This article examines the political theory of the late nineteenth-century American Populist movement, with a particular focus on its theories of state and corporation. Recent scholarship on populism has tended to present the phenomenon as a variant of direct democracy intrinsically opposed to intermediary bodies, a feature consistently traced back to American Populism as well. In this account, American Populists opposed new discourses of corporate personhood and free incorporation in the late nineteenth century owing to their tendency to distort natural bonds between peoples and leaders and to disperse the popular will. This article questions the tenability of this opposition through a close contextual engagement with original Populist texts. As the first self-declared ‘populist’ movement in modern history, Populists theorized about the usage of corporate personality for their own co-operatives and put forward ambitious visions of American statecraft, breaking with the proprietary individualism that characterized Jeffersonian agrarianism before. The article focuses on two particular genres of Populist thinking: first, their advocacy of the corporate form for their co-operative farm organizing and, secondly, a specifically statutory vision of state reform. It concludes with reflections on how these findings destabilize assumptions governing the current populism debate in political theory and American historiography.

本文考察了 19 世纪后期美国民粹主义运动的政治理论，特别关注其国家和公司理论。最近关于民粹主义的学术研究倾向于将这种现象描述为直接民主的一种变体，本质上与中介机构相对立，这一特征也一直可以追溯到美国民粹主义。在这种情况下，美国民粹主义者反对 19 世纪后期关于公司人格和自由合并的新话语，因为他们倾向于扭曲人民与领导人之间的自然联系并分散民众的意愿。本文通过与原始民粹主义文本的密切语境接触来质疑这种对立的有效性。作为现代历史上第一个自称为“民粹主义”的运动，民粹主义者将企业人格用于他们自己的合作社进行了理论化，并提出了雄心勃勃的美国治国理念，打破了以前杰斐逊农业主义特征的专有个人主义。本文重点关注两种特殊类型的民粹主义思想：首先，他们倡导采用公司形式进行合作农场组织，其次，国家改革的特定法定愿景。最后反思了这些发现如何破坏当前政治理论和美国史学中民粹主义辩论的假设。本文重点关注两种特殊类型的民粹主义思想：首先，他们倡导采用公司形式进行合作农场组织，其次，国家改革的特定法定愿景。最后反思了这些发现如何破坏当前政治理论和美国史学中民粹主义辩论的假设。本文重点关注两种特殊类型的民粹主义思想：首先，他们倡导采用公司形式进行合作农场组织，其次，国家改革的特定法定愿景。最后反思了这些发现如何破坏当前政治理论和美国史学中民粹主义辩论的假设。