Kotkin on Populism

Demographer Joel Kotkin, writing for The Daily Beast, takes on the populist, anti-elite attitudes that are sweeping much of the developed world, something he's labeled the Great Rebellion. His thrust is to understand from whence it comes and where it goes.

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.

The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.

For all its divergent views, the Great Rebellion has accomplished this: the first serious blow to the relentless ascendency of neo-liberal crony capitalism. The rebels have put the issue of the super-state and the cause of returning power closer to the people back on the agenda.

Caveat: If you read Kotkin's article, you'll discover that nobody at The Daily Beast does copy editing. You'd think Kotkin would be more careful, maybe he expected the publisher to clean it up.