ABSTRACT
Bilgrami explores the term “populism”, defined as ordinary people’s opposition to elites. It questions how opposition to voluntary and implicit surrender of sovereignty by elected law and policy-makers to unelected wielders of elite financial interest can be perceived as wrong. One cannot believe in democracy and dismiss the electorate as vile or stupid, for the electorate is shaped by what knowledge it possesses. Just as there can be a power vacuum, there can be a movement vacuum into which extreme right-wing nationalist movements step, representing a failure of public imagination on the part of the Left and its educated institutions and policies. Thus, populism is a reaction to capitalism in its neo-liberal mode: its inability to create sufficient employment, its systematic destruction of the bargaining power of labor and unions, and the making of immigration into a deep source of anxiety. Bilgrami concludes that the two underlying causes of contemporary populism are a chronic crisis of capitalism and the failure of the Left to find an adequate response to it. Ideas like de-linking nations of the South from the global economy and South-South relinking would take a great deal of public imagination on the part of the Left.
