Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient and Modern [Paperback]

Adrian Kuzminski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2008

In the current climate of dissatisfaction with "democratic" Western political and economic systems, this is a timely book that demonstrates a true political Third Way.
Populism is distinguished from other political movements by its insistence on two things conspicuously missing from modern systems of political economy: genuine democracy based on local citizen assemblies, and the widespread distribution among the population of privately-owned economic capital. Fixing the System offers a comprehensive historical account of populism, revealing the consistent and distinct history of populism since ancient times. Adrian Kuzminski demonstrates that populism is a tradition of practice as well as thought, ranging from ancient city states to the frontier communities of colonial america—all places where widely distributed private property and democratic decision-making combined to foster material prosperity and cultural innovation.
In calling for a wide distribution of both property and democracy, populism opposes the political and economic system found today in the united states and other Western countries, where property remains highly concentrated in private hands and where representatives chosen in impersonal mass elections frustrate democracy by serving private monied interests rather than the public good. As Kuzminski demonstrates, as one of very few systematic alternatives to today's political and economic system, populism, offers a pragmatic program for fundamental social change that deserves wide and serious consideration. Populism is a genuine "third way" in politics, a middle path between the extremes of corporate anarchy and collective authoritarianism. As America takes stock of her current situation and looks toward the future in the 2008 election year, Fixing the System offers a trenchant and timely study of this deep-rooted movement.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Fixing the System is, as it were, a rare new book, one in which a serious political theorist does startlingly original and important thinking about populism, democracy, and our present American society. Tracing the history of populism through two and a half centuries, Kuzminski eviscerates the allegedly democratic American system as collective authoritarianism and presents populism rooted in decentralized economic justice as an approximately egalitarian democratic alternative. Expect, if you read Kuzminski, to be shaken up where it most matters: in your mind."- Ronnie Dugger, founding editor of The Texas Observer and co-founder of the Alliance for Democracy.

"Kuzminski (philosophy, Hartwick College) laments the substitution of representative democracy and capitalist economics, amounting to plutocracy, for a genuinely democratic system of direct popular rule by citizens who "do not differ significantly in wealth and power."...Kuzminski's rhetoric is shrill, his political and economic judgments unsupported by factual evidence, and his prose repetitive and filled with typos. Summing Up: Not recommended." - D. Schaefer, CHOICE, January 2009 (Negative )

"This gracefully written, broadly researched study is a work of many aspects. It is part history and part philosophy and also has a psychological dimension....More important: Fixing the System is sound intellectual history, a serious contribution to the study of American economic and political thought. Kuzminski is an intellectual, a thinker, and all the populist writers, from Phaleas via Aristotle through Harrington, Jefferson, Kellogg et al., have been intellectuals, thinkers. They presented their ideas in books and essays and in letters. They did not institute their ideas or make notable efforts to institute them. Kuzminski's notable contribution is not in the presentation of practical measure to achieve political and economic equality but to present an ideal system for that achievement...This is a serious study by a deeply thoughtful observer of present-day politics and economics and a student of the complexities of these activities through the centuries...It should be read by anyone interested in the human past and the human present." —New York History, Spring 2008

"Focusing primarily on populism in the West, Kuzminski traces populism's origins back to the days of Greek city states such as Athens. He also offers a withering critique of the state of most Western democracies, which he views as corporate oligarchies that perpetuate themselves by means of plebiscites that only provide passive popular acquiescence to the chosen policies of an elite. And he writes that no system can be called democratic unless citizens are owners of property and have a direct, active involvement in the formation of the policies of their government. Populists claim that 'property for all' means the widespread personal ownership of private capital sufficient to establish the relative economic independence of citizens. When none are rich enough to dominate others, and none are poor enough to be dominated, the public rather than the private interest is likely to be served."
David Isenberg, The Journal of Peace Research

"Kuzminski (philosophy, Hartwick College) laments the substitution of representative democracy and capitalist economics, amounting to plutocracy, for a genuinely democratic system of direct popular rule by citizens who "do not differ significantly in wealth and power."…Kuzminski's rhetoric is shrill, his political and economic judgments unsupported by factual evidence, and his prose repetitive and filled with typos. Summing Up: Not recommended." - D. Schaefer, CHOICE, January 2009 (, )

“This gracefully written, broadly researched study is a work of many aspects. It is part history and part philosophy and also has a psychological dimension….More important: Fixing the System is sound intellectual history, a serious contribution to the study of American economic and political thought. Kuzminski is an intellectual, a thinker, and all the populist writers, from Phaleas via Aristotle through Harrington, Jefferson, Kellogg et al., have been intellectuals, thinkers. They presented their ideas in books and essays and in letters. They did not institute their ideas or make notable efforts to institute them. Kuzminski’s notable contribution is not in the presentation of practical measure to achieve political and economic equality but to present an ideal system for that achievement…This is a serious study by a deeply thoughtful observer of present-day politics and economics and a student of the complexities of these activities through the centuries…It should be read by anyone interested in the human past and the human present.” –New York History, Spring 2008

"Focusing primarily on populism in the West, Kuzminski traces populism’s origins back to the days of Greek city states such as Athens. He also offers a withering critique of the state of most Western democracies, which he views as corporate oligarchies that perpetuate themselves by means of plebiscites that only provide passive popular acquiescence to the chosen policies of an elite. And he writes that no system can be called democratic unless citizens are owners of property and have a direct, active involvement in the formation of the policies of their government. Populists claim that 'property for all’ means the widespread personal ownership of private capital sufficient to establish the relative economic independence of citizens. When none are rich enough to dominate others, and none are poor enough to be dominated, the public rather than the private interest is likely to be served."
David Isenberg, The Journal of Peace Research

About the Author

Adrian Kuzminski is a scholar and political activist living in rural upstate New York. Formerly a professor of history at the University of Hawaii, Dr. Kuzminski has been Resident Scholar in Philosophy at Hartwick College since 1997. Dr. Kuzminski has also been a public official and candidate for office who has worked for political change through both the Green and Democratic parties, as well as through various environmental groups. Fixing the System was born out of the fusion of his political experience with his scholarly passions. He is also author of The Soul, published in 1994, and of the forthcoming Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (June 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826429602
• ISBN-13: 978-0826429605
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,389,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Grown Solution, September 15, 2008

By 

Cruxpuppy (Asheville, NC) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient and Modern (Paperback)

The American experiment in self governance was hobbled from the start by two factors, according to Adrian Kuzminski, a research fellow at Hartwick College in New York who has long been involved in third party politics: James Madison's mistrust of direct democracy, and Alexander Hamilton's scheme to create a privately owned banking system on the British model.

The results are apparent today in the out of control Executive which defies popular will as it guts the Bill of Rights and the imploding private financial system that serves elite interests at the expense of the general welfare.

Kuzminski's historical presentation of populism is not simply an academic study that traces democratic theory to its roots in ancient Greece and Aristotle's critique of the first proponent of democracy, Paleas of Chalcedon, it is also a biting criticism of contemporary progressive thought, which wraps itself in the rhetoric of democracy, but is in fact nothing of the sort.

Those who have been beguiled by the the phrase "western democracies", or references to "the spread of democracy" will be sobered by the revelation that the American political system of today is not a democracy at all but a corporate oligarchy that perpetuates itself by means of plebiscites, or periodic elections in the name of democracy that only provide passive popular acquiescence to the chosen policies of an elite. It is for this reason that 70% of the American population can disapprove of preemptive war, and yet look on in dismay as their country lays waste to other nations that have been systematically vilified by orchestrated corporate propaganda.

No system can be called democratic unless citizens are owners of property and have a direct, active involvement in the formation of the policies of their government. Progressives that are associated with the Democratic Party, are not democratic, but are instead socialist insofar as they champion a client relationship between government and the citizenry.

American native political genius created a true democratic plan that became known as Populism in the 19th Century because it devised a means to permit every citizen to be independent owners of property and free of the onerous client relationship with a paternal state.

Kuzminski revisits the issue of monetary reform with a careful examination of the work of the American economist, Edward Kellogg, whose original insights became the basis for "greenback" monetary theory and a public monetary system that would serve the interests of all citizens. It is, after all, the private monetary system we today know as The Federal Reserve that sponsors and promotes the confiscatory system of finance that tends to strip citizens of their wealth and property and turn them into debtors, that is to say, bound clients, servants to the owners of capital.

Kuzminski reminds us that the revolution of the founders is a work in progress, and that Jefferson himself foresaw the means for direct participatory democracy in a scheme he referred to as "ward republics".

The progressive tradition that found its greatest expression in the New Deal of FDR, is fundamentally undemocratic, as traditional conservatives have always complained, because it turns citizens into clients and the state a paternal benefactor. The Populist solution reinforces the individual rights of citizens, allowing them active participation in the formation of policy so that their government is more truly an expression of popular will and not an all powerful dispenser of "benefits".

Under a populist system, the people entitle themselves. A progressive solution is essentially socialist, leading the citizenry deeper into client hood. The populist solution is truly democratic, allowing independent owners of property to retain free agency within a capitalist market system that has made America the light of the world.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading, July 21, 2008

By 

E. E. Newman (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient and Modern (Paperback)

Every American should read this book. As Obama proceeds with his program of exhuming the Clinton administration we are reminded that he is not going to fix the system -- only we the people can do that. We're all anxious right now, possibly even downright scared. This book points out that we already have all the tools we need to address even the current crisis, as sson as we re-educate ourselves about the history of populist democracy. Kuzminksi very clearly and simply explains why our system isn't working now. Then he proceeds to outline rational practical prescriptions for how we can make our lives stable and prosperous, and our political participation matter. I would reccommend this book in particular to people my age (born after the 60s) since we received pretty scattered and conflicting education about what our political system actually is. This book answered all the questions I didn't know how to ask.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Careful analysis of origins, August 17, 2008

By 

Utility Man - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient and Modern (Paperback)

This analysis is quite a bit different from what I expected, due to my incomplete familiarity with the roots of Populism. I was expecting more emphasis on the American trends in the mid and late 19th century (mid-West farmers cooperatives, the Grange, unionism, "cross of gold," etc.), but author does say at one point that that is well covered already. His purpose is different, and therefore was very illuminating for me. He traces the roots of Populism from the Greeks onward, carefully describing the contributions of each step. Though there is some prescriptive suggestions for the future, most emphasis is on the tradition and how it differs from actual governance. So Jefferson and Vermonters are some of the main players? Interesting.

His analysis seems suitably painstaking, qualified, and comprehensive. Highly recommended.