The Irrelevance of Today’s Left

The Leftist roots of today's MAGA Right and "Woke" Left

The Populists: During the late 19^th century and early 20^th, there were three major political movements on the Left. One of these was the Farmers Alliance that became the Populists in the early 1890’s. Populists were concerned with the harm wrought upon small farmers by the gold standard and the power of Big Business. Railroad companies controlled the means through which farmers brought their products to market and they charged exorbitant rates, which (populists claimed) interfered with the action of the free market. Even more damaging was the secular deflation caused by the gold standard. This meant the dollar value of the product of their labor fell over time, while the dollar value of debts they incurred in the operation of their farm did not, leading to the loss of their land through foreclosure. The gold standard added an extra real return to financial investments and loans and so benefited financiers and bankers. Populists saw themselves as the enemy of the big corporations such as railroads, and big finance and tried to form political alliances with other victims of elite interests.

The Populists merged their ticket with the Democrats for the 1896 presidential election and when they lost the election, their party collapsed, leaving only a rump going forward. The evolution of the Populist movement after this is illustrated by the career of Thomas Watson, Populist vice-presidential candidate in 1896, and twice candidate for president after that. After the 1896 Populist-Democratic defeat he left politics, returning in 1904 as the Populist presidential candidate with a new message. After having long supported black enfranchisement, he now endorsed the disenfranchisement of blacks. In 1908 he ran again as an avowed white supremacist in 1908 and later called for the reorganization of the Klu Klux Klan. The populist party dissolved in 1908, but the Watson-style tradition of Southern populists continued on with George Wallace’s presidential runs in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The ideology supporting populist policy preferences was conservative in character. It revolved around the preservation of the agrarian character of America, or what Jefferson had called a nation of yeoman farmers. Populists opposed capitalism because it promised to displace a nation of families farming their own land with a nation of rootless urban industrial workers. The leftist economic policies Populists called for (and the inclusive racial positions to gain black votes taken by leaders like Watson before 1896) were in support of farmers against industrial capitalists to maintain a traditional American way of life. Economic benefits were not paramount for all Populists; some, like Watson, denounced socialism. Others, for whom economics was the objective, embraced socialism as it promised an alternative to capitalism.

Socialist-Labor: A second Leftist faction were the various Socialist-Labor parties. They were concerned with the plight of the working class in an industrializing America. Post civil war economic development increasingly benefited the capitalist class, leaving workers behind as indicated by the rise in economic inequality. Workers’ parties sought the legal right to collectively bargain for higher wages and better working conditions. They engaged in bitter (illegal) strikes in which violence, sometimes deadly, was used to intimidate striking workers.  Labor parties supported a number of things the populists called for, such as postal banks and a progressive income tax, but also legalization of unions and government non-interference with their efforts to secure for workers a fair share of the wealth their labor helped create. The ideology supporting the policy preferences of industrial workers came from the international socialist movement and was largely based on the theoretical work of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels.

Marx had developed a theory of historical development that structured historical dynamics in terms of class conflict. During Feudal times the conflict had been between greater and lesser agrarian elites. With the rise of capitalism, it became a conflict between agrarian elites and rising capitalists, the Bourgeoisie, who came out on top in the French Revolution. In his time the conflict was about the industrial working class, the Proletariat, against the Bourgeoisie. This narrative of Bourgeoisie oppression fit with the lived experience of both industrial workers and small-time farmers, who often tried to build a common cause political opposition to the (Republican) capitalist elite on basis of their shared enemies in the big corporations and banks. Such cooperation was hampered by the fact that the inflation the farmers wanted could hurt workers, while the collective bargaining rights the workers wanted did nothing for the farmers. The socialist-labor parties reached their peak influence two decades after the 1896 Populist peak in the presidential runs of Eugene Debs in 1912 and 1920. After this a rump of the socialists continued with the “sewer socialists” who eschewed overthrowing capitalism in favor of providing good local government for working people.

Decline of the Old Left: The decline of the parties had the same cause. The 1896 merger of populists with Democrats resulted in the creation of an inflationist faction within the Democratic party which made the Populists politically irrelevant. This faction provided the political support enabling Franklin Roosevelt to end the classical gold standard in 1933 and introduce an inflationary bias in economic policy going forward, achieving the core Populist objective. Similarly, the New Deal support for unions and their policy aimed at boosting wages and narrowing economic inequality was a victory for Socialist-Labor policy preferences. Now ascendent, the Labor portion of the Socialist-Labor coalition moved into the establishment as leaders of a now mainstream Labor movement, while the sewer socialists opted for pragmatism, as described earlier, leaving only the true-believer Socialists to carry on the radical left tradition.

But just as NATO did not dissolve after its purpose was achieved these two versions of the Left continued on. The Populist rump, now shorn of their economic concerns and with most of their leaders now conservative Democrats, devolved into an unfocused anti-Elite sentiment. When Republicans embraced anti-Civil Rights and conservative Christian voters in the late 1970’s many of them found a home with their one-time political enemies. Today they are the “MAGA Republicans.” The Marxists followed a similar path as the populists by reinterpreting Marxism in ways not involving economics. Some focused on international politics (e.g. support for colonized peoples) others on cultural phenomena (e.g. some of the critical theories). Today they are the “Woke Left.”

With both of these Left movements the New Deal successes removed their relevance to real-world problems allowing them to become increasingly uncoupled from reality. On the right, the ideological descendants of the Populists have taken over the Republican party, while the descendants of the Marxists have remained separate from the Democratic Party.

The Progressives: The third left-leaning movement were the Progressives. In the 1896 election, William Jennings Bryan won 22 states (out of 45) running on a radical anti-elite platform, demonstrating the electoral potency of anti-elite politics in America. Furthermore, new moral understandings arising out of the Civil War creedal passion period led to concepts like the Social Gospel.  The Progressive movement arose out of the Social Gospel and as a response to the radical threat posed by both the Populists and the Socialists. Progressives sought to reform the system to make it more responsive to the needs of the people and to provide good governance that made life better for Americans. Wisconsin was an early leader in progressive reforms such as workers' compensation, state life insurance, a progressive state income tax and limited working hours for women and children.  Similar policies were introduced in several other states. Progressive reforms enacted during the Wilson administration included constitutional amendments establishing the income tax, direct election of senators, and women’s suffrage. Policies like income tax, coupled with war spending, played a role in the sharp, but temporary, decline in economic inequality from 1916 to 1920.

Originally, there were Progressives in both parties. They mostly focused on economic and regulatory reforms and not on social or cultural issues. Republican progressives were socially liberal, likely reflecting the abolitionist roots of their party, while Democratic progressives were conservative. For example, progressive leader Theodore Roosevelt frequently had black dinner guests while governor of New York, and shortly after becoming President,  invited Booker T Washington for dinner at the White House. In contrast, Progressive Woodrow Wilson was a racist champion of the Klan.

They were not a working class movement, most of their members were middle or upper class. Nor did they seek policies that would benefit themselves. Their motivations were moral or idealist. Both of these were also present in the other Left movements, of course, but they were built around a core economic objective they wished to achieve for their membership (which meant once that was achieved their movements unraveled). Progressives achieved all sorts of things from the very beginning, and they continued to achieve policy successes for decades after implementing virtually all of their original program.

Since so much of their initial offerings were economically liberal, they clashed with the economic conservatives in the Republican party, eventually leading to a split in 1912. Failing to achieve the Republican nomination against sitting President Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt went independent, running as the Progressive Party candidate under an economically liberal platform, and outpolled Taft in the general election. Wisconsin senator “Fighting Bob” Robert M. LaFollette, another former Republican progressive, ran for President in 1924 under the banner of a different Progressive Party that called for similarly economically liberal policies.

Progressive Victories: The economic transformation achieved under Democratic progressive President Franklin Roosevelt subsumed economic progressivism under the New Deal banner. The Progressive dreams of an America that worked better for ordinary people under Capitalism was being achieved. The New Deal Progressives (who now called themselves liberals) who achieved this were now the Establishment as shown by the continuation of the New Deal order under Eisenhower. The social justice impulses of pre-New Deal Republican progressivism found an outlet in the postwar phase of the African American Civil Rights movement. President Truman integrated the Armed Forces in 1948. A liberal Supreme Court (reflecting 20 years of New Deal administrations) declared Jim Crow segregation unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 Brown ruling. Black civil rights activists immediately initiated a campaign to bring down Jim Crow and restore suffrage rights for African Americans. Progressive participation in the later stages of this movement created a new generation of progressives with a focus on social justice, rather than economic issues. The economic job was left to the liberals now in the Democratic establishment. As I have previously argued, they failed to do their job.

Not only that, but the rising generation of liberals and progressives did not receive any training in how the New Deal progressives had achieved their great policy successes. What economic training they received came either from Establishment economists or Socialists, whose ideas about overthrowing capitalism had been invalidated by the New Deal’s success under capitalism as contrasted with the Soviet Union’s failures under socialism.

Transformation of the Progressives: The 1970’s saw increasing use of identity politics by both the Republican and Democratic parties. Republicans deployed white identity politics by portrayed their party as the place for sensible, traditional (white) Christian Americans by opposing abortion and homosexuality on moral grounds, environmentalism and feminism as inconsistent with common sense and welfare programs (coded as black) as economically unwise. Democrats increasingly saw themselves as a big tent party consisting of many explicit identity groups: blacks, women, union members, gays, environmentalists, etc. Though the Republican message was camouflaged, it is clear that both parties were employing an identarian-based and not policy-based politics.

The ca. 1970 creedal passion period was going at this same time, which gave rise to a variety of radical ideas such critical race and gender theories, and identarian academic disciplines: Black Studies, Women’s Studies, Colonialism Studies, Gender Studies, etc. By this time almost all progressives now saw themselves as closer to the Democratic party than to the Republicans and they had shorn themselves of the socially conservative views of many old-school progressives and even some Socialists. Though working people were experiencing the return of hard times and Republicans were resurrecting a modified form of pre-New Deal economics (neoliberalism) that was responsible for the hard times, the new theoretical underpinning for Progressives eschewed economics, employing these new identarian ideas instead.

Liberals become neoliberals: The end of the 1970’s creedal passion period and three Republican electoral victories in the 1980’s set mainstream progressivism (now known as liberalism) on its back heels, causing Democrats to develop what they called “The Third Way”, embracing neoliberal economics, and offering small-scale targeted programs to address various issues, which sometimes reflected milder forms of the identarian ideas being developed by true progressives. The time for a new economic vision was past, Republicans now had the dispensation and economic policy was now under their control, meaning liberals had to acquiesce to rising inequality until such time that a Reconstructive president wielding a new economics should appear.

Remaining progressives embrace new ideology: Because of the identarian nature of Progressive theory, the injustice of decades of rising inequality after the end of the New Deal Order has not led to any sort of coherent progressive response, unlike what happened a century earlier. Progressives employing critical race theory suggest the lack of economic progress for working class African Americans was caused by systemic racism rather than the replacement of New Deal economic policy with increasingly neoliberal economic policy after the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. A mix of intersectional theories with a Marxist take on colonialism that arose after New Deal success and Soviet failure had discredited classical Marxism, has produced an anti-Western ethic among Western progressives and a sense of solidarity with the West’s enemies. This ethic has recently led to progressive demonstrations in favor of Palestinian Hamas, a religious military order whose members would kill them as unbelievers if they came into contact during jihad.

There is little hope that effective solutions to the many problems America faces can come from these remnants of the Progressives and Socialists (they have effectively merged). There is even less hope that anything positive can come from the remnants of the Populists or their “Dark Enlightenment” theorists. As for those members of the Progressive and Socialist-Labor movements that were part of the solution last secular cycle (i.e. New Deal liberals and their Labor allies), there is little hope there either. The liberals betrayed the New Deal in the 1960’s and by the time they realized their mistake, they had lost any ability to rectify the situation, and without support from New Deal economics, Labor lacks the power to effect change on its own.

If this crisis is to be resolved in a positive way for most Americans it will require a new movement that represents the interests of ordinary Americans, either a morally incented group like the original Progressives, or a working-class movement that calls for actual economic policy (e.g., taxes) rather than social policy dressed in economic garb such as immigration restriction. Exactly what this might be is unclear. In my blog I have discussed what was done during the last secular cycle crisis as a starting point for thinking about the current one. I do plan to lay out my conception of what a solution might entail in a future post.