Radio War Nerd EP #161 — Populism vs. "populism", feat. Christopher Phelps

Yes, the link Avery gives is right

There was a plug for Catherine's book at the end of the podcast but aside from saying it was available online I didn't hear where I could find a link.

The ILWU's Harry Bridges was no McCarthyite. Ferchrissakes, he went through 20 years of attempted deportations (for alleged Communist Party affiliations) during the entire McCarthyite period.

I loved Dr. Phelps' point about how agricultural producers AND consumers were somehow BOTH getting squeezed during the recessions of the 19th century. Absolutely insane.

Mark I think when modern elites talk about ‘populism’ their thoughts turn less to the Peoples Party or the Narodniks but to Julius, or rather a Caesar shaped caricature they inherited from forebares. Its deeply weird touchstone of their political thinking, but the early enlightenment liberals were classics geeks who learnt Latin rhetoric by studying the Catiline Orations . For example notorious Koch funded Cato Institute, is named for the pen name of 18th centenary pamphleteer who stole it from the Roman Senator (and reactionary loon) Cato the Younger. It’s not an isolated obsession either Americas Founders were so mad for this stuff they named a city in Ohio for a dead Roman dictator, and the French revolutionaries were even more over the top. The fun thing is, once you look at the late Roman Republic with a critical eye and control for the biases of the ancient historians you find a story that is very Radio War Nerd. You’ve got self serving corrupt elites, brutal imperial quagmires, shameless war profiteering, client states buying bribing whole sections of the political class, skyrocketing wealth inequality, agrarian displacement, bungling generals, a populist political movement, factional massacres, civil wars and massive purge. And that’s all before old Caesar is out of his teens you should do an episode some time.

Great show as always. <br><br>I always enjoy the "and then THEY elected Trump/Fascists/Bad Guy" line from the cubicle class. One walks into a voting booth and has to choose between Mr Turd or Ms Feces. When the whole rotten process is over, the highly credentialed are always like "but THEY voted for a big pile of Shit™"<br><br>

The problem with discussing populism - even in as restricted a context as the late 19th century in America - is that the concept just refuses to get nailed down. This podcast focused heavily on the People's Party and the concept of sub-treasuries (essentially public banks designed to free small-time farmers from the ruinous lending and pricing practices of railroads, store owners, and large land-holders), but that was just one of the many issues that got people raring and fighting during the period. The issues that drove particular populist revolts were frequently highly localized. In Virginia, for example, the Readjuster party won control of the state between 1879 and 1886, taking as its main issues repudiation of the pre-Civil War state debt (which had been spent on boondoggles like the Kanawha canal), reassessment of land-values to bring tax bills in line with the actual productivity of land which armies had spent the last four years marching and fighting through, funding of public agricultural and technical schools, and reclaiming ownership of state railroad projects from northern and english hands. Race was involved, too (and a race riot in Danville, VA was ultimately what sunk the Readjusters, who got tarred one too many times with the "black Republican" racial slander) but as a whole the battle was between old, pre-war social hierarchies (as laid out in Bertram Wyatt-Brown's magisterial work "Southern Honor) trying reassert themselves and provide stability in the chaotic, bloody post-war environment, and younger reformers rebelling against the scions of the old gentry and trying to overturn the social order in order to re-develop what they saw as an unforgivably backward economy. It's easy to caricature the "funders" (as the anti-Readjuster party was often known) as reactionary old dinosaurs, but any realistic portrayal has to take into account that Virginia had just been basically leveled by the war, a whole generation of rising leaders - the most energetic of her young men, taught that they were born to lead and educated since the cradle with leadership in mind - were dead or crippled, and had to implement a brand new political order on the fly while at the same time creditors were repossessing the only profitable physical plant in the state; the railroads and corduroyed highways that took goods to market. It looked like everything had completely fallen apart, and if I'm honest with myself I can't blame those - especially the older generation like Jubal Early and Frederick W. M. Holliday - who desperately wanted to cling to any vestige of pride and order they could find. And to their credit they didn't all run off to join the Knights of the White Camelia or the Klan like so many did down in Louisiana and South Carolina; they decided that their stand would be on the state debt. By god, it was a matter of honor - men pay their debts, and Virginians are men goddamn it. Readjustment, to these guys, would have been just one more admission that they were smashed, ruined, wrecked. At the same time, the leaders of the Readjusters weren't saints either. William "Extra Billy" Mahone, the former-Confederate General and failed railway President who was one of the driving forces behind the movement wasn't shy about the fact that he was primarily interested in two things: (1) establishing his home-town of Petersburg as the primary junction for a network of rail lines connecting the port of Norfolk to Tennessee and the middle west through the Cumberland Gap, and (2) screwing over the northern and english interests who took his railroad away from him during the crash of 1873 (funny anecdote; Mahone's railroad was the AM&O - the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio - but due to his megalomania and shady business practices wags frequently joked that the letters actually stood for "All Mine & (Mahone's wife) Otelia's"). There were good intentions aplenty on the Readjuster side to be sure, but there was also an incredible amount of ambition, and quite a bit of corruption too. There are stories of campaign parties held on election days where big punch bowls were circulated to all the good voters; only instead of alcohol, the bowls were full of coins and bills. Almost none of the leading Readjusters came from prominent Virginia families with long ties to state government or business establishment. These were new men, up-and-comers who saw the main chance to clear away the deadwood of the old aristocracy, bring the state up to modern standards with technical education and the introduction of scientific farming methods, remake the state according to their own ideals (and grab a piece of the sun for themselves while they were at it) after the old system had been smashed to flinders by the war. So yeah, the economics were important. And yeah, to a certain degree populism in the late 19th century can be tied to broad demands for equity, opposition to capital, and all the rest of the good ol' progressive songbook. But I can't urge you guys strongly enough to try and minimize the generalizations as much as possible. Political phenomena which come from the ground up are always overdetermined and complex when compared to the nice, clean, comparatively simple history of generals and bankers read from the top down. For a portrait of the generation who fought the battles over Populism in Virginia in specific, I highly recommend Peter S. Carmichael's "The Last Generation." A good general history is Charles C. Pearson's "The Readjuster Movement in Virginia."

The song "the taxes on the farmer feed us all" might have come from that time. I know it from Ry Cooders rendition from the album Into the Purple Valley: "We worked all through Spring and Winter, through Summer and through Fall ut the mortgage worked the hardest and the steadiest of us all. It worked on nights and sundays, it worked each holiday; and it settled down among us and it never went away" Maybe the 40,000 lectureres wrote songs in their spare time? As far a Brexit is concerned, both parties are split with the liberal wing of both trying to end brexit and remain the EU. It is possible that the Yellow vest movement is being high-jacked. I've seen Boris Johnson (one of the Leavers) has often been seen in a yellow, high-viz vest. Some Leavers today blocked a bridge to traffic. they were all wearing yellow vests. It is hard to tell. The movement is soon surrounded by a fog of propaganda, little of it theirs. There was a good article on them (the gilet-jaune) in the Atlantic. The parallells with today exist. The farmers felt that the bankers and railroad magnates were oppressing them via monopoly pricing. These days it is the pharmaceutical companies like Valeant (see the episode from Dirty Money on Netflix) with capitalists like Peter Thiel questioning whether competion is a good thing. Then enemy then was debt and it is today. Plus ҁa Change.

Check out the book the populist vision by Charles Postel

Ironic how the guest is here to talk about populism. Then he casually says " today the Fed can drop rates to zero. Muh easy money". Yeah and the rates stayed at zero for 8 years and that's where all this wealth inequality came from. That's how F-tard trump got elected. That's the route of the problem today. Inflation.

Writers and books referenced in the intro: William Greider, author of "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country" Joseph Costello, author of "Of, By, For: The New Politics of Money, Debt & Democracy" And Hunter Thompson and Goodwyn

I'd like to ask Mark Ames why ppl on the left always assume that a loose money capitalist regime is better for the common person than a harder money regime ? (assuming we are stuck w/ capitalism) EDIT: Mark you even said that Ron Paul's gold buggery implies that he's even less of a populist. Theoretically, loose money seems better for everyday ppl. But it's not. Where is the evidence? Governments are just as stingy with spending now as they were in the hard money times. In fact govts are more stingy now b/c they are doing these bailouts. You said it yourself. All of this cash sloshing around is almost pricing you out of your neighborhood. That's a condition of an easy money regime. This liquidity would not be there in a harder money regime. Even the guest today, you could tell that he supported the loose money policies of the Fed. I don't think that this as clear as anyone thinks. We've had a loose money regime since the 2000's. It's been an utter disaster. And we had a tight money regime from 1980-1999. Those were better years for the common man. Ppl from the left should support a tight money regime. Not a loose money one. The rich under this loose regime are just obscene. It is just disgusting. At least in the hard eras, ppl went bankrupt. (like trump) Today the rich just can't lose. Even once.

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