At 01:23 20/04/2007, paulp wrote:
I was at a seminar a few weeks ago with an ambassador from a former USSR
country... and I asked him
how it was that populism, that was a generally a positive description in
19th and early 20th century US and Canada popular movements, mainly of
agrarian interests, had become a negative appellation for 'demigods' in
the 21st C, at least to Americans. His answer, I think deserves some
serious consideration.
His point was that populist leaders related to the general
population directly, without the intermediation of the elite, whether
the 'elite' were financiers, politicians, or labour leaders. This, in
his view, was what made them most dangerous to the US powers that be,
because they bypassed the 'moderating' effect of the elite and the
bureaucratic superstructure that supported them since they gained their
power directly from the people and not from a political structure.
I'm afraid that I can't resist quoting a passage from an article on
Venezuela, etc that I'm working for the July-August issue of MR
(with the theme of the Latin American Left):
"Making the Bad Left bad, though, is essentially described by one
word--- 'populism.'
When they hear the term populism, Latin American
intellectuals reach for their incense. Partly that is because the
term conveys people, masses, the unwashed in motion. When Castenada
declares populism to be 'nationalist, strident, and close-minded', it
is hard not to think of this as his description of the masses themselves."
How much of the bad connotation of 'populism' comes from
intellectuals--- e.g., Hofstadter writing about Nativism in the US
(in the context of McCarthyism) or Lipset about Canada; indeed, how
much comes from social democrats?
michael
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela.
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