| Two Types Of "Progressive"
Type 1: Post-Kennedy "Progressives"-- In the late 1960s and early 70s, a number of folks opposed to the Vietnam War began calling themselves "progressives." Those prosecuting the war had appropriated the term "liberal" for themselves, and while many people would contest this term, folks like me, who considered ourselves radicals of one sort or another, saw the term "progressive" as a big-tent term that could describe a common framework in which we could work with and talk with self-identified liberals who opposed the war.
The term gained a much wider usage in the decades to come, and with the wider usage came a significant dilution as well, primarily because grassroots organizing dried up, national organizing got entrained to the realities of Washington-even as it sought to confront or change them-and organizing in general was largely disfavored in deference to providing services, a losing game a government services were increasingly slashed.
People of Matt and Markos's generation had a tendency to come along, see almost-exculisively single-issue national organizations clinging to a model of bipartisan organizing that was utterly out of date, at least since the 1994 "Gingrich Revolution," and identify that model exclusively with post-Vietnam "progressivism."
My view is drastically different. What they saw was primarily the most prominent remnant of a failure to recognize and respond to a highly organized rightwing Gramscian "culture war," waged to remake or replace the entire range of cultural institutions that in turn define the basic commonsense understanding that defines our society, culture and politics. There were many cultural, economic and historical forces at work in producing this outcome, but the end result was a process of cultural change from the 1970s to the early 2000s in which the public generally changed little on most issues, became more socially liberal on race and gender, and yet the political spectrum moved sharply to the right.
Type 2: Post-Populist "Progressives"-- The progressives of 100 years ago were a very different lot. In fact, in the 1896 election, even the McKinley Republicans fancied themselves as "progressives"-they were for progress, unlike the backwards-looking populistst! At least that's what they told themselves.
But, of course, it wasn't the McKinley Republicans who defined progressivism-it was their inter-regional rivals, who were disproportionately the older civic elites who had been displaced by the get-rich-quick McKinley Republicans. While the Populists were primarily ordinary folk on the edges of civilization-the priaries of Kansas and Nebraska-the Progressives were old stock leaders striving to reassert lost moral authority. They were not, however, trying to do that by turning back the clock. Instead, they sought to better managing the future-and take up some of the Populists ideas to do so.
One of the clearests examples of how this relationship worked was the hoped-for role of the initiative, as explained by Richard Ellis in his book Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America. As Ellis explained, the Populists wanted to use the initiative to bypass corporate-dominated state legislatures, and sweep away the old system entirely. Progressives had a far more limited view-they wanted to use the initiative as a seldom-used safeguard, "the gun behind the door" was a favored phrase at the time. (As it turned out Ellis wrote, both were disappointed. Rather than altering politics as usual, initiatives turned out to be largely an extension of politics as usual.)
Thus, the earlier progressives were very much the technocratic social engineering sort, who often tended to think that the populist rabble-or, more properly, their urban counterparts-were as much in need of social engineering as the problems that they complained about. They did not trust great concentrations of wealth, nor did they trust the impoverished masses fighting against against the great monopoly capitalists. When Sinclair Lewis wrote The Jungle, about the great injustices the capitalists visited on the immigrant masses working in their slaughterhouses, the progressive elites were horrified-by what it meant for them, as consumers of meat prepared under such horrid conditions. The result was not labor reform, but creation of the Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA). "I aimed for the public's heart," Lewis famously said, "but I hit its stomach instead."
Progressivism vs. Populism
In a diary last Decemeber, "Populism & Progressivism-Pt1: Obama As Classic Progressive", I drew on an essay by Constitutional Law professor Jack Balkin, "Populism and Progressivism as Constitutional Categories". It was a long diary, and even a "brief" excerpt from it would be long. So I'll just cut to the chase: Balkin argues that the two tendencies, historically rooted in successive movements over 100 years ago, reflect two strikingly different views about the nature of democracy. The populists saw it as a popular enterprise, engaged in sporadically, in which the people as a whole reigned supreme. The progressives saw it as an ongoing deliberative process that people had to be specially prepared for. Populists tended to see the progressives' approach as patronizing and paternalistic, progressives tended to see the populists as short-sighted, partisan, ill-informed, even dangerous.
I would make 3 points in light of this discussion:
(1) Obama's primary orientation is that of a classic progressive. He seeks prolonged deliberation, and seeks to draw people into that process who are not ordinarily engaged. This is what he did as an organizer, and many people-perhaps including Obama himself-make the mistake of confusing his close contact with those he organized for somehow becoming one with them, rather than a prolonged attempt to make them more like himself. Of course, some of those he organized may have wanted to be more like him, but it is clearly not the case that most people do. Populism is a much more common orientation than progressivism.
(2) Obama's antipathy to partisanship is strikingly parallel to the classic progressives' antipathy to populist outrage. It is sharply at odds with the rationalist deliberative model that the classic progressive cherishes. Yet, partisan outrage may be exactly what's called for at this point in time. It was certainly called for when Sinclair Lewis wrote The Jungle, for example. But the progressives were morally asleep at the time, and it took another two decades for the Great Depression to deliver the opening for the workers Lewis described to get a modicum of the justice they deserved.
(3) Obama's remarks about "bitterness"-although touching on an important truth-legitimately did serve to crystalize his classic progressive attitudes that are experienced as "attempts at managerial purification [that] are paternalistic." [From Balkin's essay.] Paternalism, in turn is taken to mean that one's concerns are not really taken seriously.
Yet, if the charge of paternalism was true-and I believe it was, however unintended-the second part, about concerns not being taken seriously, does not necessarily follow. Indeed, from the classic progressive's point of view, managerial purification is necessary in order to get amorphous concerns translated into policy terms as a form of pre-processing before policy deliberation proper can begin. If one truly cares about people's suffering, and wants to do something actually effective about it, then this is what one does, from the classic progressives' point of view.
Of course, I am not saying that Obama is identical with the progressives of 100 years, but the parallels are strong, indeed. One thing that is significantly different is the relative numbers involved. A century ago, the middle class progressive leadership was numerically quite small compared to the working class masses they wished to educate and tame. Today's middle class-economically imperiled though it may be-is dramatically larger, even moreso as a percentage of the electorate.
Middle vs. Working Class
Reinforcing the progressive/populist dichotomy, though not perfectly identical to it, is a class-based difference that was discussed in great detail by our own educationaction as part of the "Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing" series, in the diary, "Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing: Social Class and Social Action".
It's a very rich diary, and I'm only going to focus on developing one aspect of its main argument. The diary shows that there are incredibly wide-ranging differences between the organizing traditions of middle class activists involved in issues like peace and the environment, and working class activists, as epitomized by unions. Among the characteristics cited for middle-class activists, in contrast with working class ones is that their activism is voluntaristic, and individualist, involving abstract and theoretical discussions, with goals that are conceived of as interest-free, beneficial to all. In sharp contrast, working class activism is a product of necessity, carried out in a disciplined, hierarchical environment, with goals that are clearly understood as being interest-based, in conflict with those who have contradictory interests.
Two points stand out as particularly important for the purposes of this diary-first, that the differences in class backgrounds are so various that it be very challenging for people to work together across class lines, despite the best of intentions. And second, that the middle-class activists tend to discount the significance of power, struggle, and differences between different interests. They presume the possibility of universally valid, disiniterested, technical approaches to policymaking that can be univerally acceptable to all-if the policymaking process is done right. Working class activists, in contrast, see such a vision as hopelessly naive.
Here are two passages that flesh these summaries out a little more:
Because they have different ways of speaking, when people from different classes meet together, they often find that they can't communicate very well, misreading discursive and social cues that seem so natural to one group and so alien to the other. Furthermore, the structure of each context tends to alienate and suppress the participation of people from the other class. For example, the quick repartee of middle-class meetings can make it difficult for working-class people to get a word in edgewise, whereas the formalistic and hierarchical structure of working-class settings can seem, to middle-class members, like a tool for suppressing their individual voices.
Rose summarizes the differences between middle-class professional and working-class organizations in this way:
The middle class is prone to seeing the working class as rigid, self-interested, narrow, uninformed, parochial, and conflict oriented. The working class tends to perceive the middle class as moralistic, intellectual, more talk than action, lacking commonsense, and naïve about power. Each side has a different standard for evaluating information, with the working class trusting experience and the middle class believing in research and systematic study. The result is a wide gulf in understandings of nature, sustainability, economics, and human conduct. Worse yet, working-class unions and middle-class environmentalists seek change differently. The working class seeks to build power to confront external threats, while the middle class hopes to change people's motivations, ideas, and morality.
Finally, the issues tackled by groups like unions and local community groups are usually closely tied to particular community needs. Instead of focusing on universal values (although they may often refer to these), they tend to define their battles in terms of "competing interests," experiencing "their own interests . . . in opposition to the interests of others" (Rose). A problem is rarely seen as the result of a simple misunderstanding that can be rationally dealt with. Instead, power must be wrested from others who will generally not give it up without a fight. Win-win solutions may sometimes be possible, but experience has taught them that conflict generally involves a zero-sum game.
Where We Stand Now
As a classic progressive now, I am not claiming that Obama is just like the classic progressives of 100 years ago. After all, they were highly influential, but they were a distinct minority, especially in their middle class base. It was only the welfare state, the New Deal and its follow-ons-the GI Bill and the massive government spending that WWII began and programs like the interstate highway system continued-that made a truly mass middle class possible. The early 20th Century progressives stood midway between the corporate monopolists and the working masses. They wanted a more equitable society, but they didn't want to see the masses empowered. They inherently distrusted the masses. And, indeed, it was not until the masses were empowered in the 1930s by mass mobilizations and sweeping labor law reforms, that the inequities the progressives worried about were finally addressed in a robust manner.
The New Deal involved a good deal of progressive-style reforms as well-vastly improved regulatory measures that did a much better job of protecting the public and opening up acess. The reform of the mortgage market alone openned up the way for a vast expansion of homeownership, once something only the upper or upper-middle classes could afford, due to the lack of a long-term mortgage market. By the late 1940s, in sharp contrast, almost any GI returning from war-even a lowly private-could afford to buy a home with a VHA loan, at least if he were white. Thus, there was no sharp dividing line between the substantive reforms driven by a newly empowered working class, and the regulatory reforms of a new, more confident generation of progressive-style reformers. In the best of cases, they formed a single seemless garment of new opportunity.
The creation of the welfare state-not just in America, but across Europe, in turn created a profound shift in public attitudes, identified by social scientist Ronald Inglehart as the rise of post-materialist values, resulting from vast increases in the number of people who grew up in conditions free from material scarcity. Ironically, the new post-materialists were sometimes remarkably disinterested in the very concerns for economic justice that made their positions of relative affluence possible.
The following chart shows how post-materialist values correlated with education came to be increasingly common, though still not majoritarian, even among the poorly educated:
The rising numbers of post-materialists is part of the secret to Obama's success. But there's a hidden danger here as well, as the foundations of the middle class have been relentlessly weakened by conservative policies over the past 30 years or so. Indeed, the weakening has taken on dimensions that traditional economists didn't even know how to measure, argues Yale Political Scientists Jacob Hacker, in a book I discussed in a diary earlier this year, as
"The Great Risk Shift--A Substantive Fight That Obama COULD Make His Own":
I want to point out a major substantive initiative that I think Obama could take on quite readily, even though it might at first seem a more natural fit for Edwards. The issue is laid out in a recent book by Jacob S. Hacker, a Yale University political scientist, The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement--And How You Can Fight Back. In it, Hacker argues that the greatest economic challenge facing Americans today is not economic inequality-though he doesn't seek to downplay that-but rather the shifting burden of economic risk. And that what's most needed in the 21st Century is a new orientation to bringing risk back under reasonable control.
It's not simply a matter of protecting folks at the bottom, Hacker argues--effective dealing with risk is vital for creating an environment in which people feel secure enough to take on the sort of voluntary risk that helps drive the economy forward--what's often called "entrepreneurial risk," but that includes a wide range of choices to invest resources of time, money and effort in future possibilities that by their very nature cannot be certain. These include investments in eduction, training, changing careers, starting a new business, etc. In short, Hacker argues, a security orientation is not the polar opposite to an opportunity orientation--it is a vital aspect of an opportunity orientation. And it's this latter argument that gives Hacker's point about countering the Great Risk Shift a potential bipartisan cross-over appeal that fits perfectly with Obama's articulated intentions.
Thus far, Obama doesn't seem very inclined to move in such a direction-even though doing so could have significantly undercut Clinton's advantage among less-secure, lower-income voters. Obama remains locked into a middle-class, classic progressive mindset that is, unfortunately, blind to it's own material vulnerability, via the enormous rise in risk that Hacker is talking about-risk that has been shifted onto the very individuals who find Obama's rhetoric so appealing.
This is why I think that Obama is extremely vulnerable politically-not necessarily in the upcoming election, as McCain is an incredibly vulnerable candidate who could easily lose by 10-20 points this November. Rather, if Obama's cultural blinders disable him from grasping the true nature of the challenge he faces, he could end up drowning in the flood of consequences from 30+ years of conservative failure.
In Matt's diary, mentioned at the beginning of this post, he ticked off the ways in which Obama was centralizing power within the Democratic Party. What seems clear to me is that Obama is doing this because it's the easy path to power-compared, say, to confronting the power centers beyond the party, and engaging in a Gramascian "war of position"/"culture war" to challenge, take over and transform the institions of cultural power that define the limits of the thinkable. Various people have suggested that once Obama has consolidated his power as President, he will be able to disarm his opposition and force his agenda through. Perhaps.
But the ultimate problem with this scenario is the question of whether Obama himself will have an agenda adequate to the magnitude of the problem, or if his technocratic ideology of reasonable compromise will prove inadequate to the task at hand, just as the classical progressives of a centrury ago could not solve the problems of injustice they faced, because they feared the very people who they sought to "save."
The problem is, ultimately, whether it is ever even possible to actually be technocratic for the people. Or whether that was just a dream. Just a dream.
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