The Regrettable Century
The old forms of the Left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a Dialectical Pessimism and develop a salvage project capable of sparking a new workers' movement for socialism. A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
-- Antonio Gramsci
The Regrettable Century
Partisans of a Dying Dream: The Populist Moment and American Socialism
This week we delve into what is sort of a pre-history of the American Socialist movement. Though the populist movement undeniably kept its Jeffersonian character, it was the first (arguably only) significant challenge to the dominance of the two major capitalist parties in the US. Much of the energy and the spirit of American populism flowed into and colored the burgeoning American workers' movement.
From Populism to Socialism and Back
https://jacobin.com/2019/08/populism-socialism-daniel-de-leon-eugene-debs
American Populism, 1876-1896
https://digital.lib.niu.edu/illinois/gildedage/populism
Populist Party Platform July 4, 1892
https://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1876-1900/populist-party-platform-july-4-1892.php
Cantrell, Gregg, and D. Scott Barton. “Texas Populists and the Failure of Biracial Politics.” The Journal of Southern History 55, no. 4 (1989): 659–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/2209044.