Field Dog’s Political Glossary: Progressive

The term “Progressive” as it is used today is a politically meaningless term after eighty years of semantic corruption.  Often used as a synonym for “Liberal”,  in practice progressives tend to be characterized by class bigotry and elitism.  As a class, they are not noted for their knowledge of , or adaptability to, local conditions.  They tend, therefore, to provoke populist reactions at the grassroots, which result either in electoral apathy or right-wing populism.

Originally a form of reform conservatism, the Progressive Movement espoused the rational administration of society by trained elites.   While supportive of mixed-economy capitalism (given its cultural and economic  Hamiltonian antecedents), Progressives were aware of the social and economic costs of unregulated markets.

The original movement had the intellectual flaw of presuming the inevitability of human progress, and the social flaws of class and ethnic bigotry.  The movements had regional variants, which addressed some of these social flaws as local conditions allowed. (e.g.  in the Midwest, the movement allied itself with Socialists and the labor movement; in California, the alliance was with Populists)

Starting in the 1920’s the  Communist Party used the term as a label for their attempted penetration of the labor movement, through various  “Popular Fronts”, but Progressivism retained its original meaning outside of faculty clubs.  Despite the failed attempt of the Communist-influenced Progressive Party under Henry Wallace in the 1948 Presidential election, Dwight Eisenhower had no problems with using the term self-referentially throughout the McCarthy period.  (A modern example of  an intellectually honest use of the term was Bill Clinton, who correctly used Eisenhower as his model.)

The term evolved its present usage during the simultaneous structural collapses of  labor liberalism and working-class black nationalism in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  The New Left-New Politics fusion that remained was notable for its militant class-bigotry and racial condescension.

Contemporary progressives as a class,  constitute a bohemian Tory movement, based in upscale urban neighborhoods and suburbs.  Intellectually, their distaste for manufacturing industries (and workers) makes them vulnerable to various New Economy/Service Economy fantasies, forgetting that in large ecinimic systems, there is a need to produce tangible goods in order to create the wealth to fund the services.

In government, progressives tend to circular analysis, which leads them to mistake models for reality, and equate funding levels for results.

The private sector variant tends to consultant triumphalism.

A variant is the “Left-Progressive”; a misnomer, which equates in the real world to bohemian reactionary.

For these reasons, in partisan politics, progressives function primarily as political suppression or Republican outreach mechanisms.