Beyond Populism
By Joel Kovel
Today, one of the most influential models on the left is that of Populism.
As the word suggests, Populism stems from the "people," which is to
say, the common citizenry, without respect to structural dividing lines
like class, gender and ethnicity, who come together to address a mutually
perceived social evil, most commonly, concentrated economic power.
The term has a rich history in the US, where populist movements became
quite substantial toward the close of the 19th century and have continued
to play a role in politics right up through the present. Although these
forces were originally concentrated in rural areas, populist movements
today encompass very diverse sections of the population. It is this
element of diversity and spontaneity, along with the hostility to established
power, the search for justice, and the sense of rootedness in American
democratic tradition, that leads many greens to consider themselves
populists.
There is no question that much good has come out of populism (for
example, it played an important role in the passage of anti-trust legislation
early in the last century), and that many good people have been, and
continue to be, attracted to its banner. However, there are also a
number of compelling reasons why populism is not in itself an adequate
basis for a coherent and comprehensive green strategy.
Populism builds on resentment and anger against abusive power. That
is its primary motivating force and a considerable source of its appeal.
The populist has, in effect, a free ticket of entry into the political
arena, where he can count on powerful emotions to bring his points
forward. That can be all to the good--but it can also have some noxious
side effects. We can sort these into two kinds:
First, the politics of resentment can easily turn into the politics
of exclusion, scapegoating and demagoguery. That is why, along with
the many virtuous people who have marched under the populist banner,
have come more than a fair share of dubious characters who, exploiting
a charisma that is itself utterly foreign to green values, combine
populist virtues with various malignant tendencies. Some of these,
like Louisiana's Huey Long, enacted benefits for the poor, but at an
unacceptable cost of demagoguery and corruption. Others, like Father
Coughlin, had some profound insights into the evils of finance capital,
but ended up an anti-semite and ardent fascist. Others still, like
George Wallace, were vicious racists who had a change of heart, but
surely not one of character sufficient to make him a model for green
politics. Today, the most successful populists in America are Jesse
Ventura and Pat Buchanan: the mix of resentments and good insights
will vary, but again, their utter unsuitability as models for green
politics should require no further comment. In Europe, meanwhile, Joerg
Haider has slithered into the Austrian government. People call attention,
correctly, to his fascist past and potentials, but do not sufficiently
draw the implication that Haider (like Hitler) is also a genuinely
populist politician, combining charisma and the ability to mobilize
mass hostility to a corrupt regime.
Many will now say, well, those are the bad populists; we, the greens,
can get behind a good populism based upon firm democratic values. Now
there are plenty of good populists, as I have said. However, so long
as they remain populist, they cannot rise above the implications of
its basic method, which is to personalize politics. The racism and
scapegoating can be restrained, but the need to focus upon some personnification
of evil remains. In this case, history has thrown a suitable villain
into the fray, one capable of representing the personal dynamic of
populism: the capitalist corporation, created by a legal sleight of
hand as a fictive individual. In this way arises the prevailing populist
mythology, that the People against Corporations comprises the main
ground of contemporary struggle.
Why is this a myth? Surely, corporations are the principal malefactors
in the world today, whether as polluters, the cutters of old growth
forests, the blood-sucking HMO's or indeed the entire corporate apparatus
that buys politicians, sets up its WTO's, and the like. Why should
it not be the corporations that are the prime movers of the world's
evil, as economic populists like David Korten, Richard Grossman, Paul
Hawken, and Ralph Nader, have held?
Clearly, corporations are there to be fought, in all the above roles,
and more. But they are to be combatted as the currently constituted
armies of the system, and not the system itself. When fascism was fought
in WWII, the German Wehrmacht had to be defeated, yet we recognized
the German army as the instrument of fascism, and not fascism itself.
Similarly, the corporations are the armies, or instruments, or embodiments
of capitalism. If capital, which is the moving force behind the current
world crisis, is to be defeated, corporate power will have to be neutralized,
but as a means to this end, and not as the end in itself.
Breaking corporate power is a necessary but not sufficient condition
for the building of a better world, a project that will require the
construction of a radically different economic foundation of society.
Economic populists, however, see corporations as the problems in themselves,
and their restraint as the sufficient condition for a liberated society,
and an end in itself. The myth of populism demands this, for since
the corporations are the whole problem according to its terms, all
we have to do is to restrain them and all will be well.
The narrative is patently false, and its implications, while comforting
to draw, are politically misleading. This can be seen by a glance at
history. Economic populists like to develop a kind of golden age theory
of history, in which everything was on the right track until the corporate
form was put together, aided by a bad interpretation of the 14th Amendment
in which corporations were granted personal status and so became free
to act irresponsibly. There is no question that this turn of events,
which took place late in the nineteenth century, was an important moment
in the history of capitalism. But it was no more than one moment in
a very large story. If we are to believe that things only got bad when
the modern corporation took shape, then what was Karl Marx writing
about in the 1840's through '60's, before this happened? Was the capitalism
Marx studied, with its rampant child labor and devastation of peasantries,
a golden age--or was the era of slavery, or that of the conquest of
the Americas, all integral moments of the history of capitalism? What
Marx did was to draw from the whole mass of the history of capitalism
its "laws of motion." He refused to freeze that history in any one
time and falsely identify one form with the whole of it.
This is much more than a theoretical debate. In the populist myth,
corporate power is not to be so much overcome, as checked and regulated.
A strongly democratic society--what Greens and others progressives
are to struggle for--will so bring the corporations into line that
they will now be servants of society rather than its masters. And with
this, the real market society will arise. David Korten, who is a great
admirer of Adam Smith, writes approvingly of "an efficient market .
. . comprised of small, owner-managed enterprises located in the communities
in which the owners reside, share in the community's values, and have
a personal stake in its future. It is a market that bears little in
common with a globalized economy dominated by massive corporations
. . . ." In the populist vision, the good society is a regime of small
businesses, presumably covering the earth--as no alternative form of
economic activity is given any value.
I would have four major objections to this:
1. Because there was no precorporate golden age, and capitalism is
much more embedded in society--and the psyche--than the economic populists
hold--the job of overcoming it requires a much more thorough and deep
vision of social transformation. A mere change in social regulation
of corporations is totally inadequate except as a first step--in which
case the following steps have to be anticipated.
2. The notion of smallness may be appealing for many--and indeed an
ecological society needs to be much more fine grained, intimate, and
based on face-to-face interactions than the present. However, the generalization
of the small business model to the whole social body is preposterous.
There being no point except fantasy of returning to a Jeffersonian
or precapitalist model on a world scale, there will necessarily remain
in any worthwhile future society, large-scale enterprises, and highly
important ones at that--telecommunications networks, for example, or
rail systems, not to mention the conduct of global trade in a post-WTO
era. If the state is to be merely regulatory, who is to run these enterprises--the
small-scale capitalists? If they do, they will become large-scale capitalists,
and the cycle will be renewed.
3. The notions of populists necessarily remain nationalist. They are
extensions of a bourgeois Anglo-American vision to the whole world.
4. What's so hot about small business, anyway? Why should we be satisified
with a model that represents humanity as it had evolved to the era
of Adam Smith, one grounded in hierarchy, exploitation, profiteering,
and competition--exactly what generated the present capitalist system?
The conclusion must be to go beyond populism, and its politics of
resentment. As Greens, our goal should be to build a better world,
and for this, we need to think beyond the boundaries of the present.
In my next communication, I'll expand upon this idea.
-- Joel Kovel Candidate for President, Green Party
<jkovel@prodigy.net>
TO THE GREENS #2
Critique of Populist Politics
by Joel Kovel
Rethinking Populism
Producerism
Progressive
Populists: Stand up and Fight
Right Woos Left
Chip Berlet - Political Research Associates
(Very long study)
The Sucker Punch Series
Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, & the
Reform Party
Lenora Fulani and the Politics of Opportunism
The Sucker Punch of Right Wing Populism
Right Wing Anti-Globalism
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