A recent op-ed
piece in The New York Times urged the Republican Party not to
“throw away free enterprise” and embrace populism. Arthur C. Brooks, the author
of the article, makes two bold but erroneous claims. First, he asserts that
populist moments throughout history — including the Trumpian moment in the US —
are triggered by severe financial crises that result in protracted and uneven
recoveries that exacerbate existing income and wealth disparities.
In resorting to naïve economic determinism
to explain populism, Brooks completely overlooks the awakening of the broad
American middle class to political institutions and policies that have been
designed by the entrenched elites of both parties to oppress and plunder them.
The never-ending and immensely costly war against “terror;” the Federal bailout
of multi-billion dollar financial institutions both domestically and abroad;
the ineffective and grossly expensive war on drugs; the pandemic of political
correctness unleashed by Federal mandates and regulations that has infected
American colleges and universities, and the egregious and unrestrained spying
on American citizens by the bloated US security apparatus. All of these issues
seem to count for nothing in Brooks’s simplistic analysis. For Brooks, “The
real issue is weak, unevenly shared growth.” Brooks’s attribution of the rise
of populism in the US and elsewhere almost exclusively to increasing income and
wealth inequality is not only peculiar but absurd on the face of it and I will
refrain from further comment on it.
The second claim that Brooks makes is more
commonly accepted and is fervently promoted by the mainstream media, and
academics and political analysts of the “responsible” left and right. This
claim is that populism comprises specific ideological positions and policies.
Thus, Brooks refers to “populist positions on issues such as trade and
immigration” and to “populists who specialize in identifying culprits: rich
elites who are ripping you off; immigrants who want your job; a free trade
that’s killing our nation’s competitiveness.” According to Brooks, populist
policies thus “involve some combination of increased redistribution,
protectionism, and restrictionism.” In other words, on economic issues at least,
populism is the polar opposite of classical liberalism and libertarianism.
Left-wing and Right-wing Populists
But nothing could be further from the
truth. For populism is not a right-wing ideology but a strategy that may be
used by any ideological group whose political agenda differs radically
from that of the ruling class. Surely, Brooks has heard of left-wing populists
such as Juan and Eva Perón, Huey Long, the “Radio Priest” Father Charles
Coughlin, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez. And what about classical-liberal and
libertarian populists such as Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams, Richard Cobden and
John Bright, and more recently, Dr. Ron Paul? Lately, we have seen the dramatic
rise in popularity of the populist
Pirate Party in Iceland, which may win the next election and whose
membership is ideologically diffuse and comprises libertarians, hackers, Web
geeks, and anti-globalist anarchists.
Although populism may be either
ideologically left or right, libertarian or statist, it is always hated and
feared by the political center. The reason is that the center is occupied by
those individuals and groups comprising the “moderate” left wing and right wing
who are allies in defending the political status quo and take turns ruling and
operating the levers of power to distribute privilege and wealth to themselves
and their cronies.
What Populists Stand For
Regardless of ideological bent, populist
thinkers and movement builders take to heart, at least implicitly, the profound
insight of great political theorists from La Boétie and David Hume to Mises and
Rothbard that there is no such thing as an unpopular government. They thus set
about exposing the moderates who run the State apparatus as a powerful and
wealthy elite whose interests are inherently opposed to those of the masses of
productive workers and entrepreneurs. In order to grab the attention of people
who are not yet fully conscious that they are being exploited — or in Marxian
terms, to help them develop a class consciousness — it is only natural that
populist leaders employ extreme, emotional, and embittered rhetoric. Such inflammatory
rhetoric is especially necessary for the US today and most European countries
where the mainstream media, while ostensibly free, operate as a privileged
mouthpiece for government and spew non-stop propaganda designed to camouflage
State exploitation of the productive class and to discredit dissenting
political movements.
Harsh and extreme populist rhetoric, such
as that used by Donald Trump, strikes a responsive chord among the US
electorate, but not because Americans are subject to irrational bouts of envy,
xenophobia, and insecurity brought on by crises and recessions, as Brooks would
have us believe. Rather, Americans are being awakened to the cold, hard fact
that they have been plundered and oppressed by the “moderate” American
globalist political establishment since World War Two. What Rothbard
said about the populist French Poujadist movement of the early 1950s
applies to the US and other interventionist democratic states today:
[T]here’s a
lot to be bitter about: crushingly high taxes on businesses and individuals,
submergence of national sovereignty in international organizations and alliances,
fumbling and incompetent government, endless fighting in colonial wars.
Especially taxes.
A final point: once it has penetrated into
the public discourse, populism — precisely because it is the only effective
political strategy for radical political change — will not wither away as a
result of a few more percentage points of “evenly distributed” economic growth.
Trump’s threat to contest the election, Brexit, the continuing growth of
right-wing populist movements throughout Europe, all attest to the fact that
populism is here to stay. This should be cause for celebration among the
libertarians who for the first time since its inception in the mid-1960s have
at their disposal an effective strategy for rolling back the US welfare-warfare
State.
