Empiricism, Populism, Progressivism

According to Political Empiricism, the foundation of any social organization is the perceived self-interests of its members, with, contrary to the Aristotelian thesis, perceived self-interest and actual self-interest identical.  Now, an often appealing manifestation of that ideology, commonly called 'Populism', illustrates at the same time some of its shortcomings.  For, to begin with, that appeal is a function of prior conditions, which determine whether an Empiricist moment is liberating, or is dissipation, e. g. Occupy Wall Street as a reaction to Plutocratic infection of Democracy, vs. the Ku Klux Klan as resistance to counter-segregation measures.  Furthermore, it also a function of what ensues, in the absence of which even an anti-tyrannical moment is merely nihilistic, e. g. the American Declaration of Independence without the subsequent construction of the United States Constitution.  So, Populism has value only as a stage of a more general Progressive process, to which an immediate perception is usually inadequate.