For me, one of Madison's most fascinating ideas was his demand for a federal veto over state laws. He fought for it, didn't get it, and complained about that for the rest of his life.
When did the Populists become darlings of historians of the left? Not a rhetorical question. Marxist-Leninists never liked them much, and the post WWII Democratic/center-left intelligentsia (Lippmanm, Hoftadter, Daniel Bell, probably Galbraith) held them in contempt. (Schlesinger thought that later populists were OK to the extent that they supported the Democratic machine.
With the publication of Democratic Promise in 1976, Lawrence Goodwyn reversed that tendency. Since then, the Pops have appeared as the last mass movement on behalf of democracy, as per Goodwyn's specifications. Small business as the bulwark against the corporate overlords. Mom and Pop up against the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. And so on. It's the return of the self-made man.
The Populists and Prairie Progressives were a mixed group, and more than just petty bourgeois. One of them corresponded with Marx (Demerast Lloyd) and some of them were founders of the Socialist Labor Party. The post-populist Nonpartisan League in ND established the US's only state bank and tried to negotiate a labor contract with the IWW. The post-populist Farmer-Labor Party in MN was, per Klehr, the great success of the American Popular Front.
A you see, I am a Popsymp, and I never really have had the feeling that they were darlings of the Left. Only that 20 years ago or so people stopped using "populist" as an automatic term of abuse.
I wasn't characterizing the social composition of the Populist Movement or the People's Party. Many of its adherents became prairie socialists, as per the Non-Partisan League, whether they were petty bourgeois proprietors or not. My point is that the Populist conception of self-determination as against the corporate-industrial social order has become the ideal type of selfhood for left historians. They have accordingly been able to equate wage labor and chattel slavery, in line with the new history of capitalism that treats the antebellum South as the cutting edge of capitalist civilization.
For me, one of Madison's most fascinating ideas was his demand for a federal veto over state laws. He fought for it, didn't get it, and complained about that for the rest of his life.
When did the Populists become darlings of historians of the left? Not a rhetorical question. Marxist-Leninists never liked them much, and the post WWII Democratic/center-left intelligentsia (Lippmanm, Hoftadter, Daniel Bell, probably Galbraith) held them in contempt. (Schlesinger thought that later populists were OK to the extent that they supported the Democratic machine.
With the publication of Democratic Promise in 1976, Lawrence Goodwyn reversed that tendency. Since then, the Pops have appeared as the last mass movement on behalf of democracy, as per Goodwyn's specifications. Small business as the bulwark against the corporate overlords. Mom and Pop up against the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. And so on. It's the return of the self-made man.
The Populists and Prairie Progressives were a mixed group, and more than just petty bourgeois. One of them corresponded with Marx (Demerast Lloyd) and some of them were founders of the Socialist Labor Party. The post-populist Nonpartisan League in ND established the US's only state bank and tried to negotiate a labor contract with the IWW. The post-populist Farmer-Labor Party in MN was, per Klehr, the great success of the American Popular Front.
A you see, I am a Popsymp, and I never really have had the feeling that they were darlings of the Left. Only that 20 years ago or so people stopped using "populist" as an automatic term of abuse.
I wasn't characterizing the social composition of the Populist Movement or the People's Party. Many of its adherents became prairie socialists, as per the Non-Partisan League, whether they were petty bourgeois proprietors or not. My point is that the Populist conception of self-determination as against the corporate-industrial social order has become the ideal type of selfhood for left historians. They have accordingly been able to equate wage labor and chattel slavery, in line with the new history of capitalism that treats the antebellum South as the cutting edge of capitalist civilization.
OK