Conor Williams: Defending Progressivism
[Conor Williams is a PhD Candidate in the Georgetown University Department of Government. He is currently working on his dissertation on John Dewey, Michael Oakeshott, and modern non-foundationalist politics. Williams co-authored “The Progressive Intellectual Tradition” with John Halpin at the Center for American Progress. Before coming to Washington, he attended Bowdoin College and served as a Teach For America corps member in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.]
Less than two years after the beginning of a “new progressive era” in the United States, progressives face the midterm elections saddled with massive political baggage. This may seem like nothing new. Since the term gained currency in the early twentieth century, Russell Kirk, James Ceaser, Jonah Goldberg, and other conservatives have claimed that American progressives share intellectual territory with Marxists, Nazis, and other radical, intolerant atheists. Largely by their rhetorical force, they have converted progressivism into utopianism, bureaucratic technocracy, corporatism, emotivism, anti-Americanism, philosophical non-foundationalism, racism, and so on and so forth.
In other words, for the umpteenth time in the last two decades, the American Left doesn’t know what it stands for. As has become customary, progressives are waiting for their more organized opponents to define the debate, its terms, and their role in it. They are routinely on the defensive in public debate, even when the facts overwhelmingly support their positions. Progressives have been reduced to dismissing their opponents as unfair, as unenlightened, as racists, or as politically incorrect. This needn’t happen. Progressivism is not as amorphous as the current state of affairs indicates. This is no time to despair or retreat; it is a time to reengage and reassert progressive positions in more compelling ways....
In the early twentieth century, changes in American social and economic conditions had systematically eroded the worth of constitutional protections of individual liberty. It became difficult to ignore the ways in which regnant constitutional interpretation had arbitrarily damned masses of individuals to desperate existences while rewarding others with outrageous luxuries. Progressive philosopher John Dewey asked Americans to consider the meaning of individual freedom through the following thought experiment: imagine an individual without property, education, or employment. Is this individual free to amass property? Would it matter if she was? Can this individual coherently explain her plight to those with power? Does the right to free self-expression help her obtain their ear? If they hear an inarticulate message from her, will they attend to her needs? Dewey’s point is straightforward enough: liberty is not only a matter of leaving individuals alone. At times, government must act positively to give all individuals a minimum chance to live freely. Put another way, liberty without opportunity would be a farce, if only its social, political, and economic consequences weren’t so tragic.
Dewey argued that instead of deemphasizing relevant constitutional protections of individuals, the state ought to explore ways to strengthen them against newly important corporate forces. He was among the first to note that applying private property protections to corporate and semi-public property presented a direct threat to the liberty of individuals, not to mention a tortured interpretation of constitutional property rights. Constraints upon individual liberty, he recognized, are as much social and economic as they are political. It is in response to such arguments that many conservatives determine progressives to be subconscious Marxists or secret “socialists.” The fallacy of conflating any argument suggesting that market regulation may enhance individual liberty with Marxism ought to be baldly evident. Marx saw politics withering away at the end of history, while Dewey emphasized the value of individual engagement in democratic decision-making. Concern over the use of wealth as a weapon against the less powerful does not make one a Marxist....
Read entire article at Dissent
Less than two years after the beginning of a “new progressive era” in the United States, progressives face the midterm elections saddled with massive political baggage. This may seem like nothing new. Since the term gained currency in the early twentieth century, Russell Kirk, James Ceaser, Jonah Goldberg, and other conservatives have claimed that American progressives share intellectual territory with Marxists, Nazis, and other radical, intolerant atheists. Largely by their rhetorical force, they have converted progressivism into utopianism, bureaucratic technocracy, corporatism, emotivism, anti-Americanism, philosophical non-foundationalism, racism, and so on and so forth.
In other words, for the umpteenth time in the last two decades, the American Left doesn’t know what it stands for. As has become customary, progressives are waiting for their more organized opponents to define the debate, its terms, and their role in it. They are routinely on the defensive in public debate, even when the facts overwhelmingly support their positions. Progressives have been reduced to dismissing their opponents as unfair, as unenlightened, as racists, or as politically incorrect. This needn’t happen. Progressivism is not as amorphous as the current state of affairs indicates. This is no time to despair or retreat; it is a time to reengage and reassert progressive positions in more compelling ways....
In the early twentieth century, changes in American social and economic conditions had systematically eroded the worth of constitutional protections of individual liberty. It became difficult to ignore the ways in which regnant constitutional interpretation had arbitrarily damned masses of individuals to desperate existences while rewarding others with outrageous luxuries. Progressive philosopher John Dewey asked Americans to consider the meaning of individual freedom through the following thought experiment: imagine an individual without property, education, or employment. Is this individual free to amass property? Would it matter if she was? Can this individual coherently explain her plight to those with power? Does the right to free self-expression help her obtain their ear? If they hear an inarticulate message from her, will they attend to her needs? Dewey’s point is straightforward enough: liberty is not only a matter of leaving individuals alone. At times, government must act positively to give all individuals a minimum chance to live freely. Put another way, liberty without opportunity would be a farce, if only its social, political, and economic consequences weren’t so tragic.
Dewey argued that instead of deemphasizing relevant constitutional protections of individuals, the state ought to explore ways to strengthen them against newly important corporate forces. He was among the first to note that applying private property protections to corporate and semi-public property presented a direct threat to the liberty of individuals, not to mention a tortured interpretation of constitutional property rights. Constraints upon individual liberty, he recognized, are as much social and economic as they are political. It is in response to such arguments that many conservatives determine progressives to be subconscious Marxists or secret “socialists.” The fallacy of conflating any argument suggesting that market regulation may enhance individual liberty with Marxism ought to be baldly evident. Marx saw politics withering away at the end of history, while Dewey emphasized the value of individual engagement in democratic decision-making. Concern over the use of wealth as a weapon against the less powerful does not make one a Marxist....