Quite a bit of bytes, or whatever you want to call it, is spilled on this site about the definition of terms like "conservative" and "liberal." More recently, we have "socialist," of course. What I am curious about is what "progressive" really means? I know what some people think it means, but are they correct? I ask because I am reading Edmund Morris' third and final volume of Teddy Roosevelt, in which the rise of the progressive movement features prominently. The term is defined by the author in the following way: "It was a largely middle class movement whose common denominator, apart from passion, was a mounting dissatisfaction with government and federal government, a feeling of exclusion from the tight relationship between Congress and corporations and capitalistic privilege." http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1313 In contemporary terms, the phrase is something of a new label for "liberal" in the United States...
He was speaking of a historical movement in general terms. The larger point is that if that's what it meant then, how does that relate to what it means now?
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I always thought of it in taxation: regressive taxation taxes the poor more heavily than the rich, progressive taxation taxes the rich more heavily than the poor.
The Progressive movement in the United States was founded at the turn of the 20th century, in response to the perceived social and political problems resulting from the country's transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. America changed from a scarcity-driven to surplus-driven economy in the 1890s, and the advertising industry arose to exort the population to buy all the newly available consumer goods. Throughout history more than 99% of the human population worked in the production and distribution of food; by the 1890s in America this had shrunk to about 50%; today it is 3%. As agriculture was mechanized people migrated from the farms to the cities. Most of them got jobs in factories, which at the time were not far removed from the images in Dickens's novels. Children and women, who had always worked on their family farms, were now working as employees of factory owners. They no longer lived in relatively roomy farmhouses but were crammed into tenement apartments. The capitalists were the new aristocrats (performing the same role: their antics were so outrageous that they drew the public's attention away from the even more pernicious antics of the government) and their employees were often treated like yeomen, with minimal dignity and wages. The Progressives carefully distinguished themselves from the Socialists and Communists, whom they regarded as true radicals. They didn't want to rebuild society, but simply improve it. They wanted to fix what they thought was wrong with the country, through the normal processes of the democratic government. Their champions included such famous American leaders as President Theodore Roosevelt (a distant cousin of Franklin Roosevelt). They enacted laws regulating child labor, factory hours, living conditions, the rights of women, etc. The advocates for women's suffrage, although so numerous, prominent and militant that they comprised their own movement, were regarded as part of the overall Progressive philosophy. So were the Prohibitionists. Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party in 1912 was the most successful third party ever founded in the United States. The party was re-founded twice but failed. In the United States' binary political arena the Progressive movement is categorized as leftist or liberal, since it clearly stands in opposition to conservative philosophies. Today, the people who identify themselves as Progressives are members of either the Democratic or Green Party. Their stated goal is the same: to fix what they believe is wrong with America through the normal process of a democratic government.
I don't think Roosevelt would have thought he was against conservative philosophies any more than he was against other philosophies he did not agree with. And yes, today those who say they are progressive are either Democratic or Green, but are they really progressive? Or is it a desperate attempt to latch onto a term perhaps more palatable than liberal? In other words, hat does the term truly mean, today? Progressives, for example, were tough foreign policy hawks, a position I cannot see today's brand signing onto. This is the stated goal of every political body to some degree, and as such, its useless as a descriptive term.
Ha in the UK I think of progressive as punishing the rich more than the poor by taking a 'progressively' bigger slice of their earnings. The current coalition in government (Conservatives in bed with the Liberals) seem to like calling themselves that. Edit. So what exactly is 'progressive' in politics? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11785483
In my reading I tend to associate it more with the middle class movement in the late-19th/early-20th centuries to address issues of severe income and lifestyle inequality for the desperately poor. Part of that was a dissatisfaction with big business because certain businesses did indeed seem like they were heavy handed in their efforts to exploit people. (And that more legitimate concern about the exploitation led in turn to a more generalized concern about "trusts" and their impact on society.) In a very broad sense they had a penchant for exposing what they saw as corruption, in politics and industry. It was broader than that though, as that was also the age when the city tenements started to be cleaned up after Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives was published in 1890. Rent controls were established to help the poor (not terribly successfully). Food inspection and regulations were put in place. Labor reforms were also important, minimum wage laws, regulation of child labor, no more locking your employees into the factory to force them to keep working (post-Triangle Shirtwaist Factory). At the same time they also pushed women's suffrage, pushed to limit the power of political party bosses (as when, for example, they pushed through the 17th amendment allowing for the direct election of senators), and, because they were moralistic, pushed hard for prohibition. It's hard to identify one single consistent unifying principle expect that they wanted to improve the country and most of their efforts could in a sense be thought of as being opposed to "inequality" (and even there they were divided when it came to racial equality). They do generally seem to have shared a hope that America would have more equality in the future, and a belief that America was going to improve over time.
Yes, this a good historical definition, but what I am after is a discussion about how that past reflects on the term's current comeback. Is the word being used correctly today or incorrectly?
