"Progressives"

Khwarizmi

I dislike this term when used with reference to a group of people.  I don't believe these people exist, or else I think the term is an oversimplification.

Let me explain.  Suppose I live in a society where everybody wears green hats, and I think blue hats are better.  I might be classed as a progressive for thinking that a change for the better - the adoption of blue hats as a fashion - is good.  But that same belief might cause me to be classed as a reactionary in another society where blue hats were previously the fashion.  Herein lies the problem.

"Progressivism" is a term which may be applied to a number of different ideologies.  In its broadest sense, it may be blamed for everything from the Reign of Terror in France to the Great Chinese Famine.  This is, however, misleading, as the Comité de Salut Public and the Communist Party of China had virtually nothing in common with one another, and have similarly little in common with, say, advocates of gay marriage legalisation (who arguably represent an emerging conservative attitude within the LGBT subculture) or for that matter, other movements which could be termed "progressive" such as women suffragists or the African-American civil rights movement.

tl;dr: I don't believe that a group called progressives exists, and I believe that attacks on progressives (or progressivism) are pointless as the term encompasses far too many ideas which have little to do with one another, other than that they all advocate some idea or other which hasn't previously been the norm in their respective societies.

Tnu1138

Honestly I can really get where you are comingfrom but that's pollitics foryou your progresives are another mans reactionaries for me it's an issue of scale. on a Macroscale i'm a progressive on a microscale i'm a reactioanry i fear change in my personallife but I think mass social change is usually a good thing especially when it coems to equality and acceptence.

Khwarizmi

That wasn't really what I was talking about, but I think that's fairly common.  As far as my personal life goes, I could class my attitude as conservative, but in terms of society I guess I'd be classed as progressive, or at least having some progressive views.

Tnu1138

as a matter of fact most of my pollitics can be divided in to micro and macro scale. on a Micro scale i'man anarcho-syndicalist and on a macro anarcho-capitalist. I think collectives and especailly voluntary collectives have their place but they shouldn't be the norm.Collectiveism often results in bigotry and inequality and such other things where individualism seems naturally eglatarian.

Rottweiler

@Bobby: "Progressives" or "the Left" has historically been shorthand for "people who support moves by government toward greater equality" (implicit, I think, is that supporting equals outcomes is more progressive than supporting equal opportunity). When you say that's so broad that it may be blamed for everything from the Reign of Terror in France to the Great Chinese Famine to legalizing homosexual marriage, a representative of the Old Right like Joseph de Maistre would say "exactly."

If someone advocates an idea novel to their society which reduces equality, people will intuitively label them right-wing. "Progressive" is an established self-descriptor for people who regard equality as the highest value. Compare "libertarian".

glennmagusharvey

No, I disagree; progressives do not support equal outcomes with unequal effort.  The key, though, is that they are willing to look further to determine if institutional factors beyond people's own control affect their lives and livelihoods.

Khwarizmi

@ Rottweiler, I'm a little puzzled.  That second paragraph seems like a more specific definition of progressivism than your first paragraph appears to imply.  Would you term a person "progressive" if they did not regard equality as the highest value, did not identify as progressive, and greatly disliked the Reign of Terror and the Chinese Communist Party, but supported gay marriage, for instance?

I'm unclear on what constitutes "equality of outcome", as opposed to opportunity.

Rottweiler

Glenn, I disagree. Consider:

It's a progressive claim that African-Americans have worse aggregate outcomes because of racist institutional factors. Yet Asian-Americans have aggregate outcomes better than the majority. Yet if you were to research the hypothesis that frequency of stable marriage more parsimoniously explains more data (i.e. class as well as racial groups) than "white racists keep black people down but let Asians be more successful than the oppressors themselves", you'd be shunned by progressives. It's an article of faith that people must have equal outcomes regardless of whether they were reared by a stable two-parent family or a single mother and succession of boyfriends. These are equally valid choices that require oppression to explain unequal outcomes.

Gelzo

What if we define "progressives" as "people who Rottweiler disagrees with"?

Rottweiler

@Bobby: An example of the difference would be that a society of equal
opportunity could have a hierarchy of non-hereditary classes based on
performance in schools to which everyone's children have equal access.
If what's valued are equal outcomes, all people would be expected to
treat each other as equals regardless of intellect and skills.



Oh, and if someone openly held equality to be subordinate to higher
values and considered the French First Republic an enormous enormity,
yet supported homosexual marriage? No, I wouldn't call them progressive.

LoneWolfEburg

What about someone who adores the Jacobin Terror, yet hates gay marriage?

Rottweiler

^ Sounds like someone who was progressive but stopped keeping up with changing fashions.



Such people are often called "neoconservative".

Tnu1138

ugh Neocons.

glennmagusharvey

@Rottweiler: You are assuming there that marriages, relationships, and sexual practices are purely the choice of the individual.

Your small-scale reasoning is correct, that family stability is correlated to...well, actually, I'm not sure what you mean by "aggregate outcomes", but I'll take that to mean average standard of living (as there exist poor ethnic Asians-Americans as well).

However, you have several key points incorrect:
* "White racists keep[ing] black people down" does not happen much anymore these days. 
** Fridge logic: Why would white racists be so damn lenient on Asians?  The answer is that they aren't; they're just not around anymore.  This country has already seen spates of discrimination against Chinese immigrants; it's just that we've since gotten over it.
* Economic status can easily affect family stability.  Consider these factors:
** My parents would argue less if we had more money, because very many points of dispute come from how to deal with hard decisions about our finances, as well as criticism about financial mismanagement.
** Poorer people are more likely to go into unsavory professions such as prostitution, due not to choice but to necessity.
** Poorer people have fewer choices for housing, and by necessity have to choose worse-off neighborhoods to live in, where crime occurs more often.
*** You don't want to let your children see gun battles between gangs, right?  Now why is that?

So, your assumption basically amounts to assuming that correlation implies causation.  However, the correlation may very well be due to a common cause rather than causation.

That said, there is a lot of work being done--by progressives, no less, alongside religious organizations!--to encourage stable marriages, discourage out-of-wedlock sexual activity, and more.

Tnu1138

gleenn makes good points I like the note that he uses encourage and discourage rather then enforce. That just leads me to think "The progressive right?"

FrodoGoofballCoTV

I suppose the primary issue is semantics.  Not everyone has the same definition of "Progressive", or for that matter "socialist" (UK socialism?  Soviet socialism?), "capitolist" (US in the 1880's gilded age capitolism?  China in the 1990's state capitolism?), or even "libertarian" (You want to cut government only so the budget will be balanced without raising taxes, or you want to cut government to an absolute minimum, period).  This is in part (IMHO) due to the deliberate misuse by people who want to categorize those with different ideas than their own, but also because such words are necessarily vague.

 

So my question is, is there a better word or words for "progressive" that is less confusing / offensive / etc.?

glennmagusharvey

There also needs to be a distinction made between "progressive" (which, in the United States, usually includes a strong component of personal liberties such as freedom of speech, privacy, and more) and totalitarian planned-economy ideologies.

This is a distinction that is, of course, intentionally ignored by the Republican Party, for obvious political reasons.

Khwarizmi

I'd say that, intuitively, it seems likely that parents in stable marriages tend to result in a healthier upbringing for the child.  An investigation of that sounds like an entirely worthwhile exercise.

I also think that Glenn makes a very good point regarding poverty and the family.

Rottweiler, you have lessened, somewhat, my distrust of the term "progressive"; it appears that it is not so vague or arbitary as I perceived it to be.

Regarding your hypothetical equal opportunity society with a hierarchy, however, it strikes me as likely that parents of a low economic class will be less equipped to care for their children, less likely to enter a stable marriage and more likely to receive a societal stigma than parents of a higher economic class, which in turn seems likely to negatively impact their offspring's academic achievements, thereby rendering the classes de facto hereditary in the majority of cases and preventing true equality of opportunity.

Unrelated to the above, but out of curiosity: in what respects, if any, do progressives differ from egalitarians?

FrodoGoofballCoTV

I guess I would say based on my own interpretations of those words, there's a lot of overlap between progressives and egalitarians, but there is a real difference, the egalitarian prioritizes equality in general, while the progressive is more concerned about changing society for the better through maximizing positive freedoms.  Thus:

• An egalitarian progressive seeks the goal of an egalitarian society, and seeks the use of social programs, positive freedoms, etc. to correct the situation.
• An egalitarian libertarian seeks to disrupt systems that systematically foil the goal of an egalitarian society through negative freedoms, but is more interested in ensuring the society provides equal opportunity than whether the society helps the poor in other ways.
• A non - egalitarian progressive might be perfectly OK with a multi - tiered society, as long as that society regards caring for those in the less priveledged classes and seeking social improvement to be its primary duty.  For example, many Fabian Socialists would fall under my category of "non - egalitarian progressive".
  

Tnu1138

Which do you favor out of those options are y ou Frodo?

FrodoGoofballCoTV

I consider myself a moderate libertarian.  I regard social programs as a necessary evil, not a fundamental duty of government.

Tnu1138

That's not a bad position to hold i'll admit but I feel myself sometimes going to extremes because I feel itnessecary to do so.