Today’s Dueling Populisms: Human Solidarity or Racist BootStrapism?

In Search of the Forgotten Man:

Right Wing Populism and the

Return of Social Darwinism

Christopher Malone, Ph.D.

Christopher Malone is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Pforzheimer Honors College at Pace University in New York City. He is the author of Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North (Routledge Press, 2008).

While Barack Obama's election was evident as early as summer 2008, the financial crisis later that fall certainly sealed the deal. As the economy shed about 700,000 jobs a month in the period between the election and his inauguration, political pundits wondered if 2009 would look more like 1933 or 1993: were we on the verge of a New Deal-style realignment in American politics, or were we simply witnessing the election of a Democrat in the midst of another economic downtown during an erstwhile conservative era?

2009 has come and gone, but the question remains. Gubernatorial losses for Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey in 2009, along with a shocking senate loss in Massachusetts in January, have provided Republicans with an opening: 2010 shall be to Barack Obama what 1994 was to Bill Clinton, they assert. With health care legislation stalled if not altogether dead, Republicans declare the Obama agenda has met its Waterloo. Right wing populist anger over big and intrusive government rivals a left wing populist revolt against big banks and big business.

More blanks are sure to be filled in come this November. One thing, however, is certain: the field upon which American politics will be played for the foreseeable future is a populist one. Amid the struggles over health care, terrorism, stimulus spending, jobs programs, taxes on banks, and the deficit, politicians of all political stripes are in a desperate tug-of-war over the Forgotten Man - that mythical figure in American politics whose hard work, decency, and political voice are consistently drowned out by political and cultural elites in Washington or corporate raiders on Wall Street.

Populism's undercurrent reaches deep in American political history - its appeal deceptively simple. From Andrew Jackson's self-anointment as the "tribune of the people" in the 1830s, to the billionaire Ross Perot's promises to "clean out the barn" in the 1990s, populist leaders have sought to stand with the people (whoever they might be) against the powerful (whoever they might be). Jackson railed against the "monster monopoly;" Perot against the Washington bureaucrat's propensity to govern by flow chart. The substance of populist movements may differ, but the message has remained remarkably similar over time: you're being held back by a small, invisible group of very powerful people. It's not right, and something needs to be done about it.

In this sense, the current uprising in American politics - both left and right - is nothing new. Like past populist moments it represents both the very best and most dangerous impulses of a democratic society. Rare, however, is the moment when left and right wing populism surface at the same time. Which side emerges victorious this year could well determine the trajectory of the next era in American politics.

With the conclusion of its first national convention, all eyes now fall upon the right wing populism of the Tea Party movement and its lasting impact on American politics. Excepting a vitriolic disdain for the Obama agenda and an uncritical adoration for Sarah Palin, the tea party agenda is not yet fully formed. Much work lies ahead in terms of developing its message, its logic, its strategy and tactics, its constituency, its demands, and so forth.

I would nonetheless like to suggest, however, that the philosophical underpinning to this movement has already taken shape - one we've seen before in American history. The right wing populism manifested in the Tea Party movement is in fundamental ways the mirror image of the Social Darwinism popularized in the second half of nineteenth century America.

Sumner's Social Darwinism and Modern Conservatism

The modern American conservative movement was born in the formative years of the Cold War at a time when New Deal Liberalism was the American civic religion. More than fifty years later, the movement has spawned an entire industry of think tanks, publishing houses, scholars-in-residence, and Founding Fathers. Some of the canonical texts of the conservative movement include Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, William Buckley's God and Man at Yale, F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History.

Conservatism has many tributaries, but at heart are nonetheless a few core principles: societies are ordered in classes based on divine intent and/or personal responsibility; property and freedom are inseparable; markets should be unfettered from government regulation; traditions must be adhered to in order for stability to be maintained; societies should evolve slowly rather than change dramatically. All of modern conservatism's Founders employ versions of these principles in their writings. Yet, nowhere on any reading list of canonical texts of modern conservatism will you find one of the true progenitors of contemporary social and political conservative thought in America: William Graham Sumner.

The reason is simple. Even Sumner is too politically incorrect for a group that has made a living over the last twenty five years bashing political correctness. He is unmentionable because he unapologetically preached one of the harshest versions of Social Darwinism in the late nineteenth century. But his ideas are nonetheless everywhere in the right-wing populism we've seen gain ground over the last year.

Sumner believed that "reform," "progressivism," or "socialism" - indeed, any ideology "whose aim was to save individuals from any of the difficulties or hardships of the struggle for existence and competition of life by the intervention of the state" - defied the fundamental law of the universe: survival of the fittest. Similar to the contemporary right-wing populist revolt, Sumner's brand of Social Darwinism propagated an unabashed but seamless defense of two groups in American society viewed by the left as irreconcilably at odds with one another: "the captains of industry" on the one hand, and the "forgotten men" on the other.

Sumner could praise the vast fortunes accumulated by the robber barons of his times without repudiating the hard-working, industrious common man, whom he believed was "threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government." "The reason why I defend the millions of the millionaire," Sumner wrote, "is not that I love the millionaire, but that I love my own wife and children, and that I know no way in which to get the defense of society for my hundreds, except to give my help, as a member of society, to protect his millions."

For Sumner, the millionaire and the forgotten man had more to fear from the Paternal State (or what modern conservatives call the Nanny State) than they did from each other. Take the millionaire first. Society for Sumner depended on the creation of individual wealth. Thus, social advancement for all relied upon the financial abilities of the few: "The millionaires are a product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done…they get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is good for society." Sumner chided those who believed that wealth would be created were it not for the captains of industry:

The popular notions about this matter really assume that all the wealth accumulated by these classes of persons would be here just the same if they had not existed…This is so far from being true that, on the contrary, their own wealth would not be but for themselves; and besides that, millions more of wealth, many-fold greater than their own, scattered in the hands of thousands, would not exist but for them.

"The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted," Sumner declared. Society could not advance without vast fortunes or those who acquired them. "If we should set a limit to the accumulation of wealth, we should say to our most valued producers, 'We do not want you to do us the services which you best understand how to perform, beyond a certain point.' It would be like killing off our generals in a war."

Sumner also defended vigorously the notion of hereditary wealth. That, too, was a product of the laws of nature, since hereditary wealth was a way of preserving to the industrious millionaire the success of his offspring. Since he and his offspring were responsible for enriching their communities through their wealth production, personal wealth had to stay in the family. To do otherwise was a threat to personal liberty and tantamount to an assault on the family by the State. In Sumner's word, that would reduce men to "swine."

If Sumner's defense of the captains of industry was spirited, his defense of the forgotten man was equally fervent. "It is plain enough that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are the very life and substance of society," Sumner wrote. "They are the ones who ought to be first and always remembered. They are always forgotten by sentimentalists, philanthropists, reformers, enthusiasts, and every description of speculator in sociology, political economy or political science." What the forgotten man prized was not wealth but liberty - the right to be let alone. Sumner argued that popular notions of "civil liberty" were mistaken; liberty did not reside in elections, or universal suffrage, or even democracy. Civil liberty was the idea "that each man is guaranteed the use of all of his own powers exclusively for his own welfare." Thus, a free man in a free state has "no duty whatever toward other men of the same rank and standing, except respect, courtesy, and good will."

Actually, the forgotten man and woman in society had one big duty: "to take care of his or her own self. That is a social duty." If one could not take care of oneself, it was of no consequence to others. If poverty existed, it was neither the fault nor the concern of the industrious forgotten man and woman. Sumner believed that the causes of poverty were deeply misunderstood in his time - hence the policy of state intervention was misguided. He blasted economists distressed at the amount of misery and poverty in the world. "They do not perceive that here 'the strong' and 'the weak' are terms which admit of no definition unless they are made equivalent to the industrious and idle, the frugal and the extravagant." Social welfare through state intervention amounted to replacing the survival of the fittest with the survival of the unfittest. That would be disastrous for civilization. Sumner thus rested his economic theory upon the core elements of Social Darwinism: "Laissez-faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty."

On the Road to Sarah Palin: Social Darwinism and the Rise of Right Wing Populism

To be sure, no one in the Tea Party movement - or for that matter, no one in the Republican establishment seeking to capitalize on it - has embraced Sumner's Social Darwinism in name. While conservatives talk about industriousness and idleness, frugality and extravagance, no one on the right would dare utter the phrases "survival of the fittest," "natural selection," or "the struggle for existence through competition" in explaining their political, economic, or philosophical outlook. Few, if any, even mention Sumner by name. The notable exception is Grover Norquist, who in his recent book aptly titled Leave us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off of our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives mentions Sumner in a passage about Amity Shales' 2007 book The Forgotten Man. Norquist and Shales both point out that FDR pilfered the phrase "the forgotten man" from Sumner and appropriated it to mean that he "was in need of being discovered and 'helped' by the government." Norquist was indignant at Roosevelt's theft: "This phrase was knowingly stolen from William Graham Sumner, who correctly pointed out that the true 'forgotten man' was the taxpayer who was expected to pay for the false philanthropy of politicians."

Norquist can't bring himself to call what he is advocating Social Darwinism. But he finds Sumner's views on the forgotten man quite appealing because they fit effortlessly within his own. Urged by Ronald Reagan to found Americans for Tax Reform in the mid 1980s, Norquist has consistently argued, like both Reagan and Sumner, that government is not the solution to social problems - "government is the problem" as Reagin put it in his 1981 Inaugural Address. In Leave us Alone, Norquist pits two mythical groups in American society against one another: the Leave Us Alone Coalition, who desire complete liberty from government intrusion into their lives, and the Takings Coalition, who "view the proper role of government as taking things from one group and giving them to someone else." Sumner couldn't have said it better himself. The message of Leave us Alone is simply: mind your own business and let the chips fall where they may. Where you end up is where you belong. The only social duty you have is to take care of yourself.  For Norquist, the Welfare State of the New Deal, an outsized homage to the "philanthropy of politicians," was leveraged on the backs of the forgotten taxpayer who was robbed of his liberty.

Any politician or strategist will tell you it is a winner when you are perceived to be on the side of the little guy. That is why, after all, FDR would steal the "forgotten man" phrase - and then attempt to direct the wrath of this forgotten man toward the "captains of industry" whom New Deal liberals claimed to be the real culprits of the Great Depression. The New Deal was about many things, but at its core it sought to rearrange the relationship, formed in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, between the government, these forgotten men, and the captains of industry. Government was now needed to step in and protect the forgotten man from the greed and irresponsibility of the captains of industry.

Over the last four decades, the conservative movement has been quite successful in mounting a credible counter-argument to this New Deal narrative of the forgotten man. What hasn't been properly understood, however, is that Sumner's Forgotten Man is the mythical figure right-leaning populists have been fighting for. It is this mythical figure at the heart of the Tea Party movement today. For this reason the left brushes aside Sarah Palin and tea partiers to their political peril. Several years ago Thomas Frank argued in What's the Matter with Kansas? that working and middle class voters in red states consistently voted against their economic interests when they opted for the culturally driven policies of the Republican Party. Frank missed the populist appeal of Sumner's Social Darwinism. "Mind your own business" and a "doctrine of liberty" from government make sense to these forgotten men and women, even as their lives become more tenuous.

In their world, poverty is not about the structural deficiencies of capitalism; it is about personal idleness and extravagance. In their world, welfare is not about alleviating poverty or providing a temporary hand up; it is about doing away with a government handout that breeds dependency. In their world, universal health care is not about providing a baseline of equality in society, it is about government restricting your liberty by telling you what doctors you can and can't see and when you can see them. In their world, gay marriage is not about "equal rights;" it is about government telling you what values you and your family should be compelled to uphold. In their world, the estate tax placed on the very wealthy is not about the fair redistribution of wealth; it is one last attempt through a "death tax" to take away the liberty of the dearly departed.

It really doesn't matter if any of these policies affect you personally. What matters is that, everywhere, the Forgotten Man and Woman are constantly (in the words of Sumner) "threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government." This is the logic of Sumner's Social Darwinism, and its broad appeal lies in an elegant simplicity: anything government does takes away one's liberty - both from the industrious and the idle alike, from the millionaires and the forgotten men alike. 

One would expect the modern conservative movement to formulate a narrative of the forgotten man because all successful movements at some point have to engage in populist rhetoric. We might be a little more surprised at the extent to which that narrative was taken right out of Sumner's playbook. But Sumner would be positively giddy at the success the Tea Party movement has had in reuniting the forgotten man with the captains of industry in the belief that they have more to fear from government than they have to fear from each other.

This reunion really began with Barry Goldwater's run for president in 1964, continued through George Wallace's right-wing populism and Nixon's "silent majority" of the late 1960s, gained momentum with the tax revolts in California and the creation of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1970s, and reached a crescendo with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Reagan liberated both the forgotten man and the captains of industry from paternal government by slashing taxes, cutting government regulation, firing union employees, and railing against dependent welfare queens. Yet, the Reagan Revolution was incomplete. Conservatives viewed Bush 41's presidency as an unhappy interregnum and Bill Clinton's as a tragic accident. It wasn't until George W. Bush came to power in 2000 and won a Republican Congress two years later that the reunion was ostensibly completed.

Bush's image as a plain-talking Texan was ideal for a conservative movement desperate to prolong the narrative that aligned the forgotten man with the captains of industry. Looking back though, it was improbable, to say the least. After all, here was a true blueblood, born in Connecticut as the scion of one of the great political dynasties in American history, schooled at Andover, Yale, and Harvard. The captain of industry turned man-of-the-people wins an improbable election for Texas governor, coasts to victory four years later, and immediately is anointed as the Republican frontrunner for the 2000 election. The most well-connected, well-funded presidential candidate in American history up to that time wins the White House as the straight-shooting common man who likes to clear brush on his Texas ranch during his vacations.

It didn't hurt that in 2000 and again in 2004 Bush ran against opponents that failed miserably in their appeals to the forgotten man and woman. George W. Bush, the first MBA president and a relentless ally of big business, sold compassionate conservative to the forgotten man and woman with a Texas twang. Here was President Bush, sworn to providing "tax relief" for the very wealthy and selling it as if it would liberate everyone. In the end, Bush's success - to the extent that he was successful - lay in two deceptively simple Sumnerian ideas: first, he got enough of the forgotten men and women to believe that they were threatened by every extension of paternal government; and then he was able to get them to defend the millionaire's millions under the belief that it was the only way to protect their own hundreds.

The irony, of course, is that Bush did not make good on his promise to do away with paternal government (it might be noted that no conservative could…we are all New Dealers now). Deficits, supplemental spending for wars, a botched relief effort after Katrina, and a Medicare prescription drug bill belied the very logic of the message. Even though the economic gap between the captains of industry and the forgotten men and women is larger than any time since the period when Sumner himself was writing, it took an economic collapse to derail this conservative narrative four decades in the making. In the fall 2008, the door swung open for Barack Obama to recast the relationship between government, the captains of industry, and the forgotten man.

Combating Social Darwinism: The Forgotten Middle Class

Conventional wisdom holds that Barack Obama is not a natural populist, that this cerebral former law professor doesn't know how to push populist buttons. This may be true. But Obama is smarter than that. He understands that for four decades the American public has been fed a diet of conservative rhetoric based on Sumner's Social Darwinism. In this sense, 2009 is certainly not 1933. Today fewer Americans trust government than at any point in modern history. And this is after a financial meltdown. Making the case that government can be trusted to stand between the forgotten men and women of America and the corporate raiders who caused this mess is not as easy as it sounds. After a year in which the discussion turned on government stimulus spending, health care reform, financial regulatory reform, and cap and trade, it was only a matter of time before right wing populism found its footing once again. It was only a matter of time before we saw the return of Social Darwinism. Which, alas, brings us back to the Tea Party movement and Sarah Palin.

Hitting the reset button on the relationship between the forgotten man, government and the captains of industry is at the heart of today's populist struggles. While left leaning populists realize that it may be impossible to return to 1933 and fully uncover FDR's forgotten man, they were astute enough to realize that the election of Barack Obama provided the biggest opportunity in four decades to present the American people with the counter narrative to the Social Darwinism of the conservative right. Obama's actions in 2009 have not necessarily satisfied left wing populists. But he has done just enough for the populist right to scare the hell out of a significant number of those forgotten men and women across the country - most of whom believe they have more to fear from the government than the twenty first century robber barons.

Despite the lack of trust Americans have in government, Obama and his supporters should take comfort in two things and act accordingly. First, whether or not they believe that government actually works, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that government should solve big problems. The social doctrine of "mind your own business" is so far out of the mainstream today that no one could imagine government not involved in social welfare programs such as education, health care, social security, etc. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, the era of big government is here to say - not matter what Sarah Palin or any other right wing populist says.

Second, those New Deal policies which were directed at FDR's forgotten men and women created the biggest middle class in the history of human civilization. The American middle class is also here to stay, even if it has been losing ground over the last three decades. Defeating Social Darwinism means focusing squarely on the Forgotten Middle Class and framing every policy decision around these forgotten men and women.

Christopher Malone, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Political Science

Director, Pforzheimer Honors College NYC Campus

207E

1 Pace Plaza NY, NY 10038

212-346-1146

http://webpage.pace.edu/cmalone