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As Ross Perot proved in 1992, even when funded by a bottomless bank account, American third parties have always struggled in their efforts to achieve recognition and political power. Yet even in defeat their contributions to national politics have been substantial. That, Peter Argersinger contends, was certainly true of the Populists a century earlier. Argersinger, one of our nation's foremost historians of the Populist era, brings together in this volume some of his best and most influential essays-ranging from a study of a single election campaign to complex analyses of political organizations, legislative behavior, and government institutions. Together they amply display his consistently sharp and wide-ranging insights on this important moment in American life. Argersinger examines, among other things, the Populists' evolution in electoral politics, from creating a party to running election campaigns; the enormous obstacles they overcame in the process of electing a U.S. Senator; specific laws and procedures that suppressed Populism's full political participation; hard-won successes in Western state legislatures in the face of powerful enemies and numerous internal disputes; and the Populists' long-standing struggles and frustrations with the U.S Congress. Throughout Argersinger illuminates the fundamental ways in which Populism challenged our political system and brings to life its volatile personalities, dramatic controversies, visionary programs, and enduring frustrations. (So frustrating that an Oklahoma Populist once pulled a gun on the Speaker of the House who kept refusing to recognize his request to speak to the assembly.) Of special interest to political, social, rural, Western, and Gilded Age historians, this book provides a timely reminder of the political constraints on third parties in America.
The author finds that agrarian radicalism develops most readily in a way analogous to industrial class struggle: through the economic clash of homogeneous and polarized groups within the agrarian sector. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Traces the history of populism in the United States from the time of Thomas Jefferson to the era of Bill Clinton.
During the last third of the twentieth century, white supremacists moved, both literally and in the collective imagination, from midnight rides through Mississippi to broadband-wired cabins in Montana. But while rural Montana may be on the geographical fringe of the country, white supremacist groups were not pushed there, and they are far from "fringe elements" of society, as many Americans would like to believe. Evelyn Schlatter's startling analysis describes how many of the new white supremacist groups in the West have co-opted the region's mythology and environment based on longstanding beliefs about American character and Manifest Destiny to shape an organic, home-grown movement. Dissatisfied with the urbanized, culturally progressive coasts, disenfranchised by affirmative action and immigration, white supremacists have found new hope in the old ideal of the West as a land of opportunity waiting to be settled by self-reliant traditional families. Some even envision the region as a potential white homeland. Groups such as Aryan Nations, The Order, and Posse Comitatus use controversial issues such as affirmative action, anti-Semitism, immigration, and religion to create sympathy for their extremist views among mainstream whites—while offering a "solution" in the popular conception of the West as a place of freedom, opportunity, and escape from modern society. Aryan Cowboys exposes the exclusionist message of this "American" ideal, while documenting its dangerous appeal.
Democrats and Republicans: is this duopoly an immutable and indispensable aspect of American democracy? In this text Lisa Jane Disch argues that it is not. This is an impassioned and eloquent argument in favour of third parties.
During and after the Cultural Revolution, radical leaders in the Chinese Communist Party tried to mobilize rural society for socioeconomic and political changes and move rural China to even higher stages of collectivism. David Zweig argues that because advocates of agrarian radicalism formed a minority group within China's central leadership, they acted in opposition to the dominant moderate forces and resorted to alternative strategies to mobilize support for their unofficial policies. The limited institutionalization of the system allowed the radicals to promote their principles through "policy winds," speeches generated by newspaper articles, networks of political allies, and organized visits; they also linked their policies to ongoing political and economic campaigns. In spite of this radical ideology and frequent upheavals in the countryside, Zweig finds that Chinese peasants had no ideological affinity for Mao's theory of the continuing revolution and reacted to each policy change on the basis of how it affected their personal, family, or collective interests. Despite intense propaganda, cadres adjusted the impact of these radical policies so that the peasants' conservative mindset, entrepreneurial spirit, and desire to improve their own lot remained intact. Zweig examines the local realities of the radicals' program by describing the results of specific policies; he discriminates among the responses of officials at different bureaucratic levels, peasants of varying income levels and family structures, and villages with specific geographic and socioeconomic characteristics. He draws on his own field research in Chinese villages and interviews with Chinese college students and their friends who had lived in the countryside and emigrès in Hong Kong who had lived and worked in rural China.
Stock examines recurring themes in rural radical movements, including anti-federalism, white supremacy, populism, and vigilantism. She beleives we need to understand both the historic roots and the diverse manifestations of rural radicalism in order to make some sense of the action that tore a hole in this country's heartland in the spring of 1995. 8 photos. 2 maps.
In a historical treatment of Mexico beginning with the pre-Revolutionary period and focusing on the administration of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940), Nora Hamilton explores the possibilities and limits of reform in a capitalist society. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The University and the People chronicles the influence of Populism—a powerful agrarian movement—on public higher education in the late nineteenth century. Revisiting this pivotal era in the history of the American state university, Scott Gelber demonstrates that Populists expressed a surprising degree of enthusiasm for institutions of higher learning. More fundamentally, he argues that the mission of the state university, as we understand it today, evolved from a fractious but productive relationship between public demands and academic authority. Populists attacked a variety of elites—professionals, executives, scholars—and seemed to confirm academia’s fear of anti-intellectual public oversight. The movement’s vision of the state university highlighted deep tensions in American attitudes toward meritocracy and expertise. Yet Populists also promoted state-supported higher education, with the aims of educating the sons (and sometimes daughters) of ordinary citizens, blurring status distinctions, and promoting civic engagement. Accessibility, utilitarianism, and public service were the bywords of Populist journalists, legislators, trustees, and sympathetic professors. These “academic populists” encouraged state universities to reckon with egalitarian perspectives on admissions, financial aid, curricula, and research. And despite their critiques of college “ivory towers,” Populists supported the humanities and social sciences, tolerated a degree of ideological dissent, and lobbied for record-breaking appropriations for state institutions.
This book demonstrates that apportionment, although long overlooked by scholars, dominated state politics in late nineteenth-century America, setting the boundaries not only for legislative districts but for the nature of representative democracy. The book examines the fierce struggles over apportionment in the Midwest, where a distinctive constitutional and electoral context shaped their course with momentous consequences. As the major parties alternated in effectively disenfranchising their opponents through gerrymanders, growing tensions challenged established patterns of political behaviour and precipitated intense and even dangerous disputes. Unprecedented judicial intervention overturned gerrymanders in stunning decisions that electrified the public but intensified rather than resolved political conflict and uncertainty. Ultimately, America's political ideal of representative democracy was frustrated by its own political institutions, including the courts, because their decisions against gerrymandering in the 1890s helped parties and legislatures entrench the practice as a basic and profoundly undemocratic feature of American politics in the twentieth century.