| Nate writes about "two 'progressivisms'" that "share common ground on many (probably most) issues," but "are at loggerheads on some others, as has perhaps become more apparent since the election of President Obama." He then presents this chart:
This chart can be critiqued at two levels, from within its frame (the outcome-oriented vs. process-oriented pairing seems to be flipped, as can readily be seen by comparing that with the conversation vs. action-oriented pairing) and from outside its frame: Nate naturally takes an abstract analytic approach, whereas I introduced a somewhat similar distinction in terms of historical processes, contrasting the "progressivism" of the post-60s era (which named itself in opposition to the Cold War liberals who brought us Vietnam) with the "classical progressivism" of the early 20th Century, that was a modernizing, rationalizing philosophy that existed in tension with populism, and which I went on to discuss in terms of an excellent law review article by Jack Balkin, "Populism and Progressivism as Constitutional Categories" in a couple of different diaries, "Populism & Progressivism-Pt1: Obama As Classic Progressive" and "Edward v. Obama-Cross-Wiring Populism and Progressivism".
Because my analysis derived from actually existing historical traditions, it tended to be messier than Nate's neat little chart. One might even say that my approach was "empirical" while his is "normative"--another crosswiring, but one that connects the "inside the frame" critique with the "outside the frame" perspective.
The analysis gets messier still because it also relates to the distinction that educationaction has made repeatedly in discussing the differences between middle class and working class notions of politics, which line up most directly with Nate's pairing of "sees politics as a battle of ideas" vs. "sees politics as a battle of wills". But educationaction put it somewhat differently: the middle class view is that it's not so much a battle at all, but more "conversational" as Nate has it in another pairing, while the working class knows it's a battle--not so much of wills, but of interests.
This is further complicated by the fact that Nate's so-called "rational progressives" tend to deny that politics is a battle at all. Isn't that, after all, the whole point of Obama's bipartisan crusade? In contrast, I've been going on for quite some time about politics as a battle of ideas--an idea that comes from Gramsci, just the sort that Nate goes on to warn against:
Nor do conservatives have a monopoly on bad ideas, especially when radical progressives flirt with Marxist modes of discourse.
In short, there are countless contradictions, or, to be more charitable, inconsistencies in Nate's neatly laid out little world, and while I totally share his impulse to make neat little models (I too have a math background, though my skills have grown embarrasingly rusty compared to what they were, haven't solved a diffy-Q in decades) I know darned well that they are only partial mappings at best, and better thought of as tools to probe reality with in active fashion than as maps to sit back with and marvel at, as if they could actually capture the unfathomable lands to which they refer.
One final word of warning: the classical progressives fell out badly amongst themselves, with Woodrow Wilson taking the nation to war for the most noble of reasons (so he thought) and passing the worst, mot oppressive, authoritarian laws seen in America since the Alien and Sedition Acts--arguably even worse. Eugene Debs got ten years in prison for a single speech deemed to be against the draft. Wislon's actions even launched the career of J. Edgar Hoover. On the other side of the schism, one had Randolph Bourne who came to procliam, "War is the Health of the State"
So don't think that the classical progressives are really all that mild-mannered and rational, no matter what their neat little charts may tell you.
The messiness of history says otherwise. |
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