File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1995/95-02-28.000, message 15


Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 22:20:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Jon Beasley-Murray <jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: populism


On Tue, 31 Jan 1995, Doug Henwood wrote:

> An interesting theoretical issue: the American populist right shares a lot
> with European fascist thinking, especially on "cultural" issues (religion,
> family values, hatred of fancy art, reflexive patriotism), but, aside from
> its worship of cops and the military, it is far more hostile to the state
> (and other collective entities) and far more friendly to the market. What's
> all that mean?

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on populism.  Right now I'm attempting 
to think through Peronism (another conundrum--Peron practically created 
the working class, the unions were consistently behind him, and the 
Peronist coalition certainly included leftists and revolutionaries, but 
at the end of the day one would be hard-pressed to say that Peronism was 
anything but a bad thing; in the middle of the day, however, no one 
seemed sure--as was evident by the vacillations of Cuba towards Peron and 
the incomprehension of the rest of the Latin American left).

Peronism is a counter-example to Doug's stress on populism being 
pro-small business, by the way.

A classic text on populism (which usefully surveys other positions too) 
is Laclau (while still a Marxist, by the way) in _Politics and Ideology 
in Marxist Theory_.  His broad conclusions are that there can be a 
populism of the dominated as well as a populism of the dominant, and that 
ideally socialism should be populist also, in that it is the complete 
antagonism between the people and the state: 

"Therefore, the only social sector which can aspire to the full 
development of 'the people'/power bloc contradiction, that is to say, *to 
the highest and most radical form of populism*, is that whose *class 
interests* lead it to the suppression of the sate as an atagonistic 
force.  *In socialism, therefore, coincide the highest form of 'populism' 
and the resolution of the ultimate and most radical of class conflicts*." 
(196)

Laclau also has a chapter on fascism, but I haven't read that for a long 
while, so can't summarize.

Meanwhile, I think it is at the least tendentious to say that fascism was 
anti-state--though Alice Kaplan's _Reproductions of Banality_ usefully 
periodizes fascism into a first "revolutionary" moment and a second 
statist one--nor is it a given that US populism is anti-state, either.  
Perhaps rather one could say that the domain of the US neoliberal state 
has moved from economics/politics to morals (family values, 
censorship...).  This is at least part of the argument of Hardt and 
Negri's _Labor of Dionysus_.

Anyhow, I think the issue of popularism is crucial, especially for a 
theory of ideology--and a concomitant political practice--that is not 
content merely with "false consciousness" or "manipulation" theses.  A 
question for Louis, here: how can one make Marxism "popular" without an 
analysis of why the most reactionary movements can be the most popular of 
all?
 
> Doug

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Literature Program
Duke University
jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons

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