I don’t think that anyone has defined it that way. I think the populist idea is that good political ideas can come from below, from unsanctioned, unofficial, uncredentialed oppositional groups. The Democratic Party leadership does not believe this.
Populism involves some degree of breaking down the barriers between citizens and government. The Constitution was designed to suppress direct democracy in favor of representative democracy via checks and balances, the separation of powers, federalism, and the other stuff you learned about in eighth grade civics. The two-party system puts another intermediary in there, the party, and usually the parties and the candidates work through still another layer of vote-contracting intermediaries, the organized interest groups and the mass media. Populists want to get rid of some of those layers. (Populists are sometimes portrayed as Jeffersonian constitutionalists, but they generally advocated more simplified procedures and spent a lot of time fighting the Supreme Court, and that interpretation is incomplete at best.).
When elitist liberals or socialists get upset upon finding that their representatives are lying and unresponsive, they’re populists whether they know it or not. Elitism is institutional, not intellectual. To a political player, a Nobelist is one vote, the way a HS dropout is one vote, and a famous Nobelist is an opinion-leader, on a par with a comparably famous stoner celebrity (and far outranked by a really serious opinion-leader like Bill Kristol.)
The difference is that when they’re lied to, populists know what’s happening and get mad, whereas left intellectuals are baffled and mostly just whine. My mission in this world is to convince liberal intellectuals that they are People too, salt-of-the-earth folk scorned by the powers that be. But most intellectuals find this offensive — they think of themselves as unappreciated elite units, like princes switched in the cradle and raised by peasants. They’re sure that some day they will be recognized and restored to their rightful status.
Our political elite is well-educated but tough-minded. The Democratic Party’s pious renunciation of ideology, populism, and demagoguery has been accompanied by a rehabilitation of graft, corruption, and subservience to big money. (The post-WWII pluralists and consensus theorists were fairly open about this). What we have now is a spiffy, modern, Ivy-educated Tweed Ring*. And Boss Tweed and the others, when the chips were down, were reactionary servants of big money (“Bourbon Democrats“.) They used part of the graft to help out their voters, but they supported policies which hurt these same voters), and they made sure that whatever help the voters got was controlled by vote-contractors and received only by reliable supporters.
The suffering PhD masses have nothing to lose but their chains, but they’re mired in the toils of servility and ancient prejudice. An unpromising lot indeed, but be they ever so humble, we cannot afford to write off even the least of our brethren.
* The Moonies have Ivy-educated leadership now. The Mafia and the drug cartels send their kids to the best schools. Ahmed Chalibi, Ted Kaczynski, Jerome Corsi, Bill Kristol — all PhDs from the best schools. We humble folk just don’t know what to think.
Trollblog 
November 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Maybe peruse Nietzsche on the “Herd Mind.” WASP-zionland’s 90% scheisse, JE. Why think that scheisse will produce some harmonious, orderly ecotopia? It won’t. Thus, the need for Ordnung
November 3, 2009 at 8:32 pm
I’m assuming you broke Crooked Timber.
November 3, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Not me, but it came at a bad time, immediately after CT requested that I quit hijacking threads.
November 3, 2009 at 9:38 pm
It’s hard to imagine any good political ideas in a country of 300 million; from below or otherwise. A lot of people can manage their own family, some could run a town, few understand the complexities of a city or canton.
What ideas can you offer to the central government of a half a continent with 300 million people in it? Too centralized, too hierarchical; it’s unmanageable.
November 4, 2009 at 12:05 am
It’s very odd to me that the Crooked Timber intellectuals are so attached to a definition of populism that necessarily requires villainy – and that they are entirely oblivious to your point that this is an arbitrary definition, unsupported by the historical record, and unhelpful in the current political climate. I’ve seen you make this argument before, and thought you were exaggerating your opponents – building straw men. But the straw men have come to life over at CT. If they only had a brain …
I have to say, I’m only minimally acquainted with Hofstadter, but I’m not yet convinced that he bears the blame for CT-style ignorance. I’d argue that “Paranoid Style” identifies something real and important, but not something that implicates the entirety of populism. In any event, it seems pretty clear that the CT folks are applying Hofstadter’s critique in the generalized sort of way that you accuse Hofstadter himself of doing.
Lordy, we even have shah8 saying “my personal feeling is that some kind of national strike is in order” as part of his denunciation of populism. Wow.
And look at Henri’s 22 and 202 in that thread. How does he manage to define Martin Luther King as someone whose populist approach could be appropriately summarized as “we all should go kill all the lawyer and everything will be alright again. And if you refuse to kill lawyers, then we should kill you too”?
I happen to be roughly sympathetic to Henri’s 22, though it would have been improved without the Godwin violation. MLK and the NRA are both appropriately characterized as “populist,” by my reckoning.
In 22, Henri offers an interesting question, though he seems to regard it as a rhetorical question with no good answer.
You see Grayson fumbling toward an answer. I wonder if he’ll come up with a good one. Seems like there are plenty of possibilities to choose from.
November 4, 2009 at 12:31 am
I’ve seen you make this argument before, and thought you were exaggerating your opponents – building straw men.
I’ve started thanking people for volunteering themselves to be pickled for my museum of elitism.
I have been disinvited from CT as a troll. It was fun while it lasted.
One guy accused me of being an American imperialist because I was insisting that Europeans pay attention to nobodies like the LaFollettes.
I do not at all agree that this is a Europe-America distinction. Americans developed an anti-populist discourse and exported to Europe. But the “European” view is dominant in the Democratic Party and much of American academia.
Eliot Spitzer expects the right to control the argument about corrupt finance:
http://www.newdeal20.org/?p=6046
How could it be otherwise?
Between the CT zombies, the collapse of the healthcare bill, and the reminder of the power and corruption of Goldman Sachs, I’m pretty close to forgetting the whole thing and becoming a self-congratulatory naysayer like Abb1 and ToS.
November 4, 2009 at 1:03 am
Did they really ask you to not comment?
November 4, 2009 at 1:06 am
Ah you mean in terms of appealing to the masses, getting the message out, rallying grass roots support, representin’ and so forth?? Obama did that, homie JE. As did Ol’ G Ray-gun. Yes, we cain’t.
November 4, 2009 at 1:12 am
Walt: They asked me to quit hijacking threads. I’m welcome to comment, but hijacking threads is the most fun I have over there.
Yeah, actual politics of any kind, Horation. I know it’s beneath you.
November 4, 2009 at 1:42 am
It’s actually a somewhat serious point: do you think a popular vote really proves something, JE? Especially in this day of corporate funded campaigns, and the massive power of DNC,media, etc. You’re sort ditto’ing that old bore Alinsky–work with the system, brother.
November 4, 2009 at 1:53 am
The popular vote decides things, whether or not it means anything.
I think that we’re in a world of hurt and fighting a steep uphill battle. A lot of people agree, but most of them either are either totally baffled, or bitter and defeatist, or still captive to the Democratic Party.
So I try to scheme something better. As I said, I could end up where you are, but that’s not a goal.
November 4, 2009 at 2:38 am
The problem is that left-intellectuals do have something to loose–the reward of a secure, prestigious career for spouting bullshit and doing clerical work. Therefore, trying to get them to take the side of the general public rather than power is probably not worth much effort at this time.* Better to start with those who actually want to change things, let intellectuals come around when the will.
One welcome development is that more and more academic jobs are part time, benefit free and without the possibility of tenure. That intellectuals are treated more and more like the rest of us should get them on our side faster than any argument one can imagine.
*It’s true they are acting against their own long term interests, but so far they seem eager to do so. They probably still believe somewhere that they have a shot at power and once they get their hands on it can put things to rights.
November 4, 2009 at 4:01 am
OK, deletion it is, Horation. Lay off the insults, or don’t come around.
November 4, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Hi John. Still really busy, but “they think of themselves as unappreciated elite units, like princes switched in the cradle and raised by peasants” was classic.
I am as always sympathetic to what you’re writing and as always don’t quite see the point. Are CT type intellectuals a power base? If they all decided en masse to get mad, what would change? Other than making CT more tolerable, it seems like the difference between intellectuals not being listened to and not being listened to isn’t that great.
The reason I’m really busy is because there is actual political work going on now. Even though Obama is either wasting or outright sabotaging every opportunity there is, there are still actual opportunities now. That’s different than how it’s been in the U.S. at any time since the late 80s. Health care, global warming, the economy, getting us out of Bush’s wars and security regime — those are the issues that I think are actually important, even though we’re failing many of them. Succeeding on any would still be big.
November 4, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Emo’s attacks on Academia (whether economics, the science establishment, or philosophy), are not completely worthless, but he usually pulls his punches. He doesn’t really engage the problems of academic favoritism and nepotism–say in terms of wealth and family connections. Or the shadowy power and sex games that go down. Nor does he really address the politics of academia, corporate ties to scientific research and the professorial class, publishing, recommendations, patents, etc.
November 4, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Rich, not a power base exactly, but I’ve realized that there’s a big demographic of educated rank and file Democrats who, instead of making political demands, pretend that they’re Democratic strategists and get into the famout 17-dimensional chess. Sort of fantasy baseball politics, where everyone pretends to be a manager.
There’s likewise a big Democraphic of high-minded Democrats (and independents) who “don’t want to be like them” and are vigilent about eschewing partisanship, demagoguery, demonizing the enemy, etc., but hardly vigilent at all about big-money corruption and feebleness.
There was a sort of transformation that occurred when college attendance became common. Academic ideas filtered out (free-marketism is another example). And I think that wonkishness is especially concentrated among low-level Democratic pros, interns, volunteers, etc.
The Democrats have also developed power bases among people for whom the social issues are the only important ones — arts and entertainment, college students, etc., a group overlapping with the lumpen wonks.
Part of this is a simple money and corruption problem, but I’m now convinced that there is a significant weenie wonk voting demographic.
For a long time I focussed on the party power structure and pros, but as time went on I came to feel that the same problem exists in the rank and file.
The American labor force isn’t factory workers and farmers any more, and a lot of it is now college-educated, with the pretensions that come with that.
November 4, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Horation, I haven’t really attacked the science establishment, unless you think that economics is a science.
As for the rest, I can’t do everything all at once. Some of the points you covered are discussed at my link.
November 4, 2009 at 4:47 pm
That’s part of the problem–were you really in the Lakatos/Feyerabend tradition (as you claim at times), you would do so.
Or consider the so-called Global warming scare. I don’t deny some warming is occuring (we should object to the Foxnews “dumb deniers”)–but the IPCC/Gore crew have not really established what’s due to man-made Co2, and what’s natural. But it’s big bidness, now: millions of shekels handed out to AGW research, or at least “modellers.”
November 4, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I’ve never affiliated with Feyerabend, and I’ve blamed Lakatos for the in-your-face anti-realism of some (Chicago school) economists.
You seem to spend a lot of time figuring out which category I’m supposed to belong to and then blaming me for not fitting perfectly into that category. My stuff fits together according to my own plan, but to most I’m just an eclectic (as I’ve said) because I don’t follow anyone else’s plan, since I think that most of them are crap. I’m closest to the anti-systematic, anti-metaphysical thinkers who are attentive to practice and actuality.
I’ll just ignore the global warming thingie.
November 4, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Well neither Feyerabend nor Lakatos were rightists, and they were engaged in taking on academic bullsh**t (and guestimates passed off as science) including that of economics departments. Lakatos, whatever you think of him, did not accept the Milton Friedman school–that was his central point. I doubt you understand their writing contra neo-classical economics, or philosophy of science as a whole.
November 4, 2009 at 6:42 pm
In fact, I said as much in the comments to the post I linked above. I cited Redman on the way Lakatos was used by Chicago School economics, and I noted that Kuhn rejected the use of his philosophy to justify “paradigm enforcemnt”. And I granted that I’m not on top of the whole Popper-Kuhn-Lakatos-Feyerabend succession. I’m probably closest to Feyerabend, since I think that the whole “What is science?” debate is tendentious and self-serving, dominated by people who want their field to be certified, or some other field excluded.
You keep knocking down claims I never made,and asking why I wrote about one thing instead of some other thing that you’re more interested in than I am.
It’s an understatement to say that I, as an eclectic generalist, feel no obligation to review the existing literature. That’s formally impossible.