In fact, the rise is a by-product of the wave of democratization during the “long” 1990s. There are many surprises to someone like me, who is not an economist but has been led (or pushed) to care about it from what has happened in and to America these past 30 years. Yet, though these events have caused massivedislocations of family, habitat, and work, creating masssuffering in many societies and anxiety in all of them, massmovements of protest have rarely materialized. In fact, the rise is a by-product of the wave of democratization during the “long” 1990s. Theultimate victory is nailed into place, therefore, only when thepopulation has been persuaded to define all conceivablepolitical activity within the limits of existing custom. Thus armed, thePopulists attempted to insulate themselves against beingintimidated by the enormous political, economic, and socialpressures that accompanied the emergence of corporate America.To describe that attempt is to describe their movement.The lack of visible mass political activity on the part ofmodern industrial populations is a function of how thesesocieties have been shaped by the various economic or politicalelites who fashioned them. Leaders in both parties now serve up dueling populist appeals. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books). Though ourloyalty to our own world makes the agrarian revolt culturallydifficult to grasp, Populism may nevertheless be seen as a timeof economically coherent democratic striving.
In emphasizing this, Lawrence Goodwyn has helped us see why it originated in the aftermath of the Civil War and why it failed to succeed in the elections of the 1890s. This historicalconstant points to a deeper reality of the modern world:industrial societies have not only become centralized, they havedevised rules of conduct that are intimidating to theirpopulations as a whole. Some of them formed organizationsof economic self-help like the Grange and others assisted inpioneering new institutions of political self-help like theGreenback Party. In fact, the new populists like elections and, unfortunately, often win them. During the 1870's they didthe kinds of things that concerned people generally do in aneffort to cope with “hard times.” In an occupationnoted for hard work they worked even harder. The simple fact of thematter is that, in ways that affect mind and body, times havebeen “hard” for most humans throughout human historyand for most of that period people have not been in rebellion.Indeed, traditionalists in a number of societies have oftenpointed in glee to this passivity, choosing to call it“apathy” and citing it as a justification formaintaining things as they are. moments as it shows how and why populist movements, particularly that of the post-Civil War era (with its inception in Texas), began, grew, and failed in competing with big banks and business. Admittedly, socialproblems have persisted -- inequities of income and opportunityhave plagued the society -- but these, too, have steadily beenaddressed through the sheer growth of the economy. In America, an important juncture in the political consolidation of the industrial culture came some four generations ago, at the culmination of the Populist moment in the 1890's. Yet, quite obviously the process is extremelydifficult for human beings to set in motion and even moredifficult to maintain -- a fact that helps explain why genuinelydemocratic cultures have not yet been developed by mankind.Self-evidently, mass democratic societies cannot be createduntil the components of the creating process have beentheoretically delineated and have subsequently come to beunderstood in practical ways by masses of people.
Opinion polls demonstrate that during the accession process the majority tends to view Brussels as an ally in controlling corrupt elites. Populism as synonym of post-modern politics, as flight from class and interest politics towards a new centre, is old hat.The outcome is politics where populists are becoming openly illiberal, while elites secretly harbour anti-democratic resentments. When and if achieved, these conforming modes ofthought and conduct constitute the new culture itself.