Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Farmers' Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880-1890 [Book Review]

Abstract

Sociologist Michael Schwartz's well-written monograph is an uneasy combination of New Left social theory and a sketch of the history of the Southern Farmers~ Alliance from 1886 to roughly 1889. Less satisfactory as history than Robert C. McMath, Jr.'s Populist Vanguard or Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise (neither of which Schwartz was aware of when his book went to press), Schwartz's study offers a wholly economic explanation of the origin of the Alliance, and an indictment of its leadership as oligarchs whose class and personal interests contradicted those of the membership and caused the failure of the organization.

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