So long as I’m debriefing myself about the OAH panel on this blog, let me put up my answer to the “nomenclature question”—i.e., “progressive” or “liberal.” I said (and I paraphrase myself from memory) that while as a citizen I understand the practical reason for avoiding the “l-word,” as a historian I’m not that keen on the use of the word “progressive.” Because as I understand it, I said, both wings of our modern political family descend from the progressives of the early twentieth century.
Basically, some progressive reforms addressed the ills of modernity by trying to make Americans into a better people—prohibition, immigration restriction, eugenics and so forth, and their descendants are modern conservative measures. Other progressive reforms addressed the ills of modernity by taking people more or less as they are, but by trying to dicker with the system that governed them—regulation of the financial rules, changes in workplace laws, and so forth, and their descendants are modern liberal measures.
So the term “progressive” seems a bit imprecise.
20 comments
March 31, 2008 at 5:20 pm
so-called "Austin Mayor"
Sir,
Although I make no historical claims for my nomenclature, I call myself a “progressive” as distinct from a “liberal”. A progressive is a person who both a) has a liberal/lefty political philosophy and b) a deep belief in a populist/grassroots/small ‘d’ democratic.
In my political theology, Hillary Clinton is a liberal and Paul Wellstone was a progressive. Rahm Emmanuel is a liberal and Howard Dean is a progressive.
And Sen. Barack Obama seems to be a progressive as well.
– SCAM
so-called “Austin Mayor”
http://austinmayor.blogspot.com
March 31, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
I agree that the term “progressive” comes with a lot baggage from several ill-conceived “reform” movements of the early 20th-century — baggage most of us on the left would rather not be burdened with. By comparison, the term “liberal” has a long, noble history in the US from the Abolitionists to the New Deal to the civil rights movement.
So, why not stick with the L-word?
I think SCAM above touches on something. I think it has to do with change, who’s behind it, and how it is to be carried out. As one wag put it the difference is this: A liberal is someone who WANTS health care for everyone. A progressive is someone willing to WORK for it.
Yes, that’s overly simplistic, and perhaps unfair. But I think there are connotations with both terms that need some more exploring.
March 31, 2008 at 6:55 pm
eric
To: SCAM
http://austinmayor.blogspot.com
Sir,
You are correct. Nobody cares about the progressive period, or much other History, except the abstruser type of Historian.
We regret the error.
ER
March 31, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Colin
My impression is that it sorta means “left” when people lack nerve to say “left,” and/or that it’s used to claim vague high ground against others; the telltale phrase is then “true progressive.”
Reading the first post, it may also be that because people who would be considered center or center-right in other contexts, like Clinton or Dean, have gotten weirdly identified as “liberals” there’s some need for a leftward distinction away from “liberal.” But this gets to the incoherence of “liberal.”
March 31, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Hemlock
I’m wondering if historians can classify collectivities–even native dissidents from distinct cultural systems–as progressive, i.e., making people better and trying to dicker with/challenge the colonial system and governmentality. That is, can progressivism result from the cultural encounter and the used for decolonization purposes (both constructive and destructive)? Sorry just thinking while eating.
March 31, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Hemlock
The problem, as i see it, is the classification system itself. Especially cultural appropriation–often it’s conscious and used for individual ends rather than directly operating on consciousness.
Plus, good and bad for good is sorta like resistance v. accommodation….such foundational classification systems have been in Western pedagogy since Herodotus. I mean, “republicanism” and civilization narratives (whether in discourse or physical objects) is the same thing. All describing the same sorta deal…it’s the stuff that doesn’t fit and the constitutive mutuality…that’s what makes history.
March 31, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Hemlock
What’s funny is when historians (hell i’m bounding to do it/am doing it) challenge those kinda things. For example: what’s the difference between a declension narrative and a civilization narrative? One’s liberal while other is anti-capitalist and demonstrates the decline of a bucolic culture? Well..there’s the same prejudicial assumption structuring both, if you think real hard about it (at least, I had to think real hard). =)
The other thing is, when historians “discover” a discourse. What’s the difference between modernity and a civilization narrative? I mean is modernity really new? What…a new signifier? What’s new is the stuff that differentiates modernity discourse from civilization discourse…if yer all about culture, eh? I dunno…civilization seems more predominant in Anglo-American discourse in the eighteenth century. A transition? I dunno…at least, not as much in colonialism…perhaps in the metropoles? We need a modernity expert…
March 31, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Hemlock
Anyways, the attempt and PROVISIONAL interpretations are what counts…not obliterating the academy just cuz the subaltern can’t presently speak. Hence why I’m torn about cutting edge–shows people are attempting, but also becomes an avenue for socioeconomic/sexual hegemony. BTW apologize for grammar/spelling writing really quickly.
April 1, 2008 at 12:06 am
Hemlock
Correction: “conservative”, not “liberal” in the context of civilization narrative (capitalist or Western pedagogy justifying white supremacy/defining against history of native peopls/etc.).
April 1, 2008 at 1:02 am
Ben Alpers
Neither “progressive” nor “liberal” is particularly precise if you look at the various ways both have been used in American political discourse historically. I’m not sure any major political keyword really is.
As late as the 1930s, “liberal” was claimed by people we would today call “conservative,” like Herbert Hoover.
“Progressive” was also used as a euphemism for fellow travelers and Communists (both by Communists and fellow travelers and by their opponents) from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thus “progressive” became a term of abuse when wielded by Cold War liberals like Arthur Schlesinger. In The Vital Center, Schlesinger attacks not merely the current crop of “progressives” (represented by Henry Wallace, against whose Progressive Party Schlesinger was most directly writing), but progressives throughout American history, who Schlesinger portrays as sentimental “Doughfaces.”
It has always interested me that this mid-century phase of the use and/or abuse of “progressive” rarely enters into conversations about the term, which tend to center on the early 20C uses of it.
Finally, I think there are actually plenty of conservatives who are opposed to the legacy of (capital-P early 20C) Progressivism. These would include “traditionalist” conservatives like the Nashville Agrarians, free-market absolutists (e.g. Randian Objectivists), as well as people like Edward C. Banfield and Charles Murray, who launched very broad critiques of “social engineering” in general. This last group was particularly influential in transforming many neoconservatives from being aggressively anti-communist right social democrats (in the late 1960s) to being more typically American conservatives who opposed redistributionist social policies (by the late 1970s).
So while I take Eric’s point that there are strains in the modern right that descend from Progressivism (especially if one sees Progressivism as including, e.g., Prohibition and restrictions on immigration and the franchise), there are also powerful currents that descend from the opposition to Progressivism.
April 1, 2008 at 5:13 am
eric
there are also powerful currents that descend from the opposition to Progressivism
I’m having trouble with this sentence, which I would like to believe but don’t. For two reasons. First, because I would rather it read, “reaction to Progressivism,” rather than “opposition to Progressivism”; infamously, it’s really hard to find anyone who’s actually opposed to Progressivism during the progressive period.
But second, because I don’t think there’s any real constituency that responds fully to e.g. the Nashville Agrarians. Actual, voting agrarians were among the most steadfast of progressives, favoring all kinds of regulation, roads and schools improvements, and also prohibition and immigration-restriction. While the Nashville Agrarians might have used the rhetoric of real conservatism—i.e., keep all as it is—any constituency they might have had still favored all kinds of progressivism.
So I guess my point 1 and my point 2 are actually closely related: show me a constituency that’s really conservative, and not just progressive-for-me-but-conservative-for-you. I think it’s awfully hard to do, and even harder during 1900-1920.
April 1, 2008 at 7:45 am
Mr Punch
The current use of the term “progressive” has a lot more to do with Henry Wallace than with Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. “Liberal” was rejected both by the New Left (I recall I.F. Stone trying to defend it at an early anti-war march on Washington) and by organized labor — which is of course basically conservative in its defense of its prerogatives. A new term was needed to put the Democratic Party back together after 1972. (Of course the fact that the media often referred to Jimmy Carter as a liberal didn’t help.)
I still call myself a liberal. I guess I’d classify Obama as more of a liberal than a progressive, because he’s internationalist, concerned with civil liberties, and pro-worker without being entirely under the thumb of the unions (a post-1968 criterion). Hillary Clinton is a “Cold War Liberal” on the model of Scoop Jackson — and he didn’t seem very liberal by 1976.
April 1, 2008 at 7:47 am
Mr Punch
I don’t know what happened here — my comment is the two paragraphs beginning “The current use…”
April 1, 2008 at 7:53 am
eric
We can see it, Mr Punch—I’m going to bet you’re using Internet Explorer. There’s some known problem with IE and formatting of our comments that we’ve never been able to fix, unfortunately. We welcome the free consultative services of any css gurus….
April 1, 2008 at 9:21 am
Coyness is nice, and coyness can stop you, from saying all the things in life you’d like to… « Blurred Productions
[...] Eric & Ari link: Eric on the past & future of American [...]
April 2, 2008 at 4:47 am
Ben Alpers
I tried to formulate a quick response to your 5:13 am post from yesterday, Eric, but I find that it’s hard to be terse about such complicated issues. So here are some still scattered thoughts that hopefully will address some of what you wrote above.
I’m more or less comfortable with substituting “reaction to progressivism” for “opposition to progressivism.”
However, I think there’s a danger in defining “progressivism” in the Progressive Era (putting aside the Henry Wallace usage for a second) so broadly as to make everyone progressive, at which point the term no longer means much of anything (see Dan Rodgers famous review essay “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 113-132).
Though “progressivism” is difficult to define, it’s important to at the very least acknowledge that progressives in the early twentieth century believed that they had opponents who rejected progressivism, most prominently corrupt urban political machines and certain big business interests. Certainly by the 1910s, nearly everyone in American politics wanted to be seen as “progressive.” But these claims were often contested. For example, President Taft in 1912, made a point of claiming to be a progressive, and TR, in turn, devoted a speech to denying it (“Roosevelt Denies Taft is Progressive,” New York Times, April 4, 1912).
Four and a half years later, President Wilson concluded the final statement of his reelection campaign by warning: “It is…our duty to take every precaution, lest conscienceless agents of the sinister forces working in opposition to progressive principles and popular government resort in their desperation to industrial coercion or to the evil and insidious practices of a decade and more ago.” (“‘The Fight is Won’ is Wilson’s Final Word to Leaders,” New York Times, November 6, 1916).
Contemporary academic observers of the political scene similarly drew contrasts between conservatives and progressives. To take one random example, here’s Addison Sheldon writing about Nebraska’s 1919-1920 Constitutional Convention in The American Political Science Review, vol. 15, no. 3 (Aug., 1921), p. 392:
However we define “progressivism” during the Progressive Era (and I’ll admit that this can be difficult), I think our definition has to account for the fact that there were many political divisions over issues of concern to progressives and progressives themselves did not think that they were unopposed.
On the question of the nonexistence of a constituency for “real” conservatism today, you may be right if you limit your search to an electoral constituency. However, among policy elites there are a number of prominent “real” conservatives who’ve had an important impact on the way we are governed. There’s no electoral constituency for neoconservatism, either, but that doesn’t make the neoconservatives politically irrelevant.
Finally, on Mr. Punch’s point about the ’60s: Was “progressive” such an important word for the New Left? The New Left certainly rejected “liberalism.” But, as it’s name suggests, “left” was a more important self-identifier than “progressive.” At any rate, the current usage of the term “progressive” came in the wake of the right’s attacks on liberalism in 1970s. “Progressive” became a way of rejecting both liberalism and conservatism. Thus it was attractive not only to liberals (and leftists) seeking to rebrand themselves, but also to “third way” centrists, like the Democratic Leadership Council, whose think tank is called the “Progressive Policy Institute.”
April 2, 2008 at 4:58 am
eric
progressives themselves did not think that they were unopposed
This is certainly true. But this doesn’t make it so. See, e.g., Bannister on Social Darwinism. (That is also the SEK-signal.) Which is to say, just because you find people saying, “I am opposed by anti-progressive forces,” don’t make it so.
For my own self, I tend to say that, (say) Nelson Aldrich and Mark Hanna were not progressives. But you and I know there are substantial scholarly cases made the other way. And when pushed to say why they were not, I get in trouble. Because they supported x and y, which are identified with progressivism. Well, then, I say, they never would have if not forced. Ah, but of course, the same is true of Woodrow Wilson, isn’t it. Yes. One is foxed.
you may be right if you limit your search to an electoral constituency
There you have me: I don’t believe in politics without electoral constituencies. At least, not yet.
April 2, 2008 at 5:20 am
Ben Alpers
I don’t believe in politics without electoral constituencies. At least, not yet.
Do you believe in politics in which people with a particular set of political beliefs build an electoral constituency for themselves based on arguments about things other than that particular set of political beliefs?
To take a concrete example: Do you think that there’s an electoral constituency for the “unitary executive” theory? Or is that theory politically unimportant because there is no such constituency?
April 2, 2008 at 5:23 am
eric
That’s what I meant to summarize by saying, “not yet.” And by “not yet,” I meant two things: i.e., not yet in the 1910s; I don’t really believe that the 1910s saw the emergence of a coherent ideology of a governing class as distinct from its constituencies—though the word “coherent” is doing a bit more work than I’d like there and I could be persuaded on a weak day.
And by “not yet,” I was referring also to the agglomeration of administration policies that include the “unitary executive” theory; which I think are certainly the politics of a very small number of very important people. It remains to be seen whether they actually lack a constituency.
April 2, 2008 at 5:29 am
Ben Alpers
Then I largely agree with you on this point. My initial comment about politics without an electoral constituency concerned a constituency for “real” conservatism today, not in the early twentieth century.