ABSTRACT
Carlos Vilas, like Laclau an Argentine sociologist, once remarked that there is a populism for every taste—urban populism and agrarian populism, progressive populism and conservative populism, mass populism and elite populism, native populism and Westernized populism, socialist populism and fascist populism, populism “from below”’ and populism “from above.” Populism can be understood only in the context of the time and place in which it occurs. A recurring feature of populism is that its practitioners appeal across social classes and use anti-elitist rhetoric that identifies an oligarchy as the enemy of a vaguely defined sector called the “people.” The possessing classes that genuinely contribute to national grandeur and prosperity, honest merchants, working and fair industrialists, farmers who increase the fertility of the land, have no reason to fear the power of the people. Populism represented reform and modernization, often cloaked in the rhetoric of “anti-imperialism” but rarely challenging capitalism itself.
