From Lenin's tomb to Mar-a-Lago

Who speaks for the masses?

In the old days kings and emperors answered to themselves and God. But starting in the Enlightenment of the 18th century, they felt obliged to answer to—and speak for—the people. Doing so wasn't easy, because most of the speakers were members of elites of one sort or another.

The difficulty grew as democracy took hold in places like the United States. Now the people could speak for themselves. Such was the theory of democracy, anyway. The practice often remained as before.

Occasionally voters chose one of their own. Andrew Jackson was born into poverty and made his way to the presidency by talent and cussedness. Abraham Lincoln's rise was similarly heartwarming.

But most elected officials were better educated and better connected than their constituents. And wealthier: during the late 19th century, the Senate was known as the Millionaires Club, for the price of admission by state legislatures susceptible to dubious forms of persuasion. Theodore Roosevelt called for a “square deal” for ordinary Americans, a constituency this Harvard-educated, silk-stocking son of Knickerbocker New York knew only at second-hand.

As difficult as representing the people was for democrats, it was even harder for communists. Marx and Engels foretold the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat, but they said little about who would mobilize and lead the heroic workers.

Lenin solved the problem theoretically and then practically. The Russian revolutionary spoke of a small group of committed communists who would serve as the “vanguard of the proletariat." Especially in a backward place like Russia, where proletarians were greatly outnumbered by peasants, the vanguard would be necessary to drive history forward. The Communist party would strike against the capitalist state and lead the masses to socialism.

Lenin’s Bolsheviks did just this. They proceeded to entrench communism where czarism had long reigned. Proletarians with the temerity to challenge Lenin's interpretation of their interests were summarily dealt with. 

Donald Trump isn't Lenin, but he has confronted a similar problem. He professes to speak for the ordinary people of America, but he is decidedly not one of them. He might or might not be as wealthy as he has claimed to be, but his lifestyle is beyond the dreams of the average American. He channels grievances that have never touched him personally.

By one objective measure, Trump is better at this then Lenin was. Nobody elected Lenin to anything; Trump was elected president of the United States. The people he claims to speak for have endorsed him as their spokesman.

But the same measure places a ceiling on his credibility. No more than a minority of American voters voted for Trump in either of the elections he contested. Lenin never had to deal with such a negative referendum.

Populist movements can’t escape the dilemma of populist leadership. They boast of representing the ordinary people, but their leaders are, by the definition of leadership, extraordinary. No one in Russian revolutionary circles could match Lenin’s cunning ruthlessness; Trump’s rivals in the Republican party have failed to replicate his trick of breaking every rule in the book of politics and getting away with it.

Sometimes populist leaders succeed by achieving what their followers can hope to emulate. Americans so loved Andrew Jackson that many thousands of baby boys were named Andrew Jackson Smith, Andrew Jackson Jones, and so on. If Andy Jackson could grow up to be president, our little Andy can too.

Not many Russians wanted their sons to grow up like Lenin. Nor has “Donald” become a sudden favorite with American parents. It currently ranks 676 on the Social Security Administration’s top 1000 boys’ names.

Perhaps that’s why Lenin had to rule by terror, and why Trump has been stuck in the mid-40s of voter percentage. Lincoln was reported to have said you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. It sounds like something Lincoln would have said, and it’s pretty reasonable. There’s a performative aspect to political leadership generally, and to leadership of populist movements especially. Populist leaders can get broad support on some subjects, and deep investment from a core of adherents; but they can’t sell their entire agenda to the electorate as a whole.

Populism just isn’t as popular as it pretends to be.