Progressivism
Inherited social arrangements should be judged by their results, and deliberately reformed where they leave some groups worse off.
What does this mean?
Progressivism is less a complete theory of the state than a disposition toward change: the belief that social arrangements are human products, that they can be improved by deliberate effort, and that the fact something has always been done a certain way is not a reason to keep doing it. Where conservatism treats the burden of proof as falling on the reformer, progressivism places it on the arrangement that produces unequal results.
In practice it combines support for expanded civil rights and social equality with confidence in public action — regulation, public investment, expert administration — as a way of solving problems. It overlaps heavily with social liberalism and social democracy and is often found inside them rather than as a separate party. In India its concerns have historically run through movements for caste equality, women’s rights and land reform.
Where did it come from?
Named for the American Progressive Era of roughly 1890–1920, which produced antitrust law, food safety regulation and the direct election of senators. The word has since broadened to describe reform-minded politics generally. Indian reform movements — Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar, and the campaigns behind the Hindu Code Bill — pursued comparable aims on different terrain.
Major thinkers
- John Dewey
- Jane Addams
- B. R. Ambedkar
- Jyotirao Phule
- Martha Nussbaum
Historical figures
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Savitribai Phule
- Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
What it looks like today
- Civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation
- Movements for caste and gender equality in India
- The progressive wings of centre-left parties in Europe and North America
Where it sits on each dimension
Wealth and inequality
The state in the economy
Personal liberty
Tradition and change
The defining axis: arrangements that produce unequal outcomes should be changed, including by law, rather than left to change on their own.
Nation and the world
Religion and the state
Power and its limits
Environment and growth
Crime and punishment
Favours rehabilitation, and treats crime as substantially produced by conditions that policy can change.
Its strongest arguments
- Many arrangements once defended as natural and permanent — bonded labour, denial of the vote, untouchability — were changed by deliberate reform.
- Judging institutions by their results rather than their age is a standard we already apply to almost everything else.
- It has an unusually strong record of extending rights to people who were previously outside their protection.
Its strongest criticisms
- Reformers often cannot foresee the second-order effects of the changes they make, and the costs land on people who did not choose them.
- Confidence in expert administration has repeatedly outrun what experts actually knew.
- It can underrate the value of settled expectations, and of institutions whose usefulness is real but hard to articulate.
Common misconceptions
- That it is the same as socialism. Progressivism is about the direction of social change and is compatible with a market economy.
- That it means change for its own sake. The claim is that specific arrangements produce unequal results, which is an argument that can be examined and answered.
- That it is only about culture. Historically its central achievements were economic: antitrust law, workplace safety, food regulation.
A caveat
Progressivism is a direction of travel rather than a destination, so it describes a disposition more than a programme. Most people who match it here will also match one of the fuller traditions.
Sources
- John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems · 1927
- B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste · 1936
- Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 · 1967