The term “progressive” has evolved a great deal over the past 35 years. By the ’70s, many ’60s veterans had concluded that working “within the system” had become a viable option. As a result, many leftists stopped using rhetoric and slogans that had marginalized them from the political mainstream. Labels like “radical”, “leftist”, and “revolutionary” sounded stale and gratuitously provocative. And… return to article
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Reader Comments (9)Page 1 of 1 pagesI really think this article misses the mark in some very important ways. With regards to option 1, there’s no discussion of DFA, one of the more prominent groups advocating something like a “party within a party” strategy. DFA is significantly more successful than PDA, and has more than a handful of victories under its belt, and they are very well integrated into the progressive movement. Moreover, the Progressive Caucus has had some success with its agenda - the minimum wage was raised, EFCA passed the House, and so on.
With regards to the multi-issue groups, I was surprised to read no mention of MoveOn, one of the most successful multi-issue coalition groups in recent memory, also clearly well enmeshed within the progressive movement.
The option cited as the most obvious by process of elimination has not been in effect since 2001; it’s been in effect for at least a few decades, and it gets less successful with each passing year. Our success with Social Security was the product of a broad coalition that included DFA and MoveOn, two groups who clearly represent options 1 and 2 respectively, and I think that fact undermines the conclusion of this piece.
Posted by ssachs on Mar 2, 2008 at 9:40 PM Your point about DFA is well taken, but it is far from clear that DFA stands to the left of Obama. A quck glance at DFA’s website reveals very little about where it stands on any important issues - other than it suports candidates who are “socially progressive and fiscally responsible.” While there is, of course, nothing wrong with “fiscal responsibility “, it’s pretty clear that the use of such rhetoric typically doesn’t lend itself to the kind of expansive social programs that the left considers basic to its agenda. No surprise here - after all Howard Dean is not really on or of the left.
As for the two pieces of legislation you refer to in the first par., was the increase in the minimum wage a Prog Caucus led bill? It is my understanding that it was not. Unfort. - as you point out, EFCA has yet to be signed into law.
MoveON is certainly a huge success - but it is not a “coalition”. It is a membership organization. In my column, I was discussing the possibility of forming a grand coalition of the many membership orgs that are part of the prog mvt.
Sure - the ad hoc, issue -by -issue approach hasn’t been terribly successful in recent years. With Bush in the White House and the Republicans able to block any serious reforms in Congress - it was nearly impossible to move forward. But if Obama (or Clinton) becomes president - and we also have Dem control of both houses of Congress, the ad hoc approach will have a lot more chances to produce solid prog victories.
Posted by kenbrociner on Mar 3, 2008 at 7:14 AM The term “progressive” has evolved a great deal over the past 35 years.
Well, yes, and it evolved even more in the years before that.
Within the last century, in the USA, the Communists could not get themselves elected during the Great Depression, so they began calling themselves Socialists. The Socialists could not get themselves elected, so they began calling themselves Progressives, hijacking a perfectly honorable name (except for the racist and eugenic aspects) for their Leftist objectives. The Progressives could not get themselves elected, so they began calling themselves Liberals, hijacking another perfectly honorable name for their Leftist objectives.
Now Hillary is calling herself a Progressive again. The last Communist who ran for President while calling himself a Progressive was Henry Wallace, in 1948. He lost. Badly. Hillary undoubtedly does not recognize the symbolism and irony.
The whole liberal philosophy developed in the Enlightenment in the 17th Century, and upheld the rights and powers of the individual as opposed to the powers of the priests, kings, and commissars over the people. The finest and most concise statement of liberal philosophy is contained in the Constitution of the United States and in particular in the Bill of Rights.
So, why are Leftists calling themselves Liberals while enforcing speech codes, attacking religious expression, and restricting firearms? Leftists are not trying to uphold the rights and powers of individuals, they are trying to suppress the rights and powers of individuals in favor of a Collective power. It does not take a village. “Soviet” translates as “committee”. Leftist bureaucracies destroyed the Soviet Union and are now doing serious damage to Europe, and they will joyfully destroy the American experiment if allowed to do so.
The Left is having an Identity Crisis; they can’t fool all of the people any of the time no matter what they call themselves.
I propose that the followers of Marx and Gramsci be identified as Sinisteres (n.) (adj. Sinister), an apt name and description that suits them fine.
Posted by scorp on Mar 4, 2008 at 5:16 AM Fascism and communism are two sides of the same coin, and the name of that coin is capitalism. Every other form of government is an amalgym of communism (on the left) and fascism (on the right), national socialism or international socialism, privately owned enterprise or state owned enterprise, warfare or revolution. In other words, political conflict, like the religious conflict which preceded it, is just another excuse to dispose of the people rendered socially useless by the transition from feudalism to industrialism.
Posted by Major Major on Mar 6, 2008 at 6:40 PM MM -
So, if Fascism and Communism are the two sides of the capitalist coin, how do you account for the collapse of the Soviet Union into corruption, inefficiency, and bankruptcy, while the United States staggers from triumph to triumph? This despite the Sinisteres’ decades-long predictions and insistence that the USA is “failing”.
In fact, Fascism and Communism are each collectivist and totalitarian, while American democratic capitalism is uniquely individualist and thrives in a (relatively) free environment, both in theory (the Constitution of the United States) and in practice. The Sinisteres want the USA to fail, but so far, no luck. They point to our current problems, but our current problems are quite trivial compared to some of the hellacious trials we have been through in the past: the War Between the States, the Great Depression, and WWII were the biggest.
Marx promulgated the labor theory of value that declared that all value was derived from the value of the labor that was put into it. This is nonsense, of course.
At its root, capitalism is an information system. In a free market, the price of an item tells you whether it is a good deal or not, or if better offers are available. In a stable economic environment, prices do not vary much. But the value of, for example, MicroSoft was quite small thirty years ago, and is much higher now. No amount of labor could have driven up the price of MicroSoft to its current level. The value of MicroSoft is a function of it’s utility that is, in turn, a product of the innovative labor-saving function. Recognizing the changes in cost and the potentials that drive changes in cost are the basic elements of the capitalist information system.
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of similar capitalist technical innovations that add huge amounts of value to our economy and our society. People who recognized the potential of automated data after WWII were in an excellent position to capitalize on their knowledge and insight. The rest of us just benefit from the productivity and efficiency of computers, which is considerable.
In contrast, the Soviet Union had a single master list of all products and their prices throughout the Soviet Union. As a result, they frequently charged less for a product than the sum of the material, labor, and overhead that went into the product. That is why they went bankrupt, they did not know the true cost and value of anything, which only a free market can value correctly. And they certainly did not encourage innovation, except as a criminal enterprise.
Just as an exercise, can you name a single Socialist innovation that produced economies of, say, one-twentieth that of the automation developed in the USA under the capitalist system? No, you cannot.
In other words, political conflict, like the religious conflict which preceded it, is just another excuse to dispose of the people rendered socially useless by the transition from feudalism to industrialism.
You really ought to give a little thought before making weird-ball pronouncements such as this. You just said that “religious conflict … is just another excuse to dispose of the people rendered socially useless by the transition from feudalism to industrialism”. I am certain that religious conflict much predated both feudalism and and industrialism, and there is no obvious connection between “religious conflict” (or “political conflict”, for that matter) and “the transition from feudalism to industrialism”. The grand practitioners of disposing of people were the Fascists and Communists; their victims were not disposed of because they were “socially useless”, but in order to instill terror and thereby control the populace. After executing great chunks of the Red Army officer corps and the Communist appartchiks, Stalin suddenly needed these people and recalled all he could from the Gulags to fight Hitler, just as an example.
Posted by scorp on Mar 7, 2008 at 4:18 AM The tragedy is that the Russians and the Chinese and the Japanese had less than a century to modernize their societies, or face colonial conquest, while the Europeans had more than five centuries to accomplish the same results, through colonial conquest.
Posted by Major Major on Mar 9, 2008 at 4:29 PM “Progressive” is one of those fun words that is inherently neutral of content but has an implied meaning that we can argue over. I mean progressive means being in favor of progress, right? But progress toward what? That is the real question.
So to some people the industrial revolution was progress and progressive. We can progress toward the cliff and our doom, or we can progress toward a better day for all. Or we can progress toward a two teired socitey of the rich and the poor as we seem to be doing now.
I fight for the word progressive to mean “someone who is for progress toward the betterment of the human condition for the largest number of humans possible.”
So that frames questions like the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Palestline in terms of do they or do they not better the hujman condition for the most people possible. I see not viable arguemnt that either is a progressive movement toward the betterment of humans. Indeed under both occupations the people are suffering greatly, and that makes them regressive and exploitative and oppressive.
Health care? Between health care relying on for profit insurance companies and single payer not for profit health insurance, clearly the later is the progressive option becasue it will better the human condition for more people in a more even handed way without the extra expense fo the profiteering for the insurance companies..
Land mine and cluster bomb abolition?
Most issues seem pretty simple to me when the rhetoric is removed and we ask does it help or harm? Does it pay the few or benefit the many?
Posted by Gregory Wonderwheel on Jun 25, 2008 at 6:50 PM The Progressives’ Creed:
What is a progressive? A progressive is a person who believes that the progress of humanity is to be measured by the betterment of the human condition for the largest proportion of people as possible and that politics should in all cases be used to better the human condition for all and to distribute the benefits of society equally so that individuals receive equal opportunities for education, work, and fulfillment and no class, group, or people are enriched at the detriment or exploitation of another.
1. Religion and the Secular State: As there are many paths up a mountain, the many religions are equally worthwhile. An individual needs to adopt a coherently definite religion, philosophy, ethic, or creed in order to focus his or her heart, mind, and energy along a single path of personal development. A society needs to respect and appreciate the many religions, philosophies, and creeds in order to allow its members to find the path that is most suitable for their individual attributes and personal evolution. The separation of religion and state is essential to the well being of both, in that no religion can avoid the perversion of its own goals or the oppression of other religions if it becomes the sole political power of a state.
2. Tribe, Caste, Race, & Ethnicity: All ancestries are equally valuable, and there is no biological or socially valid basis for asserting that one tribe, caste, race, or ethnicity is superior to another or should hold privileges over another.
3. Environment: The maintenance of fertile earth, clean water, and breathable air are essential not only for human survival and our posterity but for the people’s well-being and happiness. The ecological commonweal requires that the environment have a highest priority in all political decision making and that environmental security and the prevention of environmental degradation must predominate in all considerations with as much care and concern as is given to national security.
4. Economics: Economic democracy is the balance between the economic anarchy of capitalism and the economic totalitarianism of historical communism. Economic democracy means a fair market system, neither a so-called “free” market nor a centrally controlled market. Economic democracy entails the democratic regulation and control of the economic system within society at two levels: first, democratically legislated state protective regulation (i.e., without the extremes of economic totalitarianism by state ownership or corporate control of the legislature) and, second, internal democratic control of corporations based on the valuable involvement of both workers and investors (i.e., rather than the plutocratic control by capital investors resulting in economic totalitarianism within the corporation and economic anarchy in the competition between corporations). There is no inherent contradiction between private property and economic democracy, but there is an important distinction to be made between ownership of private personal property and the ownership of the major natural resources and their means of production upon which society depends for its well-being. The state and its government bureaucracy need not own natural resources or the means of production but democratic government is always a proper regulator of the exploitation of natural resources and their means of production for the benefit of the people and their general welfare, not for the benefit of profiteering plutocrats.
Posted by Gregory Wonderwheel on Jun 25, 2008 at 6:52 PM Progressive’s Creed ~ continued..
5. Nationalism and Internationalism: Nationalism and internationalism both have their place, but the harmful extremes of nationalism and internationalism are to be avoided. Nations and states are essential in the organization of common interests in geographical areas. Beneficial nationalism is the recognition of the people of a nation to be sovereign in the democratic control of their nation. However harmful nationalism is a perversion of national pride that asserts the superiority of one’s own nation over another to the detriment of international cooperation. Beneficial internationalism recognizes that international human interaction is necessary for the benefit of the peoples of all nations and that no nation has the right to exploit the peoples of another nation. Harmful internationalism is an extreme that denigrates the sovereignty of the people of a nation and their right to self-determination. In all political decisions, the people’s beneficial national and international interests must be balanced.
6. Democracy: Tyranny comes in many forms, including despotism, tyranny by a minority, and tyranny by the majority, and all forms of tyranny are to be equally avoided. Democracy is the concurrence of the interests of society for the purpose of avoiding the various forms of tyranny by creating a system of governance that embodies six political principles: the people are sovereign, the people rule by laws not personalities, a majority decides the laws, the human and civil rights of minorities are protected, separation of powers within the state, checks and balances between the separated state powers. Democracy comes in many variations, for example a majority may decide the laws by direct or representative legislation, but if the system of governance does not effectively embody each and all of these six principles then it is not democracy.
~
Alan Gregory Wonderwheel
http://home.pon.net/wildrose/progressivescreed.htm
Posted by Gregory Wonderwheel on Jun 25, 2008 at 6:52 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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