I agree with Goodwin that the political backwash from the pandemic- with its clear class patterning in respect of mortality and economic damage - has yet to work its way into the system.
There is an undoubted mass reservoir of rage, anger and reckoning with the political class to come. But once the pandemic is ‘over’. It’s the working class that has had to work through the pandemic providing a widespread, once in a generation, glimpse of what work really has social value. It’s the working class, overwhelmingly, that is dying of the virus. It’s working class jobs - in services, retail and so on - that are the ones being destroyed as the middle class work from home on their laptops.
He’s also right to note the increasingly diverse nature of the ‘populist diaspora’. The always garbage idea that the populists, were ‘gammon’ was always offensive nonsense and after the US election is now objectively nonsense.
However, and as always with Goodwin, his conception of populism is that it’s forces will be on the right. It is true that the Biden/EU projects in particular will ensure that they remain competitive. But, Goodwin misses the possibility of the rise of left populist politics. The new generation of democrats inspired by Sanders, nascent left populist movements in Europe, the rise of left populist movements in parts of Latin America and the reality - as Goodwin himself notes - that the coming battle lines of the 2020’s are likely to be economic rather than cultural open up a space for left populist politics.
unherd.com
I agree with Goodwin that the political backwash from the pandemic- with its clear class patterning in respect of mortality and economic damage - has yet to work its way into the system.
There is an undoubted mass reservoir of rage, anger and reckoning with the political class to come. But once the pandemic is ‘over’. It’s the working class that has had to work through the pandemic providing a widespread, once in a generation, glimpse of what work really has social value. It’s the working class, overwhelmingly, that is dying of the virus. It’s working class jobs - in services, retail and so on - that are the ones being destroyed as the middle class work from home on their laptops.
He’s also right to note the increasingly diverse nature of the ‘populist diaspora’. The always garbage idea that the populists, were ‘gammon’ was always offensive nonsense and after the US election is now objectively nonsense.
However, and as always with Goodwin, his conception of populism is that it’s forces will be on the right. It is true that the Biden/EU projects in particular will ensure that they remain competitive. But, Goodwin misses the possibility of the rise of left populist politics. The new generation of democrats inspired by Sanders, nascent left populist movements in Europe, the rise of left populist movements in parts of Latin America and the reality - as Goodwin himself notes - that the coming battle lines of the 2020’s are likely to be economic rather than cultural open up a space for left populist politics.
Why we need populism
It kicks in when our democracies become too remote and detached from the people
unherd.com
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Whatever one thinks of Goodwin's politics it is hard to argue that much of that piece is on the money - from excluding the Johnson government as populist, to the liberal swoon over "demographics", to populism being a integral part of liberal democracy, to the underlying reasons behind the recent wave of populism not being confronted.
The Starmer LP is incapable of othering any political alternatives whatsoever, there is no political disagreement between the government and opposition over COVID. The LP agrees with the attacks on education/health/care/transport workers, the subsidising of businesses rather than workers. The LPs disagreement is that it would, somehow (although how has never been discussed), govern "better". Even the sole point of different, the timing of the firebreak/lockdown was a technical disagreement as much as a political one.
And if liberalism is not going to idenity the political problems that people have then sooner or later significant numbers of people are going to look for some political movement that will.
The above is especially worth emphasising, liberalism does not seem to have anything besides anti-populism and "competency". Whatever the failings of the LP under Corbyn it cannot be denied that the 2017 GE put a political choice centre stage a continuation of austerity or some measure of social democracy.
The Starmer LP is incapable of othering any political alternatives whatsoever, there is no political disagreement between the government and opposition over COVID. The LP agrees with the attacks on education/health/care/transport workers, the subsidising of businesses rather than workers. The LPs disagreement is that it would, somehow (although how has never been discussed), govern "better". Even the sole point of different, the timing of the firebreak/lockdown was a technical disagreement as much as a political one.
And if liberalism is not going to idenity the political problems that people have then sooner or later significant numbers of people are going to look for some political movement that will.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Agreed. Far from rescuing elite liberalism Biden and Harris will hasten its demise. The central problem they have (in common with Starmer, Macron and others) is principally this: they have no narrative to explain what is happening to people, to people. There is no vision and no sense that they have any long term project that people can get behind or believe in or which offer hope. All that’s left is their self-professed technocratic competence. To which the response must be ‘so what?’
I think your last point is critical. The next decade will inevitably see a massive space open up. Liberals/the PMC will be unable to conceive of the measures necessary to prevent mass unemployment, declining wages, health inequality and despair tearing through societies. The questions for us are these: how can pro working class politics gain ground? What are the ideas and methods that need to be emphasised (clue: no answer here requires an imagined role for the Labour Party)? How do we effectively organise to prevent the rise of the alternative?
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redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Finished the Frank now. Overall have to say I'm somewhat disappointed. There is too much focus on the Democratic Party as populist, too much on how the Democrats need to go back to the New Deal, too much that it top down rather than looking as the class forces that pushed the Democratic Party towards the New Deal.
That said there are some good points, the chapters on the People's Party are decent summary of a movement that is neglected too often. And Frank's outlining of the Democracy Scare, while a topic covered by others, is good (one only needs to skim through the US section thread on U75 to see how on the money he is).
However, for me the most important thing the book has got me to think about is that it is not (just) populism that needs to be analysed but anti-populism. Rather than starting from the point that populism is something abnormal (or crazy, like it's adherents), and so needs to be studied from the baseline of liberal democracy, by reversing that view and starting by analysing anti-populism, provides a benefit to understanding the class conflicts present between populism and anti-populism. Frank does not takes this analysis as far as I would like but there is a start.
Now on to Broder's book on Populism in Italy
That said there are some good points, the chapters on the People's Party are decent summary of a movement that is neglected too often. And Frank's outlining of the Democracy Scare, while a topic covered by others, is good (one only needs to skim through the US section thread on U75 to see how on the money he is).
However, for me the most important thing the book has got me to think about is that it is not (just) populism that needs to be analysed but anti-populism. Rather than starting from the point that populism is something abnormal (or crazy, like it's adherents), and so needs to be studied from the baseline of liberal democracy, by reversing that view and starting by analysing anti-populism, provides a benefit to understanding the class conflicts present between populism and anti-populism. Frank does not takes this analysis as far as I would like but there is a start.
Now on to Broder's book on Populism in Italy
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I’ve finished it too. Immensely enjoyed the penultimate chapter where Frank takes the PMC to task. The chapter should be widely read and shared on the left. It provides an important corrective for those who assume that there is some common ground between our side and centrist liberalism or, more commonly, that they represent some form of lesser evilism. The sooner we win the argument that both sides are the class enemy - with diametrically opposed interests to ours - the better.
redsquirrel is correct that the book isn’t about populism. It’s about the development of popular movements from below in America. The three major flaws in the book for me are 1. It’s wholly concerned with the USA 2. His argument that the rise of the PMC and its capture of the Democrats, in my view, does not alone explain the rise of populism as its popularly understood and 3. He’s far too generous to the New Deal Democrats and assumes a cross class alliance between the organised working class and the middle class Dems. That’s simply not an argument that stands up to historical scrutiny and empties the agenda of both groupings. That said m, I leaned loads about the Populist Party. Something I knew little about and which fills a gap in my knowledge about the proto industrial American working class. Fascinating stuff.
I’m going to start Eatwell and Goodwin shortly. But I’ve got a bit more work to do for the EP Thompson reading group first.
Look forward to your thoughts on Broder RS
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I note Paul Embery has got a book out ‘Deapised’ which looks at the relationship between the LP and the working class. He’s also got an article in the MoS (which I won’t link to in case it triggers a derail about how dreadful the Mail is etc) but which opens like this:
“Labour is now a party almost exclusively for the managerial and professional classes, graduates, social activists and urban liberals ... and the price has been paid in millions of lost working-class votes.”
I’m not going to buy the book, because I suspect it’ll tread familiar ground by analysing Labour’s take over by the PMC, the long march away from its heartlands, its failure to fix under Blair (or even acknowledge) the consequences of Thatcherism and its obsession with elite identity politics. I do agree with most of their analysis.
From there, I expect the book to outline the Blue Labour manifesto and prescribe this as the cure. There are two concrete problems with what the Blue Labour ‘manifesto’ poses. Firstly, and historically, the picture they paint isn’t true. The working class was never the homogenous community BL imagines with previous waves of migration carefully imbricated into communities. Deracination was a constant process under industrial society too. BL also overlooks the significant conflict and struggle and working class cultural production all of which directly challenged the existing order in this imagined sunlit period. The real evidence is when you talk to those who lived it. Their recollection of the era and Blue Labour’s simply don’t accord with each other, suggesting that BL is merely another elite outsider analysis rather than a politics developed from within.
Secondly, where would BL take us moving forward? Precisely nowhere, bar a move to occupy the ground the Tories are also seeking to mine. We don’t need to spend time discussing where that would lead, it’s long term prospects or why it should have zero appeal to socialists.
This thread, not the fastest moving admittedly, would benefit for examples of left populist politics around the world that aren’t hidebound by this types of policy prescription. If we accept as a basic form of analysis that what is commonly described as right populism and centrist liberalism are both diametrically opposed to the interests of the working class then where are the examples and ideas of a left populism that works and could work?
“Labour is now a party almost exclusively for the managerial and professional classes, graduates, social activists and urban liberals ... and the price has been paid in millions of lost working-class votes.”
I’m not going to buy the book, because I suspect it’ll tread familiar ground by analysing Labour’s take over by the PMC, the long march away from its heartlands, its failure to fix under Blair (or even acknowledge) the consequences of Thatcherism and its obsession with elite identity politics. I do agree with most of their analysis.
From there, I expect the book to outline the Blue Labour manifesto and prescribe this as the cure. There are two concrete problems with what the Blue Labour ‘manifesto’ poses. Firstly, and historically, the picture they paint isn’t true. The working class was never the homogenous community BL imagines with previous waves of migration carefully imbricated into communities. Deracination was a constant process under industrial society too. BL also overlooks the significant conflict and struggle and working class cultural production all of which directly challenged the existing order in this imagined sunlit period. The real evidence is when you talk to those who lived it. Their recollection of the era and Blue Labour’s simply don’t accord with each other, suggesting that BL is merely another elite outsider analysis rather than a politics developed from within.
Secondly, where would BL take us moving forward? Precisely nowhere, bar a move to occupy the ground the Tories are also seeking to mine. We don’t need to spend time discussing where that would lead, it’s long term prospects or why it should have zero appeal to socialists.
This thread, not the fastest moving admittedly, would benefit for examples of left populist politics around the world that aren’t hidebound by this types of policy prescription. If we accept as a basic form of analysis that what is commonly described as right populism and centrist liberalism are both diametrically opposed to the interests of the working class then where are the examples and ideas of a left populism that works and could work?
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