ABSTRACT
The "reform Darwinists" laid much of the intellectual groundwork for the twentieth-century social and political movements that have taken the liberal label in the ordinary language of political discussion. In the 1890s, Clark argued for a neoclassical revival of laissez-faire, but with the difference that the state would assume the role of enforcing genuine competition. All saw themselves as offering alternatives to the Darwinian struggle of laissez-faire conservatism, and all were influential on the movements for change that were to follow, from populism to the New Deal. Populism as a style of thought is an enigma that is difficult to capture. On the simplest level, one might say that its guiding principle is that all politics tends to come down to a conflict between "the people and the interests". The portrait of populism that emerges here is one of a confused and sometimes backward-looking social movement trying to make sense of a world in a state of rapid flux.
