Progressivism
Forward thinking: Rather than marching ahead, assuming that progress is linear and that others are following, we must stop to make the case for change
By Emily Robinson
@ea_robinson
When the RSA was founded in 1754, the concept of ‘progress’ as we know it was just emerging. Over the course of the 18th century, it developed from being an idea related to movement through space, to one connected primarily with movement through time. Along the way, it gathered a whole host of other associations: improvement, reform, civilisation. It also migrated from being an adjunct to other concepts (the progress of art, of knowledge, of science), to being an active agent in its own right. By the early 19th century, it was possible to speak of the ‘progress of history’ or the ‘progress of time’; by the end of that century, it was common to invoke ‘progress itself’ as a seemingly unstoppable force.
The evolution of this idea was rooted in the history and values of the Enlightenment, as, of course, was the RSA. This is a history that has come under a good deal of criticism over the past 50 years, both because of the colonial and patriarchal assumptions underpinning what is sometimes referred to as the ‘Enlightenment project’, and because of the complacency that comes with a faith in continual improvement, which can sweep aside the messiness of human interaction. But it is also a history that is having a bit of a political comeback. At a time when tolerance, reason and expertise seem to be under threat, the idea of resurrecting Enlightenment values seems attractive.
While it is difficult to oppose the idea of “enriching society through ideas and action” contained in the RSA’s mission to create a 21st century Enlightenment, we need to approach this history with a critical eye. If we take, for instance, the idea of being progressive, which is the focus of this issue of RSA Journal, there are big questions hidden behind its seemingly incontrovertible appeal. What does this label include, what does it exclude, and — most importantly — what does it do?
Let us begin with an opposition. ‘Progressive’ and ‘conservative’ have long been taken to denote opposing mindsets: forward thinking, experimental and modern on the one hand; stable, cautious and traditional on the other. In political terms, this has tended to be applied to the left and the right of the political spectrum, respectively, but with a great deal of scope for counter-intuitive positioning between them. For instance, in England, as early as 1858, the Manchester Guardian was complaining that “the edifying discussion of the respective beauties of progressive Conservatism and Conservative progress” was occupying so much parliamentary time that it was distracting attention from questions of national defence. It has barely been off the agenda since. In contrast, ‘conservatism’ has more often been used as an accusation than an aspiration within left circles, at least in the UK. The term is used to attack both centrist caution and socialist traditionalism; notwithstanding a brief flurry of interest in ‘radical conservatism’ in the immediate aftermath of New Labour.
This asymmetry is revealing. It tells us something about the cultural value of the term ‘progressive’. In his influential compendium Keywords (1976), the cultural theorist Raymond Williams suggested that by the turn of the 20th century, ‘progressive’ had become an empty word, more of a persuader than a descriptor. He noted the emergence of ‘progressive conservatism’ as a marker of the term’s boundless elasticity. Although Williams underestimated the longer history of progressive conservatism, he was right that something had changed. By the early 20th century, progressivism had become such a desirable political and cultural trait that, in the words of the conceptual historian, Reinhart Koselleck, “it has become difficult to gain political legitimacy without being progressive at the same time”.
The elasticity of the term might seem surprising to anyone with a background in liberal or left politics. In the UK, this was, after all, the time at which the Lib-Lab ‘progressive movement’ took shape. From the municipal politics of the London County Council to the electoral pact that helped the Labour Party gain its first parliamentary representatives, the history of progressive politics has seemingly been intrinsically associated with the centre-left, and particularly its relationship to one of the three themes of this edition of the journal: welfare.
Rebranding progress
In 1896, the first issue of a new journal called Progressive Review recognised the inadequacy of liberal doctrines of economic freedom and self-government “to undertake the onerous and multifarious duties which devolve upon a modern State, in contributing by legislative and administrative acts, to secure the material and moral welfare of the people”. Its editors argued that: “If such a departure from the historical lines of party action seem[s] impossible, we can recognize no force in the claim of the Liberals to be regarded as the progressive party of the future.” This was an attempt to reorient both liberalism and progressive politics around a strong commitment to welfare, and to the state apparatus needed to deliver it. This use of language became widely accepted, to the extent that we now forget, for instance, that progressive income tax was originally so-called because it is graduated and sequential, not because it is redistributive. It belongs to the family of progressive salaries, share dividends and hire purchase schemes that were regularly advertised in the late Victorian and Edwardian press. Its resonance with the aims of the new ‘progressive movement’ was a fortuitous coincidence.
But this redefinition was only ever partially successful. It supplemented, but did not replace, existing understandings. Enlightenment views of history had identified commercial freedom as both the driver and marker of social progress. This association remained intact throughout the 20th century. The efficiency, energy and innovation of successful businesses made them seem inherently progressive, and developing nations were expected to demonstrate their progressive credentials through stability, prosperity, rapid growth and self-confidence.
In party politics, progressive arguments were used to resist as well as to espouse state intervention in the economy. Most notably, self-described ‘progressive’ Liberal-Conservative alliances operated at both local and national level from the 1930s well into the post-war years, arguing for freedom for private enterprise in the face of what they saw as socialist restrictions. For instance, local Progressive Parties set themselves against municipal provision of utilities and direct employment of labour on the grounds that it was expensive for ratepayers and disadvantageous to private businesses. Such schemes had previously been undertaken in the name of progressive politics, most famously by the London Progressive Party. Yet, these new alliances applied the same language to the opposite cause, invoking instead older liberal ideals of retrenchment and good government.
This language has not died out. When David Cameron launched his ‘progressive conservatism’ project in 2009, and his ‘progressive partnership’ with the Liberal Democrats the following year, this was intended to signal a break from the party’s past, particularly Thatcherism, yet this might have sounded less novel to voters than he anticipated. A 2012 YouGov poll suggested Margaret Thatcher was thought more progressive than any other politician except Boris Johnson.
There are two understandings of progress at work here, which see it as either an organic process or a deliberate project. According to the former, state intervention risks interfering with supposedly natural progress through the market. The latter believes that real progress entails harnessing the resources of the state and driving them in a particular direction. This is not, however, as clear-cut as it seems. It is in the space between these two extremes that most self-described ‘progressives’ cluster. Partly, this is marriage between two forms of liberalism, with their two conceptions of progress. It suggests that welfare can only be built on prosperity, and tends to assume that the state can learn from the market, that innovation thrives on competition.
But this line of argument also carries the implication that it is politics itself that is the obstruction. This is what lies behind the repeated refrain that sensible, progressive people — from all parties and none — should simply be allowed to get on with things. ‘Progressive’ in this context denotes rational, reasoned solutions (it is striking that in the historical sources I look at, it is often coupled with ‘sane’). But it also suggests that there is a right answer, which could be found if only we had enough evidence, enough experts, enough creativity. Such attitudes have contributed to the increasingly technocratic and remote nature of governance, which has been blamed for both declining levels of trust and political engagement before 2008, and the anger and frustration we have seen since. Moreover, it is important to recognise that the very language of being ‘progressive’ can function as a threat. It is used to make certain futures seem inevitable, with the implication that we must keep up or be left behind.
The pressures of modernity
This is not just a story of party politics, ideological commitments and policy outcomes. It is about how we relate to one another and how we understand ourselves. Here, it makes sense to think about how progressiveness relates to another slippery concept: modernity. Although this is notoriously difficult to define, most understandings of modernity revolve around the question of time, and our changing relationship to it. That includes the perception that time is accelerating, or that it is less predictable, less continuous, than before. Modernity is also frequently described as a project of the self; it is a state of constant reflection, remaking and reimagining, in which we are always becoming, never just being. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, citizens were constantly encouraged to ‘be progressive’, both by commercial advertisers and by public agencies. This involved a certain amount of flattery, but also the pressure not to be left behind. To be progressive was, then, both daring and prudent, innovative and conventional. This language works to shift the burden of risk onto the individual. It becomes our responsibility to develop our skills, to adapt to the shifting terrain of the economy, to demonstrate both our willingness and our capacity to continually progress.
But modernity is also a collective undertaking, the means by which communities and nations position themselves in time and in relationship to one another. The idea of Britain as a peculiarly progressive nation has had a great deal of purchase. Yet, this has always been shadowed by fears that this status was slipping, and particularly that attachment to past glories was holding back progress, creating a cultural drag on innovation. Such fears peaked in the decades after the Second World War, but their continued resonance can be seen in the language surrounding the EU referendum: variously understood as an opportunity to halt decline and restore Britain’s independent status in the world, or as a suicidal rejection of whatever stability, prosperity and influence we once had.
One of the recurrent features of this debate is the suggestion that social divisions (such as those opened up by the referendum) should be understood in temporal terms. It has become common to distinguish between those who have benefited from ‘progress’ and those who have not, and to separate those who are comfortable with the future from those who prefer to dwell on (or in!) the past. This kind of thinking tends to equate cosmopolitanism, economic liberalism and social liberalism with the idea of ‘progress itself’. In so doing, it obscures the extent to which these tendencies are not three parts of the same whole: migrants and BAME Britons are, for instance, often at the sharp end of economic liberalism, while social conservatism is by no means the preserve of the poorest.
Casting these divisions in temporal terms also gives them an unhelpfully moral edge. It becomes a question of who is on the ‘right side of history’, even though once we focus on specific issues it is often difficult to know which is the right side. And expert opinions can cycle back as well as thrust forwards, leaving previously progressive solutions — high-rise social housing, out-of-town shopping centres, baby formula milk — out of fashion. We could all list many self-consciously progressive reforms that have allowed individuals and communities to live more fulfilled, enriched and empowered lives. But we also need to create forms of politics that include room for those who fail, or refuse, to ‘keep up’, and that enable us to pay attention to the work of maintaining existing systems and relationships, rather than always searching for the new.
Unease with the very idea of progress is not new. In post-war Britain, fewer than half of respondents to a Mass Observation survey felt that mankind was progressing, and one in 12 feared it was progressing backwards (the authors of the report felt this was probably an under-representation). Individual comments included: “Mankind’s progressing to destroying itself,” “We’re progressing too fast, and in the end it will kill us,” and “We’re progressing to degradation everyday.” Such attitudes are perhaps not surprising in the context of the aftermath of the Second World War and with the ever-present threat of the atomic bomb, but it is worth noting that this led to a general fear of science and expertise. As one 55-year-old woman described as ‘educated’ put it: “James Watt and his kettle started all this trouble. I’d like to drown all scientists. We’d be better off without them. We’re not educated up to it. We haven’t the right principles.” During the war, another Mass Observer had recorded an acquaintance’s view that “all scientists should be hung by the neck until dead and then left as a grisly warning to others… He would also like to see the aeroplane inventors and technicians enjoying a similar fate to the science-mongers.”
The here and now
This is a salutary reminder that innovation is not experienced equally. Alongside ever more terrifying methods of war, we might place perennial scares over automation and job security, or the rather more silent ways in which algorithms entrench inequalities. It is also worth noting that, as the historian David Edgerton has argued, the history of technology is itself uneven. In celebrating inventors and privileging the new, it obscures the way technology is actually used: the way bicycles, coal power and screwdrivers persist in the internet age. While social media may have given us new tools to both commit and resist exploitation, it has done little to change the underlying power structures of gender, race, class and capital at its core. And we should not forget that so many of the most pressing social problems, such as housing and social care, are inescapably physical and relational.
The idea that we are living through an unprecedented era of social and technological change is itself rather old. It was in the 18th century that we came to expect the future to be necessarily different from the past. This was the very foundation of the conception of progress and of the condition of modernity I have been describing. Yet, even this sense of accelerated time has been called into question. In the late 1980s, cultural Marxists identified the arrival of what they called ‘New Times’, predicated on the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist economy, and from the modernist belief in progress to a post-modern sense of ironic nostalgia. More recently, the social theorist Zygmunt Bauman proposed the concept of ‘liquid modernity’: an unstable, liminal state, in which we behave as tourists, endlessly in search of new and fleeting experiences, rather than pilgrims on a linear path of self-development.
Yet, the idea of progress remains powerful. We need to think about what this does, particularly in a context where our means to achieve it, whether individually or collectively, are in doubt. It is no longer clear, for example, that each generation can expect a higher standard of living than their parents. The American cultural theorist Lauren Berlant has called this a state of ‘cruel optimism’, where our attachment to increasingly unobtainable markers of ‘the good life’ has become an obstacle to self-fulfilment. The conversation around social mobility is an interesting example of the way that the idea of progress continues to shape our expectations of both political and personal success. While it is right to focus on the means by which education and employment can give people power over their lives, we also need to find ways of creating modes of living that are enriching and fulfilling, without the need for constant upward movement, and that are not based on a race that only some can win.
We are at an important political juncture. It is becoming increasingly clear that appeals to progressive rationality do not work and that passion, emotion and identity cannot be sidelined. Might a reconsideration of the terrain of the political allow for the development of a language that does not speak of ‘modernisers’ and ‘left behinds’? Or a notion of political choice that is not constructed as a competition between those who are comfortable with the future and those who are not?
Abandoning a restrictive and linear conception of time has potentially radical implications. It means the future need not necessarily lead on from the past in an ordered fashion. It might, for instance, give us space to explore economic options that are not tied to the male breadwinner models we have inherited from the post-war period, or to the need for constant growth. It might allow us to revisit abandoned ideas, such as workers’ control of industry, or nationalisation, without fears of going ‘back to the 1970s’. In terms of social change, there is no reason to think that abandoning the logic of progress means giving up on its benefits. It simply means challenging racism, sexism, ableism and heterosexism head on, rather than invoking abstract historical forces to make our case for us. It is not good enough simply to declare that ‘in this day and age’ certain attitudes are appropriate and others are not; it is not surprising that such arguments lead to alienation and resentment. Framing this as a debate about the common good in the present, rather than as an encounter with the impersonal and inevitable ‘forces of progress’, could enable a different kind of political conversation. It might even create space for something genuinely new.
This article appears in the RSA Journal Issue 5 2017–18.
