Pragmatism

Pragmatism During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the United States suffered, not fiscally, but internally. There were many problems internally with the United States during this period due to monopolies, and overwhelmingly large corporations. Due to these internal flaws, many large corporations were able to take advantage of their workers, their wages, and further concentrate their wealth to the select few who owned or operated the elite levels of the corporations. This then led to a growing movement to support these workers, and protect them from the controlling elite. At this time, there was many different political organizations emerging; all sharing different opinions and solutions on how to fix the United States’ internal problems. Ideologies such as populism, socialism, communism, and even anarchism all presented different approaches to combat these large elitist corporations.
One of the earliest of these ideologies to be influential at the time was socialism and populism. However, due to socialisms social stigma it carried, it was not viewed as a pragmatic solution. Populism on the other hand, did receive a large amount of support due to its democratic approach to mild reform. Many argue that populists and progressives were able to be successful in politics because they were pragmatic in their political approach. By this, I mean that populists and progressives saw a problem, and attempted to fix it. Most populists and progressives left abstract theories aside, and presented solutions that were relevant only to the issues at hand. Of course there were many populists and progressives that held socialist and other abstract theories; but as a majority, these people sought a current issue, and found a current solution to that issue.
Pragmatism in many ways is the rejection of abstract theories and the concentration of the present. It is in many ways a method of how to approach life. It is an individualist approach and