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What is Producerism?

One of the staples of repressive and right-wing populist ideology has been producerism, a doctrine that champions the so-called producers in society against both “unproductive” elites and subordinate groups defined as lazy, immoral, or subversive. Producerism has its roots in agrarian populist movements but moved across several sectors of society. In outcome, producerism represents a militant anti-regime revolt serving reactionary White privilege and defending unequal economic hierarchies.

Emerging in the GOP primaries as a central meme is the idea that the the election is about the White middle class versus the lazy, sinful, and subversive (non-White) parasites. This has a name: Producerism. See, for example, the excellent article by Joseph Lowndes: "Why Are GOP Contenders Reviving Racist Rhetoric?"

Throughout the Tea Party movement are calls to rally the virtuous "producing classes" against evil "parasites" at both the top and bottom of society. None of this is new.

Producerism is a social movement narrative built around a conspiracy theory of power. Today we also see examples of producerism in some sectors of the Christian Right, in the Patriot movements and armed militias, and in the Far Right.

At the core of the producerist narrative is the idea that the middle class is being squeezed into the poor house by parasitic forces above and below them on the socio-economic ladder that have created a vise.

Conservative activists Gary Allen and Larry Abraham used a producerist framework in None Dare Call It Conspiracy Allen and Abraham claimed this represented the the use of the “Communist tactic of pressure from above and pressure from below,” and used this illustration below:

(Allen with Abraham, 1972, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, p. 124)

 

From the Horse's Mouth

In 1975 Conservative ideologue William Rusher, longtime publisher of National Review, picked up the producerist refrain as part of an ongoing discussion among conservatives on whether it made more sense to start a third political party or try to take over the Republican Party. Rusher charged that a:

...new economic division pits the producers—businessmen, manufacturers, hard-hats, blue-collar workers, and farmers—against the new and powerful class of nonproducers comprised of a liberal verbalist elite (the dominant media, the major foundations and research institutions, the educational establishment, the federal and state bureaucracies) and a semipermanent welfare constituency, all coexisting happily in a state of mutually sustaining symbiosis.


William Rusher, 1975, The Making of the New Majority Party, Ottawa, IL: Greenhill Publications, p. 14. See also Berlet and Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America, especially pp. 6-13.
Richard Viguerie, one of the founders of the New Right, promoted right-wing populism and producerism in his book titled The Establishment vs. The People.
According to Conservative Digest, the liberal government "pork barrel" passed tax dollars to bureaucrats who funded left-wing activists attacking capitalism and promoting welfare.

In our book Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, Matthew N. Lyons and I explained producerism this way:

Producerism begins in the US with the Jacksonians, who wove together intra-elite factionalism and lower-class Whites’ double-edged resentments. Producerism became a staple of repressive populist ideology.  Producerism sought to rally the middle strata together with certain sections of the elite.

Specifically, it championed the so-called producing classes (including White farmers, laborers, artisans, slaveowning planters, and “productive” capitalists) against “unproductive” bankers, speculators, and monopolists above—and people of color below.

After the Jacksonian era, producerism was a central tenet of the anti-Chinese crusade in the late nineteenth century. In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin’s fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against “parasitic” Jews.

Our conception of producerism is derived from Alexander Saxton’s discussion of the “Producer Ethic” as an ideology of the early White labor movement that “emphasized an egalitarianism reserved for whites.” (Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America [London: Verso, 1990], p. 313.) See also White Republic, p. 298; and Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 21-22, 52, 265-69.

Our conception is also deeply influenced by Moishe Postone’s discussion of how modern antisemitism draws a false dichotomy between “productive” industrial capital and “parasitic” finance capital. See Postone, "Anti-Semitism and National Socialism: Notes on the German Reaction to ‘Holocaust,’" new german critique 19 (Winter 1980), pp. 97-115, esp. pp. 106-13.

We use the term producerism in a different way than Catherine McNicol Stock does in her book Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). Stock portrays producerism simply as a form of populist antielitism, separate from (though sometimes coinciding with) attacks on people of color.

In our view, producerism intrinsically involves a dual-edged combination of anti-elitism and oppression (in the US setting, usually in the form of racism or antisemitism, but also sexism and homophobia) and it is precisely this combination that must be addressed.

Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press.

Kazin points out that as it developed in the nineteenth century,

...the romance of producerism had a cultural blind spot; it left unchallenged strong prejudices toward not just African-Americans but also toward recent immigrants who had not learned or would not employ the language and rituals of this variant of the civic religion.

Even those native-born activists who reached out to immigrant laborers assumed that men of Anglo-American origins had invented political democracy, prideful work habits, and well-governed communities of the middling classes.

In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin’s fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against “parasitic” Jews.

Like Ford and Coughlin, Willis Carto combined producerism with antisemitism, where it appeared in his Spotlight newspaper and later in the American Free Press. Producerism saw "welfare cheats" and the "undeserving poor," assisted by a wasteful liberal government bureaucracy handing out tax dollars to the lazy underclass.

Producerism, with its baggage of prejudice, remains today the most common populist narrative on the right, especially in the Tea Party Movement. Producerism facilitates the use of demonization and scapegoating as political tools.

Producerism is a core component of Right-Wing Populism. You can see how it works in the following Chart:

 

 

This page adapted from Berlet and Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press.

 

Find out more about
Right-Wing Populism
in America:
Too Close for Comfort

 
by Chip Berlet & Matthew N. Lyons

 

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