Let's take a look at the populist party resolutions in their platform of 1892, near the peak of the party:

RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all elections and pledge ourselves to secure it to every legal voter without Federal Intervention, through the adoption by the States of the unperverted Australian or secret ballot system.
RESOLVED, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax should be applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.
RESOLVED, That we pledge our support to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union soldiers and sailors.
RESOLVED, That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and demand the further restriction of undesirable emigration.
RESOLVED, That we cordially sympathize with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor, and demand a rigid enforcement of the existing eight-hour law on Government work, and ask that a penalty clause be added to the said law.
RESOLVED, That we regard the maintenance of a large standing army of mercenaries, known as the Pinkerton system, as a menace to our liberties, and we demand its abolition. . . .
RESOLVED, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people and the reform press the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.
RESOLVED, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice-President to one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a direct vote of the people.
RESOLVED, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose.
RESOLVED, That this convention sympathizes with the Knights of Labor and their righteous contest with the tyrannical combine of clothing manufacturers of Rochester, and declare it to be a duty of all who hate tyranny and oppression to refuse to purchase the goods made by the said manufacturers, or to patronize any merchants who sell such goods.

Let's score this:

1. On one hand, the secret ballot system is very progressive, on the other hand, note the state's rights angle. We should all remember how lack of Federal Intervention in state's voting was a means for preventing millions of African Americans from voting.

2. Income tax happened.

3. Military pensions have, indeed, improved dramatically, but note how narrow this is. Social Security, alone, is a broader based improvement in the fortunes of the retired than this proposal.

4. Nativism. Pat Buchanan and many right wingers would be down with this. The US would, indeed, dramatically restrict immigration. One should also note the racist bent of much of the restriction of immigration. Cartoons from the period made the language in this plank clear: anti-Chinese sentiment.

5. Unionism certainly happened, but not without radical changes.

6. This certainly would be a good idea, don't you think?

7. Happened, but it is not clear whether it has worked out very well.

8. Two terms happened.

9. Ending Corporate Welfare is certainly a cutting edge issue now.

10. The Textile industry in recent years is in virtual depression in the US, but conditions for overseas workers are as bad today as they were in Rochester in 1892. One reason for fair trade is to prevent exporting of exploitation.

Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com

Max! What a romantic boychik you are!

On the tax issue, I would add a tax on increases in the value of investments. At the current time, someone whose income is from invested capital pays no taxes on the increase in the value of those investments until they are sold. A person whose wealth increases by one billion dollars in a single year could pay little or no tax or FICA while a working family making 50,000 would pay substantial amounts of both. If the estate tax is eliminated, that income would NEVER be taxed (not double taxed as some aver). Florida has had an intangible assets tax that demonstrates that this increase in wealth can be taxed. Broadening the tax base could mean that all tax rates could be reduced. But whatever the progressive movement decides to do about taxes, do NOT eliminate the estate tax. No other measure would further increase tax injustice or concentrate wealth.

It clearly references Federal intervention in elections in the reconstruction era, particularly in enforcing voting rights, prior to the Amnesty Act of 1872.

As this commentary onThe Strange Career of Jim Crow" outlines:

So, why did Jim Crow come about, then? "The South's adoption of extreme racism was due so much to a conversion as it was to a relaxation of opposition," writes Woodward. "All the elements of fear, jealousy, proscription, hatred, and fanaticism had long been present, as they are present in various degrees of intensity in any society. What enabled them to rise to dominance was not so much cleverness or ingenuity as it was a general weakening and discrediting of the numerous forces that had hitherto kept them in check. The restraining forces included not only Northern liberal opinion in the press, the courts, and the government, but also internal checks imposed by the prestige and influence of the Southern conservatives, as well as by the idealism and zeal of the Southern radicals. What happened toward the end of the century was an almost simultaneous -- and sometimes not unrelated -- decline in the effectiveness of restraint that had been exercised by all three forces: Northern liberalism, Southern conservatism, and Southern radicalism." (69)

To take each very briefly, northern liberalism waned in the wake of Supreme Court decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson and "White Man's Burden" imperialist ventures overseas, southern conservatism returned to its Redemptionist appeal to "negrophobia" to retain its power and to keep the South "in step with the conservative Northeastern wing of the party and with its views on economic policy," and Populists turned on their former African-American allies as scapegoats for the movement's failure. (77)

"Having served as the national scapegoat in the reconciliation and reunion of North and South," writes Woodward, "the Negro was now pressed into service as a sectional scapegoat in the reconciliation of estranged white classes and the reunion of the Solid South. The bitter violence and blood-letting recriminations of the campaigns between white conservatives and white radicals in the 'nineties had opened wounds that could not be healed by ordinary political nostrums and free-silver slogans. The only formula powerful enough to accomplish that was the magical formula of white supremacy, applied without stint and without any of the old conservative reservations of paternalism, without deference to any lingering resistance of Northern liberalism, or any fear of further check from a defunct Southern Populism." (82-83) In effect, African-Americans became a sacrifice to perpetuate the white man's peace.

And so African-Americans were disenfranchised in the name of Progressive reform, a flurry of laws were passed (and cultural conventions created) to separate the races, and former Populists like Tom Watson, who once stood in the path of this type of discrimination, instead became "one of the outstanding exploiters of endemic Negrophobia."(90) Very shortly thereafter, the Jim Crow system was deliberately given a patina of inevitability by many Southern writers, who proclaimed it an outgrowth of the South's natural "folkways." And thus "the Jim Crow laws...gave free rein and the majesty of the law to mass aggressions that might otherwise have been curbed, blunted, or deflected." (108)

Here it outlines what is taking place by 1892 - the populist movement had, originally, believed that there was a horizontal stratification of society - that is, by economic circumstance and economic class - but by the 1890's it had identified itself with the rise of the Jim Crow system. By 1892, the leading edge of this acceptance of nativism, racism and, by extension, a rejection of the earlier principles of the populist movement, was already apperant.

Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com

Stirling, I think you missed the point. I don't think Max was advocating adoption of the 1892 populist platform, but pointing out that the broad ideals of the progressive movement, as it now exists, can draw support from significantly large segments of society just as they did in the earlier period.

In effect, you're criticizing populists for failing. They failed, or disappeared, not because of the bad in them, but the good -- the recognition of an egalitarianism of want across races, as Woodward said. It's true, this could not survive the rise of white supremacy. That is not a legitimate criticism of their most basic insight into class, only of the difficulty of following through in the post-Civil War South.

There is is annoying tendency in regard to a class-oriented movement of dwelling on its decline, rather than its essence.

Max B. Sawicky

All thats required to be a populist is the position (or at least the rhetoric) that holds that the majority common person's interests are oppressed or hindered by a specific elite group (Capitalists, Jews, Northeastern Liberals).

"the powerful trial lawyer lobby"
"the liberal elite"
"the Hollywood elite"

These have all been the targets of a very real & profound right-wing populism, of which "Those spend thrift liberal elites in Washington are stealing your Tax Dollars! We need to keep our hard earned money out of Government's pocket and back in the hands of hard working men & women" is a popular strand.

Segregationist George Wallace's whole political campaign was built on a reactionary populism.

This isn't even touching on the nativist reaction towards liberalized trade & immigration (They took your job!) which has a profound populist strand.

Populism is a style & a method, not a real political philosophy. It can be used for good, it can also be used for bad. Whatever it's effectiveness, I consider it on the whole to be illiberal.

 One component in all of this is the ambiguity of the English language itself.  The nation's history is full of episodes of "kidnap the definition".  I have to say that the other guys seem to be particularly good at this sort of thing--making one term after another socially unacceptable and beyond the political pale.  The good guys, i.e., us, let the bad guys, a.k.a. them, ruin one perfectly good word after another. 

I think I'll cling to the idea of "serving the common good"...with the emphasis on "common" and maybe the emphasis on "good" as well.  There is enough historic precedent for that idea, or its twin, the commonwealth, for me to stay happy.  Within that idea there's room for me to call myself just about anything I wish;

• A social democrat
• A social gospeler
• A progressive
• A populist
• A communitarian
• A liberal
• An Idealist (and a realist)

and several other things as well... and there's plenty of room for my adversaries to call me things as well.  But through the Commonwealth (we have a couple of those,  Massachusetts, Pennsylvania),  I'm able to ally myself with

• common schools
• common sense
• common decency
• common respect
• common kindness

and many other all too uncommon things.  So let's have a a government which truly promotes the general welfare, and devotes as much energy to nurturing the social infrastructure as it does the technical and engineering infrastructures, and you can call it what you wish. 

aMike

Your post illustrates perfectly why increased power to the states is not only needed, but is essential.

National politics, dating from the time of the Founding Fathers, has always been about "the haves." To get elected in Washington you have to be wealthy; at very worst upper middle class (for the House of Representatives, of course).

In other words, there has never been a time in American history where everyday, working-class men and women have been elected to Congress. It has always been the wealthy elites; mostly industrial north-easterners.

To find the vein of the "real" America, one must look to state governments where "real" people govern. It is not uncommon to find state legislators who have credit card debt and mortgage payments.

As we have seen over the last several years, national politicians rarely have the interests of everyday folks in mind. Rather, they have agendas and personal interests to attend to and there is no limit to the amount of logrolling in which they may participate.

The Southern United States seceeded from the Union because of these sorts of things.

Perhaps we ought to learn from our own history.

Populism, like religion or patriotism, can be hijacked for unsavory purposes. One should look warily on politicians engaging any of the three.

If one is looking for solutions, then criticizing a movement for failing is certainly fair game. I don't mean to criticize the populist party unfairly - after all if state's rights is hinted at in their platform, it is front and center of the Democratic Party's 1892 platform:

We warn the people of our common country, jealous for the preservation of their free institutions, that the policy of Federal control of elections, to which the Republican party has committed itself, is fraught with the gravest dangers, scarcely less momentous than would result from a revolution practically establishing monarchy on the ruins of the Republic. It strikes at the North as well as at the South, and injures the colored citizen even more than the white; it means a horde of deputy marshals at every polling place, armed with Federal power; returning boards appointed and controlled by Federal authority, the outrage of the electoral rights of the people in the several States, the subjugation of the colored people to the control of the party in power, and the reviving of race antagonisms, now happily abated, of the utmost peril to the safety and happiness of all; a measure deliberately and justly described by a leading Republican Senator as "the most infamous bill that ever crossed the threshold of the Senate." Such a policy, if sanctioned by law, would mean the dominance of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of office-holders, and the party first intrusted with its machinery could be dislodged from power only by an appeal to the reserved right of the people to resist oppression, which is inherent in all self-governing communities. Two years ago this revolutionary policy was emphatically condemned by the people at the polls, but in contempt of that verdict the Republican can party has defiantly declared in its latest authoritative utterance that its success in the coming elections will mean the enactment of the Force Bill and the usurpation of despotic control over elections in all the States.

We are, afterall, talking about a mass political movement in the late 19th century America, which means almost by default that we are going to see levels of racism, isolationism and ethnocentrism which would be regraded as regressive, or at least Republican, in today's discourse.

The failing of populism is its lack of policy imagination. Consider the 1892 platform. One plank is a one term limit for the Presidency. However, from Grant until Wilson, no President was elected to, and served, two consecutive terms. In fact the Republican Party, particularly the corporatist wing of it, did very well rotating non-entities for a single term through the Presidency. Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, McKinley all managed to add to the pile without having long to do it.

Another example of lack of policy imagination is free silver coinage. While it would remain a celebrated cause for another 40 years from 1892 - FDR would request more in silver subsidies than in direct agricultural subsidies during the New Deal - it would have done little for the majority of people who it was supposed to benefit. Silver is great, for those who have some, but the allocation of work to digging silver would not have been a good use of national effort. The populist's by ideological blindness - were against the very tools that would later be used to improve people's lives, namely government programs - there's a small government bias to populism, as well as an anti-corporate one.

To go forward, "railroad nationalization" means nothing, the gag is that the railroads were effectively nationalized - merely that they were being run for the benefit of the interests of the US government and a small number of rail barron's. Not so ironically the very court decisions used to justify the railroad regime lead directly to the authority of liberalism to control interstate commerce.

The populists where Jeffersonians - with all of the baggage that entails. While they have a moral clarity as to the purpose of government - to improve the lives of the people who do the living and dying in this world - their ideological horror of larger structure, their craving for direct, emotionally appeallilng actions, and their entanglement with the darker impulses of the public imagination brought about their downfall. In this they are neither the first, nor the last such movement to fail.

Populism must be a pillar of future politics, but it is not a template, because it lacks policy imagination, and the ability to lead people up out of their narrow world. And it is that narrow world of what they see every day that allows people to believe that if only all sources of power were knocked over, then everyone would be happy. They do this as the eat bananas from central America, put foreign gasoline in their cars, and watch televisions made in China, oblivious to the fact that they have to sell something to get them, or live with a dramatically lower standard of living.

No one who has watched liberalism decay into bloodless technocracy can fail to look back at Populism, either as its own party or in its incarnations in the Democratic and Republican Parties of the same day - and not note that the moral clarity of populism is a sine a qua non of restoration in the present.

But it is not the only, nor even the predominant, lack. As we are seeing now with the Democratic Congress, another, equally urgent, failing of our present politics is a lack of policy imagination to further populist ends. Populism, without progressive and liberal impulses, is an engine without tires, clutch, brakes or muffler.

Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com

Quite. I believe that if you told most Progressive Populists before they got involved in the movement that they would not elect any candidates to high office but that they would succeed in getting fundamental reforms put into place, they would have signed up for that deal.

IOW, what is the meaning of the term "political success"? Winning an election, or getting a policy put into practice?

... while at the same time conservative governments have from the 1980's promoted the practice of illegally hiring people without established work rights in the US as a convenient means of undermining unions, which Bush-43 proposes to legalise with a Guest Worker program.

Your view of the Founders is only true from a 21st Century perspecitive. They had a 18th Century view of virtue. They believed that only the disinterested had the proper virtue to govern. From their perspective those who had to work for a living,by definition, could never be disinterested and thus should never be entrusted in government.

Thus the well off saw themselves as obligated to give up their private lives in order to engage in public service. Thus on of the poorest Founders, Franklin, when you made enough money stopped working, at the age of 42, and took public office and public engagement full time.

To look back at history and ask those of the past to live up to current standards is inevitably to be disappointed and a distortion of history.

Daniel A. Greenbaum