The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books) [Abridged] [Paperback]

Lawrence Goodwyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 1978 | ISBN-10: 0195024176 | ISBN-13: 978-0195024173 | Edition: Abridged

This condensed version of Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise, the highly-acclaimed study on American Populism which the Civil Liberties Review called "a brilliant, comprehensive study," offers new political language designed to provide a fresh means of assessing both democracy and authoritarianism today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A history of Populism that will be the new standard against which all future efforts must be measured."--The Progressive

About the Author

Lawrence Goodwyn is at Duke University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 349 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Abridged edition (November 30, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195024176
• ISBN-13: 978-0195024173
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Last Great Mass Democratic Movement, December 20, 2003

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

Seldom in our nation's history have there been widespread, grass-roots challenges to the economic and political system. According to the author, the agrarian movement of the late 1880s, otherwise known as Populism, was in fact the last such great challenge. Beyond the history of the movement, the author is much concerned with the implications for future democratic movements.

The small farmers in western Texas in the 1880s recognized that the economic cards were stacked against them. The crop lien system and the "furnishing" merchant, the exorbitant prices paid for goods combined with low prices paid for cash crops, and the price gouging of railroads - all of these inspired some farmers to begin forming local alliances that would try to use cooperative methods to bypass those powerful interests that placed farmers in economic thralldom. Lecturers that spread across the South, and even westward and northward, drew upon close-knit farming community ties to eventually establish some 40,000 "sub-alliances" involving two million people, all finally part of a National Farmers Alliance. Through local trade stores, warehouses, and state exchanges, these sub-alliances attempted to buy and sell in bulk. But these efforts met with varying and limited success. Banking interests, grain elevator operators, and stockyards, among others, refused to deal with these farming groups, to accept their notes based on their cash crops and land.

It is hardly surprising, given their radical critique of economic interests, that agrarian organizers would turn to political action to seek redress for farmer grievances. Yet the turn to politics was a highly complicating development for agrarian reform. The agrarian platform was highly radical for the times involving such issues as land reform, labor rights, government ownership and control of transportation and communication, and banking and currency reform with the elimination of the gold standard. But the hold of generational allegiances to the Democratic and Republican parties prevented many farmers from shifting to independent politics despite the fact that their traditional parties were resolutely opposed to many of the farmers' measures. Attempts at reform through the traditional parties were met by cooptation and demagoguery.

The People's Party was formed at Omaha in July, 1892. The party's platform was the agrarian platform containing not only the National Alliance's sub-treasury plan, which was a plan for the issuance of greenbacks, but also calling for the free coinage of silver, both planks having the effect of increasing the money supply. Electoral success was limited. The Democratic Party through coopting of the silver issue and flagrant electoral fraud was able to defeat the Populists throughout the South, where they had their greatest support. In 1896 the People's Party through pre-convention intrigue actually nominated a staunch silver Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, for president, thus essentially ending the Populist movement. According to the author, Populism had become a "shadow" movement, a mere shell of its former orientation.

For the author, democratic mass movements that take issue with core aspects of society face almost insurmountable odds. In the first place, there are the assumptions that the "system" works, that the system contains mechanisms for continual progress and for overcoming problems. In fact, there exists an entire school of thought among historians that contends that the Populists were cranks unwilling to accept social progress and sought only to maintain an antiquated way of life. That school of thought is most closely associated with historian Richard Hofstadter. However, the author finds that the Populists' grievances were real enough while admitting the difficulties of overcoming the received culture. In addition, the author contends that the hierarchical nature of social structures and the accompanying deferential behavior make independent thought and action exceedingly difficult.

Genuine mass movements cannot be top-down driven. The formation of a mass movement that can achieve political viability must proceed from the ground up. Key to any such movement is the establishment of an independent institution that through the participation of its members develops an ideology and strategy that counters prevailing authority. The counter organization must educate and recruit new adherents. The agrarian movement was based on the sub-alliances and their cooperative ventures and achieved extensive recruitment and education through a lecturing system. The politicization step is often difficult to take and sustain because member activism takes on an indirect element in that it is geared to electoral success allowing party elites to then fully engage in the governmental process. Populism was ultimately unable to successfully take the political step.

The author suggests that the failures of Populism essentially defined the boundaries of the possible in fundamentally changing basic structures of American culture. First Progressivism and then liberalism all operated on a basis of incremental reform. In other words, the system works. The policies forming the Federal Reserve, allowing the constant rise of farm tenantry, and permitting the continued centralization and rise in influence of corporations all rejected or minimized the scope of the Populist program.

This book is a short form of the author's complete work, "The Democratic Promise." At times the book takes on the feel of an overview. For example, it would have been interesting to see far more details concerning the actually workings of the various cooperative efforts at the sub-alliance level. And following the twin threads of the Alliance and the People's Party across many states and conventions over a ten year period can be a little sketchy.

The author's insights into forming mass democratic movements and mounting cultural challenges are outstanding. Those insights add to the understanding of Populism. It should give anyone pause when considering the ability of modern movements to impact the status quo.

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Short Review of the Populist Moment, February 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

Obviously influenced by the New Social history and the Sixties' social movements, Lawrence Goodwyn attempts a major reinterpretation of the Populist movement in The Populist Moment, an abridged version of his epic Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America. Although Goodwyn's main project is a redefinition of Populism and stress on the movement's culture, he also provides a theory for social action that serves as the narrative structure for his history and a useful philosophy in itself. Placing the origins of Populism in Texas and conceptualizing the Farmers' Alliance as the movement's ideological core, Goodwyn's analysis marginalizes the Fusionists and Free Silverites, providing a powerful reinterpretation and the main strength of the book. However, by stressing these aspects of the movement, Goodwyn fails to take in the whole of Populism in all its disparate manifestations.

Before proceeding to the history of Populism, Goodwyn begins his book by introducing his "sequential process of democratic movement-building:" forming, recruiting, educating, and politicizing. (xviii) It is this theory of building and maintaining a movement culture, which provides the outline for Goodwyn's history. For Goodwyn, the movement successfully formed, recruited, and educated a large body of supporters. However, in politicizing, the movement failed to maintain its educational program and cooperative institutions, thereby opening the way for Silverites and Fusionists while losing its movement culture that attracted and held the base supporters.

Throughout the book Goodwyn centers Populism in the Farmers' Alliance of Texas and sees Charles Macune and William Lamb as the movement's unofficial leaders. In response to increasing poverty, drastically reduced farm prices, and, most importantly, the centralization of power and resources, the Farmers' Alliance sprung forth from communities in central Texas as a way for tenants, sharecroppers, and small farmers to educate themselves about politics, economics, and agriculture. Building membership and loyalty through cooperatives stores and the joint marketing of crops, the Alliance expanded across the South and Midwest through a phalanx of itinerant lecturers spreading the group's message. As their cooperatives fell victim to the ongoing economic recession, Charles Macune developed a federal sub-treasury plan that would create a fiat currency for farmers, essentially issuing greenbacks as loans backed by the harvest. While the sub-treasury never came to fruition, Goodwyn defines true Populists as unaligned supporters of the plan and members of the Farmers' Alliance. Consequently for Goodwyn, everyone else falls under the 'shadow' movement of Silverites and Fusionists. With this conception of Populism, Goodwyn locates the movement's demise not in the failure of Bryan's campaign, but in the People's Party support of the free silver Democratic ticket.

Goodwyn attempts a major reinterpretation of the Populist movement and largely succeeds by marginalizing the 'shadow' movement. Furthermore, his detailed analysis of Populism's development posits a truly democratic movement of common folk united by a shared set of concerns. By tying the rise and fall of Populism to his movement theory, Goodwyn provides a tremendously useful framework for understanding the broad implications, successes, and failures of the movement. While his reinterpretation can not be overemphasized, his book falls short by not paying more attention to the 'shadow' movement in the West and Midwest. The 'shadow' movement of free silver and fusion was an important and influential component of Populism; by not giving it attention, Goodwyn tells only half the story. Finally, Goodwyn's analysis of Populism could have benefited from talking more about race. Despite the connection with the Colored Farmers' Alliance, at its heart, Populism was based on white supremacy, deeply problematizing Goodwyn's eulogy of Populism as the last truly democratic American social movement.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Populism was more then a rhetorical style...., June 25, 2005

By 

Hulka (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

Most college kids in the 70's were force-fed RICHARD HOFSTADTER's book, The Age of Reform, which ridiculed populism.

But having grown up the son of a immigrant farm boy and county agent, my view of the midwestern populism and farm culture was much much different.

So Goodwyn's book was a welcome documentation of what I had known all along--that populism was a uniquely American movement, and the spirit of the frontier was never rugged individualism, but community.

The Farmer-Laborer Alliances of the late 19th Century, and the People's Party that resulted, always referred to their reform movement as 'cooperation', and quoted Thomas Jefferson, and the founding fathers. In this context, populism was uniquely American. It was a struggle between democratic capitalism vs. speculative and monopoly capitalism.

Real populism was about creating cooperative systems to consolidate farmer's economic power in competition with the railroads and the banks. It was the alternative to the disasterous crop-lien system of the rural south that turned so many of Jefferson's yoeman farmers into destitute sharecroppers, that forced them out of their homes to settle the western plains.

Goodwyn's book debunks the idea the William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech was the defining highpoint of populism, when in fact it was it's destruction. Goodwyn points out that free silver was never more then a shadow movement of an immensely popular political movement.

Goodwyn also debunks the later-day revisionists like Michael Kazin's book, author of The Populist Persuasion, that populism was a style of rhetoric than a coherent set of political ideas or reforms.

While the People's Party was co-opted and destroyed by the Democrat Party, most of the reforms advocated by the populists came to pass in the 1930's with the agricultural reforms of the 1930's. Things like the rural electrification, the regulation of the railroads, the Farm Credit Administration, and the federal reserve all grew out the original populist ideas. Because of the populist complaints, eventually government intervention in the grain and other food commodies marketplace was recognized as the means of democraticizing and strengthing the market system, stablizing the food supply, and strengthening the market system.

But most importantly, the dignity of the common man against the rich and powerful urban elite entered American political discourse.

This is an important book, and a welcome understanding of perhaps the most successful movement by common folks to control their own destiny.