What Is Progressivism?

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  Gadfly, we are now starting to hear the term progressive mentioned more and more in the public narrative.  It sounds, well, “progressive,” implying deliberate efforts toward “progress.”

Old Gadfly:  Yes, the term is very seductive.

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  I have even heard some of my relatively “conservative” friends claim to be progressive, typically as in a Teddy Roosevelt progressive.  As I understand it, Teddy was one of the first American advocates of progressivism, a political movement historians refer to as the Progressive Era, 1890s-1920s.

AM:  This progressive era focused on (a) cleaning up corruption in government (i.e., political machines) through direct democracy: and (b) reigning in monopolies through antitrust laws and actions, mostly for the benefit of fair competition and for the benefit of consumers.  Proponents of these objectives consisted of Republicans (e.g., Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette) and Democrats (e.g., William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson).     

Old Gadfly:  The focus seemed appropriate, whether Republican or Democrat.  So, it seems to me that the progressive era was a good thing for America.  Am I wrong?

IM:  Good question.

Old Gadfly:  What was going on in America at the time?

AM:  America was still transforming based on technology-driven industrialization. America shifted from an agricultural, rural nation to and industrialized, urban nation that lacked institutions to accommodate these changes.

Old Gadfly:  What do you mean by “institutions”?

AM:  I found one of the books in your study particularly useful for answering that question.  Douglass North, in his book, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, defined an institution as simply, “the rules of the game.”[1]  North expands on this simple definition by explaining that institutions are “the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.  In consequence, they structure incentives in human exchange, whether political, social, or economic.  Institutional change shapes the way societies evolve through time and hence is the key to understanding historical change.”[2]  Thus, in answer to your bigger question, Teddy Roosevelt advocated new rules of the game to better accommodate the technology-driven changes taking place in America.

Old Gadfly:   All this sounds like a good and needed approach.  Yet, why was the term progressive used as opposed to modernism, solutionism, or some equivalent word?

IM:  Do you think it related to the idea of progress?

Old Gadfly:  What do you think?  Is there such an idea?

IM:  Yes, it stemmed from the Age of Enlightenment.

Old Gadfly:  Explain.

IM:  The theory of the idea of progress subscribes to a combination of technology, science, and social action (e.g., social engineering) to improve the human condition.

AM:  We have seen where single elements or combinations have produced positive and negative results.  For example, nuclear energy can be used for electrical power for the benefit of many people or it can be used for death and destruction.  So, these concepts can improve or adversely impact the human condition.

Old Gadfly:  Excellent point, AM.  So, if the idea of progress can have different paths, that is, creative versus destructive, then what is the determinant of those paths?

AM:  Any application of technology, science, or social action is based on human decision-making.

Old Gadfly:  I agree.  Now, how does this decision-making relate to the nature of progressivism?

IM:  It requires someone or a like-minded group to make decisions.

Old Gadfly:  And this is why progressivism is seductive and dangerous.  The notion of progressivism emerged based on reasonable expectations to accommodate major changes taking place in the American culture with new institutions; yet, the scope and application of progressivism evolved over time.  As a consequence, many today who favor progress believe they are a “progressive.” 

IM:  So, those who understand the seductiveness and danger of progressivism are considered “conservative” and opposed to progress.  That is why it is so customary today to hear the left accuse the right of being anti-women, anti-black, anti-gay, anti-equality (this runs the gamut from income inequality, gender-based wage inequality, to marriage inequality), anti-immigrant, anti-reproductive rights, and so forth.    

AM:  It appears that the major leftward evolution of progressivism took place during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. 

Old Gadfly:  What was Wilson’s view?

AM:  The main tenet of Wilson’s progressivism is that central planners with superior knowledge could advance policy to promote the idea of progress for the benefit of the people.  Wilson was critical of a constitutional republic because it was based on property ownership and individual rights.  He believed that the principles of democracy and socialism were essentially the same, with socialism being a more advanced condition that only the historical evolution of organizational institutions (i.e., a large, national, central government) could support.  Ronald Pestritto provides evidence of this view based on a critical analysis of Wilson’s documented writings and actions in his book, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism.[3] 

IM:  Pestritto also provided an excellent analysis, often ignored in histories and biographies, of Wilson’s view on the role of “progressive races” in the historical development of the modern state.[4]  He was openly critical of post-Civil War Reconstruction because “blacks were an inferior race.”[5]  Thomas Sowell, in his book, Intellectuals and Race, provided a wealth of evidence about Wilson’s and the American political elite’s fascination with and advocacy of eugenics.[6]  Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood is a modern legacy of this thinking.[7]

Old Gadfly:  A little more than a year ago, I visited the presidential library of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  In one of the displays, I was amazed to read the explicit acknowledgement by FDR of his admiration for Wilson’s progressive views.  So, as I turned the corner and examined a series of panels listing all the New Deal policy changes FDR instituted during the course of his presidency, I began to realize how serious this group of American progressive political elite was in transforming America from a constitutional republic to a socialistic democracy.

IM:  It was also during this timeframe that American political elite traveled to Europe and Russia to see first had the great experiments by Hitler and Stalin to advance the human condition.  As Amity Shlaes described it in her book, The Forgotten Man, collective freedom observed by these elite seemed superior to individual freedom.[8]

AM:  The American political elite’s admiration of the statist and social engineering efforts taking place under Hitler and Stalin gave birth to the neoconservative movement.  Francis Fukuyama explained this development it in his book, America at the Crossroads:  Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy.[9]  He traced the roots of neoconservatism to City College of New York in the mid-1930s to early 1940s, where a group of Jewish intellectuals attended as students.  A late-comer to this group was Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  There were two major reasons for splitting away from their left-wing liberal colleagues.  The first reason was their disgust for communism and those who sympathized with communist developments in the 30s and 40s.  These founding neoconservatives generally had no issue with the idealism of socialism; yet they saw the realities of socialism—its evil manifestations stemming from the Hitler-Stalin pact and other significant unintended consequences—and wanted nothing of it.  The second major reason for the split from their liberal colleagues was the liberal’s passion for social engineering.  Social engineering, as an egalitarian approach to shaping society, assumed perfect knowledge by elite who conceived the engineering.  These elite were members of a central planning effort within the government.  The evolving progressive ideology had already demonstrated its similarities to the statist and socialist movements in Germany and the Soviet Union.

Old Gadfly:  When you say, egalitarian approach.  What do you mean by that?

AM:  Egalitarianism is a manifestation of modern liberalism and progressivism.  Its guiding principle is equality of outcomes.  Thus, egalitarianism chooses equality of outcomes over freedom of choice.  According to Milton Friedman, a classical liberal is encouraged by greater material equality in a free society, trusting that material equality is a by-product of a free society.  Progressives are not content with this dynamic; they feel morally obligated to take control of society and justify taking from some to give to others as the “just” thing to do.^[10]  Even the celebrated John Rawls, a Harvard political philosopher, argued for egalitarian approaches in his book, A Theory of Justice.  Rawls claimed an impartial system of justice is not possible, even in modern, civil societies because of various conceptions of justice.  Thus, he argued, “Clearly this distinction between the concept [ideal, impartial justice] and the various conceptions of justice settles no important questions.  It simply helps to identify the role of the principles of social justice”.[11]   Consequently, in Rawls’ reasoned judgment, justice in the form of “social justice” is a means, not an end.  Egalitarian approaches, as a form of social justice, are morally coercive because they “take away” and “give to” in the spirit of equal outcomes.  Progressives believe central planners of superior intellect can make these types of decisions.  Forced redistribution of wealth is a classic example.

IM:  C.S. Lewis addressed this coerciveness in his book, The Abolition of Man.[12]  His chapter, “Men without Chests,” challenges political correctness and the threat to free and spontaneous expression and behaviors.  Lewis wrote in the mid-1940s.  During this same period, “progressive” developments in the Soviet Union prompted Winston Churchill to give his “Iron Curtain” speech (the real title was The Sinews of Peace, delivered on March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri—after losing reelection).  Stalin denounced Churchill’s speech and accused him of “racism.”

AM:  Stalin’s reaction is interesting and ironic.  In modern America, it is typical for a progressive to accuse those on the right as being racist (as well as homophobes, xenophobes, anti-women, etc.).

IM:  Incidentally, F. A. Hayek, like C. S. Lewis, explained how progressive central planners even insist people internalizing values that the planners determine.  In Chapter 11, “The End of Truth,” in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek explained:

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends. . . . It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends.  Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants.[13]

AM:  Lewis and Hayek wrote in the 1940s.  Their observations certainly apply to the emotional reaction and labeling by those on the left in America today.  Secretary of State Kerry recently called global warming skeptics members of the Flat Earth Society.  Yet, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) politicizes a consensus view among 52 scientists, there are over 700 who disagree for a variety of legitimate, scientific reasons.  

Old Gadfly:  What you are describing AM is how progressives use scientism, not science, to advance their notion of progress.  In another conversation, we’ll discuss scientism in greater depth. Meanwhile, we have discussed the Progressive Era and some of its spinoff manifestations from Wilson and FDR.  Is there any other evidence of progressivism in America since FDR?

IM:  As I understand the evolution of the neoconservative movement, there was a “second wave” stemming from the emergence of the “New Left” led by Tom Hayden who authored the Port Huron Statement in 1962 that spawned the Students for a Democratic Society.  As Fukuyama asserted, the New Left fueled a “revival of large-scale social engineering on the part of the U.S. Government, in the form of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society Programs.”[14] 

AM:  In 1966, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven published an article that laid out a political strategy to overload the welfare system to precipitate a crisis that would justify (a) blaming capitalism for its inherent flaws, and (b) replacing our economic system with socialism and a government run guarantee of equal income for everyone.[15]  Given this New Left momentum, combined with significant Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress (see table below), Lyndon Johnson resurrected progressivism after significant stability and infrastructure investments under the Eisenhower Administration. 

IM:  Barack Obama has taken progressivism even further leftward with his hope and change agenda.  The further left it moves, the more coercive it becomes.  Obamacare is an obvious example.

Old Gadfly: Excellent analysis, gentlemen.  So, we have arrived at a definition of modern progressivism:  a belief that central planners with superior knowledge can combine technology, science, and social action in such a way as to improve the human condition, using coercion if needed.  This approach seems to completely disregard the importance of individual liberty.  We have also mentioned other concepts such as Democrat, Republican, modern liberalism, classical liberalism, and so forth.  In our next conversation, let us further define various terms and then place them on a political map to see if we can further understand where we are today in America.  

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[1] Douglass C.  North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.  (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1990).

[2] Ibid, p. 3.

[3] Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism.  (New York, NY:  Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005).

[4] Ibid, pp. 43-45.

[5] Ibid, p. 44.

[6] Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race.  (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2013)

[7] Vanessa Murphree and Karla K. Gower, “’Making Birth Control Respectable’:  The Birth Control Review, 1917-1928.”  American Journalism, Volume 30, Issue 2 (2013), pp. 210-234.

[8] Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man:  A New History of the Great Depression.  (New York, NY:  Harper, 2007), pp. 78-139.

[9] Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads:  Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy.  (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 14-21.

[10] Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 40^th Anniversary Edition, (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 195.

[11] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition.  (Cambridge, MA:  Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003 (originally published in 1971]), p. 5.

[12] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.  (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 1996 [originally published in 1944]).

[13] F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, The Definitive Edition, Edited by Bruce Caldwell.  (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 2007 [originally published in 1944]), p. 171.

[14] Fukuyama, op cit., p. 18.

[15] Richard Cloward and Frances Piven, “The Weight of the Poor:  A Strategy to End Poverty.” The Nation (May 2, 1966).  Available at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/24-4.  If you visit the website, note the subtitle under Common Dreams:  “Building a Progressive Community.”