Progressivism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Progressivism is an ideological perspective broadly opposed to conservatism in regards to any number of political, economic, social, or moral issues. As such, it is often, though not always, premised upon a philosophy of history that affirms the continual possibility of progress toward improved conditions of justice in human consciousness and society. This conception of progress is usually not a perfectionist or utopian one, whether religious or secular, but instead emphasizes ameliorative reform and innovation in private behavior, as well as public matters and organizations. Since these reforms and innovations frequently clash with the traditional patterns of exchange and governance, religious and moral beliefs, or cultural norms and customs defended in a wide variety of ways by different forms of conservatism, progressivism has often come to be identified with the various liberal, egalitarian, and democratic movements that oppose conservative parties and tendencies in numerous societies around the world.

However, progressivism in the United States is also closely associated with a specific historical era of political, economic, business, and bureaucratic reforms and the policies established during that period. The extensive changes that took place during the twenty years covering the presidential administrations of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909),William Taft (1909–1913), and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) resulted in the first decades of the twentieth century often referred to as the Progressive Era. Some participants in various modern liberal, egalitarian, and democratic movements in the United States today—most usually within or at least aligned with the Democratic Party, but occasionally as members of other, more narrowly focused or radical ideological organizations and political parties—have taken to looking back to that particular era as a source of benchmark measurements. They use these measurements to assess their own aspirations, goals, and approaches. (However, explicitly socialist or social democratic thinkers sometimes see the “progressive” moniker as signally too much willingness to accept and work within the modern liberal capitalist order.) Thus, those associated with the modern liberal, egalitarian, and democratic movements sometimes adopt the label “progressive” with the explicit intention to associate themselves with those historical reformers, in contrast to the more generally moderate “liberal” perspectives that are more common among opponents to conservatives in America today.

The basics of the progressive perspective in this more particular sense is a belief that the social and economic transformations that accompanied the Industrial Revolution—and which have only continued as the centrality of technology to modern life has grown—demand a rethinking of the traditional responsibilities of democratic government. The increasing pluralism of societies with significant migrant and immigrant populations also calls for reconsideration, in the sense of both large numbers of people moving from the countryside into the cities, as well as large numbers of racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse immigrants coming to the nation from foreign shores—both of which were the case in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America, and which remains the case today. More specifically, the progressive perspective requires an expansion of the powers of state bureaucracies and regulatory agencies in order to control the exploitive practices of key economic actors, and to make democracy more accessible, effective, and accountable. The overarching goal is to empower American citizens by making mechanisms of participation available in an increasingly complex economy and in the government of an industrialized, urbanized state, as well as to streamline and make those same mechanisms more efficient.

The various liberal, egalitarian, or democratic accomplishments of the Progressive Era ranged from the constitutional accomplishments (e.g., the extension of votes to women, the direct election of senators, the foundation of a progressively scaled income tax) to the political achievements (e.g., the widespread establishment of the secret ballot, primary elections, state referendums and ballot initiatives, and the recall vote) to the economic feats (e.g., trust-busting, child labor laws, support for unionization, the minimum wage, and workers compensation). The legacy of this era of accomplishment inspires those who adopt the progressive label today to seek and use government agencies to achieve, within the context of liberal democratic capitalism, ever greater political and economic equality. This occurs through the expansion of the welfare state, the extension of public education and health care coverage, and so forth.

In some basic ways, these goals, both historically and today, parallel those pursued by various advocates of populism. In fact, many of the reforms associated with the Progressive Era actually began through earlier populist agitation, from the 1870s through the early 1900s, and some influential populist leaders (e.g., William Jennings Bryan) came to affiliate themselves with the progressive movement. However, progressivism was from its beginning a more mainstream, urban, and middleclass (and upper-class) phenomenon, and much more willing to trust in the authority, language, and expertise of higher education—and the practitioners of such emergent fields as public administration or political science—than were the primarily agrarian and rural defenders of local populist sovereignty. This class divide, which also has a racial subtext, can be seen in the enthusiasm many progressives of that era had for Prohibition, for the urbane (and easily secularized) teachings of the social gospel, and for political reforms (e.g., civil service requirements) that disempowered ethnic and religions enclaves and parties. It is also evidenced in their favor for approaches to civil planning that privileged centralized management and mass production, thus breaking up small neighborhood and local economies, and—in a few cases—for policies premised upon the practice of eugenics. While few self-described progressives today associate their commitment to egalitarian reforms and democratic improvements with these kinds of practices, the legacy of the elite educational, bureaucratic, and class perspective of American progressive liberal thought sometimes still brings populists or radicals in alignment with conservative movements in order to oppose them.

Bibliography:

Crunden, Robert M. Ministers of Reform:The Progressives’ Achievement in American Civilization. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Eisenach, Eldon J. The Lost Promise of Progressivism. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994.
The Social and Political Thought of American Progressivism Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2006.
Elshtain, Jean. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Fried, Barbara H. The Progressive Assault on Lassiez Faire. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 2001.
Lasch, Christopher. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.
Pestritto, Ronald J., and William J. Atto, eds. American Progressivism. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 2008.
Skowronek, Stephen. Building a New American State:The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
White, Ronald C., and C. Howard Hopkins. The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976.

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