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I am a great believer in multiple causation and over-determination. So if you ask me why progressives might be so confused about what the term "progressive" itself means, it's hardly surprising that I will come up with a variety of different explanations--historical, philosophical, social scientific, cognitive scientific--and every one of them multi-causal as well. Which only serves to make folks like Mike Lux feel like I've proved their point: What good is all this over-thinking? We need to get things done!
I'm sensitive to that criticism, believe me. It's why I'm writing new reflective diaries this week different from the ones I was working on this weekend, which I naively thought I could just roll out during the week. So let me start with this: I think that the primary difference between conservatives and progressives is that: Conservatives believe in tribally-shared narrative myths that comfort them in perpetuating a world of inequality, while
Progressives believe in a universalist, critical-empirical approach to creating a world that works for everyone.
This is not an all-encompassing explanation. There are other important factors as well as a host of secondary ones. But I believe that this captures a "good enough" central core of the difference between the two worldviews. By its very nature, conservatism's tribalism, focus on narratives, attraction to comfort and acceptance of hierarchy provide a strong impetus towards a relative simplicity of political self-concept.
The exact opposite is true of progressivism. The universalist tendency means everyone is invited in, and tribalism is always distrusted to some degree or other--even the idea of establishing a progressive identity. Having a critical-empirical approach means that what a given progressive individual or group believes is highly mutable, depending on the latest research--or at least, the latest information available to them, as it fits into their pre-existing understanding of the world.
It's a great approach for problem-solving, in that disputes and disagreements help keep things honest, and create incentives for producing better and stronger arguments, as well as for finding creative syntheses that reconcile seemingly contradictory findings or approaches. But what's great for problem-solving in an ideal world can be positively debilitating in a world of ideological trench warfare, and for a wide variety of reasons, the vast majority of progressive institutions are premised on the myth that we still live in something vaguely approaching the ideal world, which may have had some element of truth back in the 1950s and 60s, but has clearly not been the case for several decades now. Finally, there are significant differences in how people conceive of a "world that works for everyone", which somewhat roughly parallel divergences in how people understand the world critical-empirically.
In my previous diary, Walk & chew gum: Still seeking clarity on Obama and the nature of progressivism, I quoted a passage from a Salon article by Ned Resnikoff, "Does the left even know what 'progressive' means?" as follows:
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And make no mistake, it is a problem. Part of the strength of the modern conservative movement is its startling clarity of purpose: beneath all of the platitudes about "freedom" and "liberty" is a well-oiled ideology machine that combines reduction of the welfare state (or at least consolidation of it around those who are already well-off), expansion of the national security state, and, although to a lesser extent in recent years, a full-throated endorsement of theocracy. All of these things are bundled together into a worldview as airtight and neatly self-contained as a conspiracy theory or fundamentalist religion in its alright.
Progressives should not envy conservatism for this entirely -- it is important to stay self-reflective, self-critical, and vaguely cognizant of reality. But progressive self-criticism and soul-searching is too often limited to questions of tactics and strategy, when the deeper issue is a seeming inability to articulate progressive first principles. The result is what we have now: a morass of factions and interests that sometimes work in harmony and often don't. A ragtag group that can never seem to find a consistent frame for the policy proposals it puts forth.
As I said in that diary:
I would argue, as I have many times before, that the key difference between the two is that conservatives have been waging hegemonic warfare for the last 30+ years, while progressive have not. (Both concepts are fuzzy, and take on diverse forms, as I've also argued.) Narrative simplicity is both reflective of conservative's antipathy toward complex thinking, and love of simple stories on the one hand, and the tremendous amount of time, energy and money that's been invested in creating a simply narrative framework: simple, but still riddled with contradictions and utterly divorced from the facts.
But I would also add that Lakoff has been making much the same point as Resnikoff with regard to progressive failings, ever since Moral Politics came out in 1996. So this is not a newly-identified problem by any means. More on this in a moment.
But first, an important aside: I want to point out that Resnikoff's characterization of American conservatism masks some serious disagreements.
As I've pointed out on numerous occasions, even a majority of self-identified "extreme conservatives" (7 on a 7-point Likert scale) are opposed to reducing the welfare state on a program-by-program basis. OTOH, support for expanding the national security state has only fleetingly surpassed 50%. Furthermore, theocrats and libertarians are deeply at odds ideologically, and it's taken generations of narrative massaging to fuse the two, with decidedly slipshod results. None of this seems to matter much because (a) progressives haven't been in the hegemonic warfare game, so there hasn't been a sustained attack on the contradictions, (b) logic and evidence have never mattered that much to conservatives (and even liberals can rationalize very well, thank you), and (c) appeals to tribalism (don't listen to the liberal media!) can serve to shut down questioning. Still, the contradictions do exist, and we should not forget about them--or worse deny them--so that our thinking about progressives is not distorted by a false background impression of conservative unity and coherence.
If we want to create a unified understanding of what it means to be a progressive, we need to do at least four different things: (1) Articulate a value-centered core.
(2) Demonstrate a convergence of various empirical approaches to understanding progressive vs. conservative ideology.
(3) Create a unified framework of meta-understanding to facilitate mediation of differences and disputes.
(4) Identify and make progress in dealing with major divisions that need to be resolved, or at least significantly re-thought and mitigated.
I've already presented a first-draft suggestion for (1), to wit: Progressives believe in a universalist, critical-empirical approach to creating a world that works for everyone.
Of course, I'm open to further ideas on the subject--what kind of progressive would I be if I weren't?--but I do think it provides a good-enough starting point. But I should probably say a bit more about what I mean by "critical-empirical approach". What I mean, quite simply, is a scientific-style approach as understood by William James, one that is basically a systematically disciplined form of common sense, and that allows as much importance to the critical asking of questions as it does to the finding of answers. This contrasts sharply with the positivist model of science, which serves to denigrate critical discourse, in the extreme claiming that such discourse is meaningless, since it does not involve statements verifiable by empirical observations. Properly understood, such an approach also highlights the crucial importance of institutionalizing checks against group-think and the like.
As for task (2), I've been doing some writing on this that I hope to pull together in diary form soon. But it needs to be properly understood as something intended to serve a practical purpose, not just as idle speculation.
Task (3) necessarily depends on task (2). We need to achieve a certain level of integrating our understanding of what it means to be a progressive before we can fruitfully start to create a unified framework of meta-understanding.
Finally, as to task (4), I believe that this is deeply implicated in the arguments that arisen about Obama and whether or not he is a progressive. They center around the tensions between the Third "Third Way" and those I call progressive populists, which includes, but is not limited to, those who draw on the European social democratic tradition.
This, then, is my tentative plan of action. Obviously, it doesn't matter much if it's only my plan. For it to matter, it has to engage others as well, hopefully, over time, a lot of others. But for now, at least, it has to engage you, dear readers.
What do you think? |
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