The Populists had inadvertently added, to the traditional democratic tenet that power should be in the hands of the people, the sociotropic tenet that the government should use this power to serve the people’s interests. These two tenets have been all-but-universally accepted ever since—although the sociotropic premise can be turned against the democratic premise, justifying government by experts, whose knowledge might serve the people’s interests. . .
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the Populists’ Progressive successors widened and deepened the new understanding of the purpose of government. Progressives tended to be relatively well-educated and urban, producing an elitist image that’s largely inaccurate. They actually favored a massive expansion of democracy, including the direct election of presidents and senators; primary elections to choose the candidates and weaken party bosses; initiative and referendum elections; recall elections; the election of judges; campaign-finance legislation; and congressional reforms that would expose back-room dealings to “sunshine” and popular accountability. Each of these political reforms was designed to enable the people to enact far-reaching social reforms to solve problems caused by industrial capitalism. As Theodore Roosevelt memorably put it, political reforms would be “weapons in the hands of the people,” enabling them to enact minimum wages, worker’s compensation, food and drug regulation, antitrust laws, and the rest of the endlessly proliferating measures that have, ever since, been the routine business of government.
Mencken said that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Populism re-emphasizes that theory. In some sense, Mr. Trump represents the culmination of progressivism. That is the irony which Jeffrey Friedman would have us appreciate.
“In the first decades of the twentieth century, the Populists’ Progressive successors widened and deepened the new understanding of **the purpose** of government.”
[**added]
Jeffrey Friedman @ Niskanen
“Purposive” Government or the “Purposive” State has not been the exclusive political province of “Progressivism,” though advocates of the latter have embraced and fomented the “Purposive” at the cost of individuality and individual liberty.
That very concept of “Purpose” of governments and the failures to distinguish functions from purposes has led to the “modern” impasse of the “Modern State.”
Those seriously interested might want to read some of Oakeshott on “purposive” government.
“hey actually favored a massive expansion of democracy, including the direct election of presidents and senators;…”
That might be expansion of democracy or it might have been cover to shift the electoral power to the populous cities and away from those country bumpkins, or their state legislature representatives who could have an outside impact on Senator selection.
Tyranny of the majority.
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The Ethics of Democracy by F.J. Stimson. Scribner’s Magazine (1887)
“We will therefore conclude with the perhaps unforeseen result, that democracy, when crowned with power, seeks rather what it considers the well-being of the community than the liberty of the individual.”
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“It was a great advantage when tyranny had one head and one neck; but what axe will relieve us from the tyranny of the majority? Foreign conquest was an evil; but it commonly took only our flocks and herds and left ourselves in liberty.”
http://www.archive.org/stream/scribnersmag01editmiss#page/n681/mode/2up
It’s not accurate – or really intellectually fair – to portray today’s progressivism and yesterday’s as the same thing just becuase they share the same name and there is historic continuity. There’s been far too much water under the bridge, and frankly, we’d all be better off if we had a strong norm against engaging in subtle smear campaigns against rival contemporaries by means of guilt by association with forebears whose views have passed out of the Overton window of today’s intellectual and moral fashions. So, while Thomas Leonard’s book is true about some of the views of many of those old progressives, well, ok, nice to know, good – and unfortunately also “brave” in this day and age – work of scholarship, but so what? Who cares about that when today’s progressives don’t overlap on any of those views deemed nasty today?
And while Nancy MacLean’s book is a false and despicable hatchet job, well, even if were true, then also, so what? Well, the “so what” was her attempt to tarnish contemporary libertarians – especially the Kochs and the George Mason scene and anyone having anything to do with them – as racists, by trying to prove some seminal predecessor was not just racist but concocted modern libertarianism as little more than an clever facade and cover story for a fundamentally racist agenda. Well, again, that’s clearly false, but even if were true, there is nearly zero overlap between that fable of racism and the views on contemporary libertarians.
Some people have tried to affix modifiers and labels to movements like these to distinguish fundamental transitions in ideas. Old Left vs. New Left. Second Wave vs. Third Wave Feminism. Paleo vs. Neo-Conservatives. There are even paleo vs. “14th Amendment” vs. “Orange Line” Libertarians, though those prefixes are not as commonly applied. There are those unfashionable post-libertarians, and I’ve proposed “Alt-Libertarianism” for those who still appreciate and prefer traditional Anglo-Saxon liberties, but who are not idealogical or utopian about it and maintain their worldview and political ideas within the constraints of human nature realism.
We don’t have these modifiers for progressivism’s vintages (which is quite revealing to anyone who understands what is going on), except for maybe “early”, but we should, because it continues to evolve with each generation.
And if we did, we would see that Democratic Populism doesn’t really have anything to do with progressivism (earlier or later) really except that it was a political tactic that the early progressives found expedient as a way to gain power around the turn of the century. This is the basic pattern of political conflict throughout history, which is that conflicts are between in-power and out-of-power elites, and out-of-power elites can occassionally rally the masses behind them in the name of the interests of those popular masses who are being exploited or oppressed or betrayed by the in-power elites, all of which usually turns out to be a big con job in the end (even if there was a little genuine sincerity in the beginning).
So, progressivism wasn’t “about” populism, it just used populism as a tool to bust up the old political machine power structure, and as soon as progressives were firmly entrenched at the society’s commanding heights, they immediately set to work building institutions which would negate the popular will at any point it threatened to go against progressive values or policy agendas. For example, see what happens in the courts these days after a referendum on affirmative action (MI), or gay marriage (CA), or term limits (MA), etc. There are administrative and bureaucratic parallels as well, the whole “deep state resistence” concept.
Elite progressives have to rely on these anti-populist tools because at least half the country really does not want the progressive agenda to be implemented.
Which provided Trump with the opportunity to use the same tool of American democratic populism to run his strategy in accordance with The Fundamental Historical Rule of Political Conflict.
But the willingness and capability to use this tool, and indeed the necessity of its use, has nothing whatsoever to do with progressivism or any “ideology” of populism. All that happened was that the early progressives forwarded this intellectual cover story of a “populist ideology” as a convenient rhetorical narrative that allowed them to obtain power, a pretense that formed no essential part of the overall progressive ideology and value system, and one they dropped like a rock as soon as it became more trouble than it was worth, only occassionally and cynically paying some lip service to the notion in those convenient circumstances where it meant a result in their favored direction.
“the sociotropic tenet that the government should use this power to serve the people’s interests. ”
In an older article from AskBlog, Mr. Kling defined a platitude as a statement with which no reasonable person could disagree. He then went on to say that if that’s the case then the statement is too general to have any real meaning and needs further clarification before it can be meaningfully discussed.