The new citizenship : origins of progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900

Abstract

This is a book about people with different ideas about democracy from those that prevail today. Wisconsin's early progressives would have been astonished by the focus historians have placed on producer identifications. They identified mainly with their roles as consumers and taxpayers, and they gravely doubted whether the existing political economy could ever meet their needs. Many of them favored public ownership of certain corporations because the particular relationship of those corporations to the political process made it impossible for consumers to receive redress in any other way. For these early progressives oppression resulted from "special privilege," not from relationship to the means of production. A socialist state could be as dominated by special privilege as a capitalist one, and it, too, could deny real power to consumers.