In recent times, I have frequently heard Conservatives maintaining that Socialism and Progressivism are identical. While there is a definite relationship, it is both a historical and a conceptual mistake to merge the two notions.
Progressivism is the broader and older approach to social, moral, and political issues. Progressivism is the child of the European Enlightenment, the 18th c. that has been revealingly known as “the Age of Reason.” While the word “reason” has positive connotations today, this is because it is the modern habit to contrast “reason” with stupid irrationality in the general run of life. In the history of Western ideas, however, from the 18th c. back, Reason (capitalized) was discussed always as the competitor of Faith. In pre-Enlightenment times, Faith generally emerged as the victor, with Reason being forced into a subordinate role. In both the realms of religion and a slowly growing empirical science, Reason was building up a head of steam under the Church repression, a head of steam that began to manifest itself visibly in the early 1600s. This was the time of Galileo, Deascartes, and Gassendi, but the stage had already been set by a large number of other thinkers and experimenters.
Thus, the direction of this historical stream was against Faith and in favour of Reason. The importance of this movement cannot be over-emphasized because it involved not only the rejection of judgment based on authority (rather than reason), but it rejected the value of tradition and culture. In effect, man’s reliance was shifted during this period from church and God to Man’s reason: man became increasingly self-reliant. No matter what the issue or the problem, the Enlightenment man said: I’ll figure it out for myself, thank you very much!
While I haven’t seen it represented in this way, one can plausibly argue that Descartes’ Discourse on Method, which is considered emblematic of our transition from Faith to Science, is also a model of our contemporary Progressive’s self-image. The revolutionary point of the Discourse is that human reason, when properly applied, is equal to the task of acquiring knowledge and using that knowledge for the betterment of human life. But, even more important, is the enormous methodological principle that each human being is responsible for validating his own beliefs. The individual human being is the final arbiter of his own beliefs, and not an external authority or tradition or culture. As they say these days, this was a very “empowering” doctrine. Yet it carried with it the assumption that a world based on its radical application would be a “better” world than the one that preceded, something that has not always proven to be the case, as terrible as the Middle Ages were at times.
Like the Cartesianism of the Discourse, Progressivism rejects tradition and rejects inherited culture; in place of these, it relies on pseudo-scientific social experimentation and social engineering. As a consequence, the history of progressivism is a grim historical case study in the Law of Unintended Consequences. To put it in figurative terms, the Progressive hates a city like Istanbul, with its small winding corridors and unsystematic sprawl, but he loves a borough like Manhattan, laid out, as it is, like a grid. Unfortunately for the Progressive, planned constructions have turned out most often like the ones built in the reign of Marshall Tito, giant, ugly, block-shaped human warehouses built in rows, rather than like Manhattan. The Progressive distrusts and dislikes natural development, and he trusts and loves a “rational” plan.
But the Progressive is not necessarily a Socialist. Socialism has been the preferred plan for Progressives because Socialism also, for distinct reasons of its own, has always rejected the traditions and culture of the country in which it created a revolution. Further, Socialism has always represented itself as a “scientific” plan for the betterment of mankind. These factors have made Socialism an obvious and ready-to-wear choice for the Progressive on the go. Yet, I can think of at least one contender for Progressive clientele who had some modest success in the past and may yet resurface.
The early 20th c Eugenics movement attracted a substantial following. Eugenics is unquestionably a Progressive movement, even though most contemporary Progressives would reject it. The contemporary Progressive associates Eugenics with the practices of Hitler’s Third Reich, and thus immediately rejects it for that reason alone. While Progressives make a mantra of Reason (“Science,” today), they actually do not think very much; ironically, they actually make judgments the same way that the Medievals did, the way that Descartes rejected, by appeal to authority. What has changed is the identity of the authority. While the Medieval appealed to what the Priests said, the Progressives appeal to what the Academics say.
And while the modern Progressive rejects Eugenics with revulsion, no less an eminent Socialist like Bernard Shaw was an enthusiastic exponent of the doctrine. And notice this: while Eugenics can co-exist harmoniously with Socialism, it doesn’t have to; a person could well argue that Socialism is actually not necessary if a thoroughgoing Eugenics policy is applied. A Eugenicist can well argue that if we breed carefully for the needed abilities and at the highest levels, the issues of distributive justice would simply never arise.
I mention the Eugenics movement simply to reinforce the point that Progressivism does not entail Socialism.
Finally, while I have argued that Progressivism is the child of the Enlightenment faith in Reason, it must be remembered, as I suggest above, that 1) a faith in reason is not necessarily the same as being rational, and 2) that children do not always inherit the abilities or dispositions of their parents.
While the French thinkers of the 18th c called the philosophes thought of themselves as the apostles of Reason, they were neither always as rational or as scientific as they thought. And while our current Progressives like to think of themselves as “so very rational,” they are not as self-reliant in their thinking as Descartes would have had them be, they have become “RINOs” (Rationalists In Name Only).
Simplicius,
ReplyDeleteI should be studying more for the bar, but I have found that I would rather read and comment on your posts.
It's funny, because I was just thinking of the progressive-socialist distinction yesterday after commenting on your last blog. I think you are correct to distinguish them. They are not really different "ideologies" so much as they are different TYPES of concepts. Progressive refers to the way in which one approaches socio-economic issues, the tools he uses as it were. Socialist refers to the end product; it can more properly be labeled an "ideology" because it concerns the redistribution of wealth. And while many progressives reject culture and tradition, they do so merely as a psychological reaction. There is something about relying on past experience to justify an argument that simply doesn't sit right with them. Conversely, socialists reject culture and tradition because those things stand in the way of their goals.
I think that just as not all progressives are socialist, it is equally true that not all socialists are progressive. Similarly, not all capitalists are conservative (as oppose to progressive) and not all conservatives are capitalist. The Canadian Left, for example, is in many ways a "conservative socialist" movement. When you hear a Canadian leftist defending our public health care system, you will often hear her speak of "Canadian values". In other words, she appeals to our long tradition of socialized medicine.
I think part of the reason that these concepts can be difficult to analyze and distinguish is that there is no bright line between them. The Protestant Reformation was a "progressive" movement - it emphasized every individual discovering the truth for themselves. It went part and parcel with Europe's scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. The American Revolution, as well, while not rejecting culture and tradition, was still "progressive" in a sense. Certainly, conservatives of the time could have warned of the horrible unintended consequences that could result. I would go so far as to argue that capitalism almost NECESSITATES a degree or progressivism: a belief that people's desires can be predicted based on rational "scientific" factors and that mankind's situation can be "improved".
The above examples are not meant to obfuscate. Clearly there was a difference between the American and French Revolutions, as we have discussed before. I only mean to point out that the line is sometimes very blurred.
The late 19th and early 20th century progressives present an especially difficult analytical challenge. On the one hand, they accomplished some good things: they attacked America's growing monopolies and helped bring order to an other chaotic industrial system. These reforms were arguably in the interest of the general population. They were regulations on the market, but ones that seemed to be in the long term interests of the market. It is unlikely that modern conservatives would want to strike down anti-trust laws any more than they would strike down bankruptcy, patent and copyright laws (which all impinge on the free market). In other words, many of the progressive initiatives sought to give the players better equipment and bring in a referee - but they did not seek to change the point of the game itself; and indeed, they believed that their initiatives would allow more people to play the game longer and better. In some ways, they were right. I like the idea of having some food regulations, of having a Federal Reserve, of "alleviating distress" as Milton Friedman calls it.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, many of the progressive initiatives paved the way for the modern welfare state. So how should history judge them? Certainly they believed in "trying new things", relying on social-science, rejecting the orthodoxy of the Constitution. But can they be said to have rejected "culture and tradition"? Are Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson really the ancestors of Barack Obama?
Perhaps the answer is that while the progressive/conservative divide was once very blurred, the passage of time and the massive amounts of experimentation that have occurred in the last hundred years have more neatly divided the two concepts. Today, we generally know what works and what doesn't. There are no longer many novel issues. For any initiative Barack Obama can suggest, it is likely that someone somewhere else has tried it already (and has most likely failed). Therefore, capitalists will tend to be conservative since they have already accepted as permanent certain regulations on the market and are well aware that other regulations are not in the long term interests of the capitalist state. At the same time, every so often, a new issue does arise, and it is at this time that many "conservatives" can find themselves at odds with one another; for example, the neo-conservatives who have retained their liberal progressivism of the 1960's and who believed that the Middle East could be made into a democracy vs. the traditional conservatives who were skeptical of the state's ability to engineer democracy in a foreign land.
I welcome your thoughts on this matter, as I think it is something that needs to be explained further.
Yes, A.G., you raise a difficult and thorny issue.
ReplyDeleteBear in mind Max Weber’s thesis about capitalism & Protestantism. He believed that the success of capitalism was fueled by Protestant religious doctrine, this much is usually focused on, but equally important in this equation is that the wealth acquired is for the purpose of doing good works! Of course, this initially meant the funding of giant monuments of charity meant to draw the donor’s goodness to God’s attention, but it was still charity, the ancestor of welfare.
What this means is that the original capitalism likely had the seeds of the welfare state within it.
I had not thought of this before, but it suggests two interesting things:
1) That coming from a religious origin, Protestant capitalism in the U.S. initiated a development that converged with the atheistic socialist development in Europe towards an identical end, viz. the welfare state. How about that!? And
2) That Marx might again have been half right, namely that capitalism really does contain “the seeds of its own destruction,” but, again, not in the way he imagined.
Thus, Teddy & Wilson really were, in a way, the forebears of Bammy, but with an entirely different set of considerations guiding them.
STUDY!!
Well I think capitalism/charity contain the seeds of socialism, the same way that Judaism and Christianity contain the seeds of Islam. The "religions" are all linked, but they have some very key differences. With respect to Protestant capitalism vs. socialism, I would say the biggest difference is the existence of God and the individual free-will, agency and autonomy that follows from that, along with the separation of the "moral" from the "civil", which socialism does not (indeed CANNOT) do. Socialists love to cite biblical passages like "love thy neighbour" as a justification for their programs. They always seem to forget, however, that this is a personal obligation - a moral contract that is arbitrated by God, not the state. Also, while they tend to cite the social justice passages, they seem to forget "thou shalt not steal" and, more importantly "thou shall not covet thy neighbour's wealth"
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