Is This Book Worth Reading?

Here's a book review I wrote for the author last year. Just floating it out there. Johnston provides a patient but, I believe, ultimately unsatisfying counterpoint to Jim Livingston and the corporate liberalism camp.


Review of Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (2003)

As part of a just-underway and ongoing attempt to "re-democratize" the progressive era, Robert Johnston offers The Radical Middle Class, a book that speaks to the latent populist impulse in American society. Combining case study with a rampant optimism, Johnston recasts the possibilities inherent to populism through a thorough treatment of the early twentieth century middle class of Portland, Oregon. In Johnston’s well-crafted scolding of forgetful or unimaginative historians, many a scholar will undoubtedly feel the sting of having past carelessness pointed out. Most every historian has spooned a little dirt onto the graves of progressivism and populism, and here Johnston digs up the bodies and finds that neither is really dead yet. How embarrassing.

Radical Middle Class problematizes our concept of the middle class by proposing that the Thompsonian view of class be applied. That is, as EP Thompson pointed out, class is a process and, even more exciting, people consciously make their own classes. In examining the middle class, several considerations are important. As Marx pointed out, there are actually at least two middle classes, a lower and an upper. The petite bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, is comprised of artisans, skilled laborers, and small proprietors. In Marx’s conception, this group believes its interests to lie with the upper class but will be slowly driven into the working class by the crushing advance of capitalism. Significantly, however, this theory allows for intraclass conflict and at least suggests the possibility that a self-conscious petite bourgeoisie could lay claim to a "middle class" reality all its own.

Additionally, and following from that observation, this new middle class (or "middling" class, to distinguish it from the upper class whose values it does not necessarily share) might not be phased out at all but may persist indefinitely and even serve as a worthy goal for members of the working class—a complete inversion of the Marxist paradigm. Such a harmony of interests with the working class is revealing, in that it suggests that occupation and class are not necessarily the same thing. Some people, though they identify as "workers," simultaneously stress their connections to a bourgeois world and self-appropriate the title of middle class. Johnston is careful to point out, however, that the middling sorts fought both the power of "elites" and the destructive forces of "cheap labor." Here, then, is a class at odds with itself, its betters, and its inferiors.

The primary motivation for Johnston’s Portlanders seems to be individualism. From Curt Muller, whose defense of long working hours for women rested, most plausibly, upon a laissez faire critique of regulation; to Lora C. Little, whose stand against smallpox vaccinations was a defense of the body against compulsory inoculation; populists relied heavily on the rights of the individual against the state. Neither socialists nor capitalists, these people warred on behalf of a number of causes, many seemingly antithetical to their democratic principles. Forgotten in the uproar of feminist historians’ recent response to the Muller case and his professed sympathies to unions, is that he was, in point of fact, a man seeking to secure unlimited access to his workers’ labor.

This particular case also points to another problem with this study, which is that it considers only one side of the question. What of "progressives" who thought that a ten-hour rule for women would open the door to equal protections for men? If Muller’s supposed advocacy of feminist principles was clever, was the ten-hour movement any less so in appealing to equal protection to turn a woman’s law into a man’s?

It is undoubtedly true that American historians, at least, have erred in insisting upon the death of populism by 1900 and the similar demise of progressivism by 1920. In relating the events in Portland—a rather singular place, perhaps—Johnston lends the reader a valuable insight into a community in which possibilities that were foreclosed elsewhere remained open much longer. More importantly, Radical Middle Class speaks to the foremost problem, to my mind, of progressive era scholarship: it is, for the most part, all gloom and doom. In precious few works of history do we find the kind of unbridled optimism, hopefulness, and confidence in the democratic spirit that young Walter Lippmann, William James, Jane Addams, and contemporary intellectuals often located as being at the root of their efforts. That sort of hopefulness is what Radical Middle Class is about. Johnston is offering us not only a brighter picture of a world that once was (and I am not referring here to the Lears-ian populist paradise), but is strongly suggesting that it could be again. The thread of populist sentiment, it seems, endures in this country in the form of the entrepreneurial spirit, the movement for holistic health, organized labor, and the continuing identification of the working and middle classes with one another. Still around, as well, are the bulwarks of the "Oregon System" of popular government: the referendum, initiative, recall, and direct election of officials.

There is one big problem that I see with such optimism, though the sentiment is surely appreciated. The problem is that populist impulses of yesteryear may not be so useful today, except as inspiration. Take, for example, the Oregon System. As we have (very) recently seen, the exercise of direct democracy may not always result in a better world. Shall we interpret the banning of gay marriage in eleven states to an anti-elite movement? Since such measures, in some cases, also disallow civil unions, even for heterosexuals, do voters not recognize it as an effort directed against themselves? Can we draw any conclusions about the wisdom of "the people," based on the California recall of two years ago? What emerged in response to a bankrupt national politics in the early twentieth century has now become a part of that system. In the absence (and I do believe there is an absence) of local power, these measures become tools of the national party and an obedient party base helps pervert their original intent. In short, such measures were formulated for past problems, and were meant to be used by a different public. In recognition of changing times and political realities, it may be time to put them to bed.

Furthermore, in the present age where hyper-individualism has taken such strong root as to be claimed as the very basis of our culture, singing the praises of an individualistic politics is problematic. Aside from that, there is also the consideration that the ideal of a nation of small producer republics denies the tremendous benefits that the lower and middle classes have derived from bourgeois revolutions. Even if Portland’s petite bourgeoisie never fully embraced capitalism, it did reap its rewards. The ability of a worker to identify with the habits of the middle class, in fact to assume a middle class identity, is the result of the national, consumer society.

On the other hand, it may be a supremely noble effort on Johnston’s part to write the book that he has. That Radical Middle Class appeared more than a year before the biggest electoral triumph of the monied interests yet in our nation's history does not weaken its impact any. The current crisis in America may stem from a certain popular disregard for history and reluctance on the part of historians to prove its worth. If the most recent election can be seen as a measure of the public’s beliefs, then it would seem that capitalism of the sort Johnston calls an "open question" for the residents of Portland has in fact become a reality for the present age. If cynicism, alienation, and greed seem to be carrying the day, can historians hope to do more than show that another, better world did exist and might exist once again? Though we might wish for a more cooperative recommendation and one that did not disavow the benefits of capitalism along with the ills, that is no reason to turn away from this book. Johnston tells a tale of enormous hope and possibility, one that is especially welcome in these dark times. That, in the final accounting, is the immense value of this book.

If you use any part of this essay, I better see some credit. I have Lexis-Nexis. I can find you.