I don’t even know what this means. If you’re going to write a book review about the defining elements of liberalism, you need to do more than just list four defining elements and say that looking at things that way is very rewarding. More importantly in our present setting, it’s almost moronic to introduce the difference between liberals and progressives this way:
You might wonder if there’s any point in even trying to define liberalism. Efforts to do so seem bound to fail. From the start, its meaning has been elusive and in flux. Today, no right-thinking person is against “liberal democracy,” and we mostly take “liberal capitalism” for granted — yet conservative Americans use “liberal” as a term of abuse and many left-leaning Americans would rather be called “progressives.”
These two words are not interchangeable. In fact, for progressivism to have any meaning at all, it has to be distinct from liberalism. If there are some Democrats who don’t want to be called “liberal” that is their choice, but whether they actually are liberal or not is not up to them.
Progressivism has a long history in this country, and it’s a history that is distinct from FDR’s New Deal coalition which relied heavily on Jim Crow Democrats. Progressives track their heritage to people like Fighting Bob La Follette, Louis Brandeis and Teddy Roosevelt. Prior to the Reagan Revolution, the Republican Party embraced many progressive concepts and goals. But the country’s Establishment was thoroughly liberal.
It is indeed difficult to precisely define what liberal means, partly because the liberal Establishment of the mid-20th Century was as heavily reliant on progressives as it was on segregationists. But JFK and LBJ were liberals on foreign and domestic policy. Yes, they both had progressive agendas and they were much different from each other in many respects. But they led the liberal Establishment at the zenith of its power.
Progressives, meanwhile, were sorted out of the Republican Party entirely and found themselves clustered on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, or even further to the left outside of the two-party system. And then watched the Democratic Establishment slowly march in their direction on a whole host of social issues but much less so on economic ones. The liberal Establishment always wanted to balance corporate/labor disputes, while progressives openly take labor’s side. Progressives are adjuncts in a center-left coalition…more outside agitators than inside legislators. Liberals are used to power and its responsibilities. The progressive movement is suspicious of all power structures, albeit generally trusting in the government’s ability to stand up to the concentration of wealth and economic power if given the authority to do so.
Liberalism is forward-looking, but much more comfortable with traditional American cultural attitudes than progressives. It’s easy to be a good FDR liberal in Arkansas or Tennessee, but disqualifying to be a “San Francisco progressive.”
I call myself a progressive and a liberal, but I don’t fit perfectly into either definition. I abhor Michael Bloomberg’s progressive excesses on things like sugary drinks while warily supporting his progressive efforts on gun control (up to a point). I’m not much interested in being a gadfly on the Establishment because I want to take over the Establishment. I want progressives to keep most of their values but to lose their anti-Establishmentarian attitudes that turn people off and prevent them from trusting progressives with power. A progressive revolution in this country can only happen when we have the geographical reach to be a governing coalition. That requires us to expand our reach, and that requires pragmatism on both issues and on how we feel about power.
But, in any case, this country is still run on the architecture built by the great 20th Century liberals, who built on the work of the great 20th Century progressives. Since both groups have a common interest in defending their work, and since both groups share an optimistic outlook on the capacity of government to do good, they are currently flocking together to oppose the dying remnants of the Conservative Movement.
Clive Crook wrote that? Of course it’s going to be drivel. He’s a Tory wanker.
I want progressives to keep most of their values but to lose their anti-Establishmentarian attitudes that turn people off and prevent them from trusting progressives with power.
Can someone tell me where the proof of this is? Is it because not enough progressive seek elected office? Something else?
Okay, look at any comment thread here on U.S. foreign policy. Look at how people here tend to view basic patriotism. Look at the cynicism level at any American institution or organization or population segment that wields power. Is that cynicism warranted? Most of the time, yes, but we have to mature.
We act like 20 year-olds who just learned to disbelieve in their parents’ religion. It’s all betrayal and rottenness. It’s the opposite of an actual progressive vision, which has to be positive. Power structures can be more or less rotten, but do we believe in ourselves, that we have the capacity to run these thing right? If we do, we fail to project that confidence and optimism in a way that is easily discernible to your Average Joe. He doesn’t want someone who thinks this country is wrong about everything running the ship.
This is a matter of growing up, not being wrong.
Okay, look at any comment thread here on U.S. foreign policy. Look at how people here tend to view basic patriotism. Look at the cynicism level at any American institution or organization or population segment that wields power. Is that cynicism warranted? Most of the time, yes, but we have to mature.
Mature meaning what? You even admit cynicism is warranted. What about the threads on foreign policy? Is Brookings or CAP going to hire doves? Of course not. Brookings derives a lot of their non-corporate funding from an Israel-firster(Haim Saban). Look at the DOJ. They are good on voting and stuff like Michael Brown, but what about prosecuting white-collar crime? They suck at that, and some would claim corrupt. Just look at the Bank of America lawsuit settlement last week. Given the large settlements, though they are tax deductible, can you really say there was no criminal activity there? Yet no one has gone to jail. Why not? Even Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren run from the cameras when asked about Israel/Gaza. Why(can you say Haim Saban again, among others)?
Ok, but what are you going to DO about all that? Does any part of it involve getting yourself or your preferred politician elected into office? Because if all you’ve got to offer is cynicism that the system is never going to change, then why should anyone pay attention to you? You may be mostly correct, but you’re also telling people that you have nothing to offer them and they might as well vote based on other issues that they can demonstrably control.
A lot of leftists, myself included, are just frustrated and exhausted by having to continually put on our happy faces and read through our handbook of Ego-Stroking Lies Traditional America Believes In just to get through the day. The liberal/progressive consensus has had to continually lie and kowtow and flatter Traditional America for the past, oh, 35 years in order to get anything done. That kind of thing will fill you with contempt for the person being lied to and loathing and insecurity for what you believe in. So it’s not surprising that people just throw away the masks and fall into honest cynicism.
But don’t you worry. Every American leftist knows how important the masks are. Just let us vent for a bit and we’ll put them back on and resume lying to people who demand to be lied to.
I don’t know. What’s to be done about this:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/friends-israel
? A small group of people have every single member of the House and Senate in their pocket. How do you counter that when most elections at that level are about domestic issues?
If we do, we fail to project that confidence and optimism in a way that is easily discernible to your Average Joe. He doesn’t want someone who thinks this country is wrong about everything running the ship.
I agree. Average Joe needs to be lied to and cajoled a lot more than he currently is. The Iraq War wasn’t aided and abetted by cowards him, it was a shadowy cabal of eeeeevil men and liberals have a plan to fix that with no responsibility on his part! The current Ferguson debacle isn’t a predictable outgrowth of Average Joe’s embrace of white privilege and authoritarianism, it’s an unfortunate but unique flare-up and things will be taken care of soon. Etc. etc.. Until we have our badly-needed demographic turnover, Average Joe will need these ego-soothing lies that the problem isn’t with him or the institutions he believes in, it’s… it’s this shadowy force!
Sort of like how smart teenage atheists lie through their teeth about their religious beliefs until they graduate college and/or move out of the house.
The establishment is neither liberal nor progressive. Look at their actions.
How else are liberals and progressives to be over against an establishment that is neither liberal nor progressive but is incompetent and corrupt in a way not seen since the 1920s?
In practice we are rapidly approaching the conservative nirvana in which the state is responsible for nothing except the military and law enforcement. And everything else is privatized whether under the cloak of the state or in the private sector.
And we are seeing that that does not in fact create smaller government; it creates more war and more police abuse, now creeping from inner cities to middle class suburbs. When it jumps the shark and actually affects middle class whites, will there be sufficient political will to reverse that trend?
With an establishment moving in that direction, how exactly can a progressive or a liberal be but anti-establishment.
That New Deal framework has diminished state by state and is under constant attack at the federal level. Where exactly are its establishment defenders? Where is the actual application of those progressive reforms that was to hold the trusts in check?
Understanding that progressives and liberals lack the geographic spread and critical mass to win a fight is not the same as dropping an anti-establishment position.
When there’s a real trans-establishment that has some sway in the establishment, that might be possible. But the current mood of the establishment is be co-opted or be expelled. Witness the sad case of Van Jones.
Ok, Boo. Please define what Liberal and Progressive means to you. Not with examples, but with definitions (examples do help illustrate the definition).
As another request, please distinguish Liberal from Libertarian. I know the practical difference, but what is the book difference?
It’s easier to define these things by historical examples than by simple word definitions. That’s because there never was a liberalism without progressivism or a progressivism without liberalism.
What are the things that defined the Progressive Era? The Income Tax and Federal Reserve, trust-busting, environmentalism, female suffrage, prohibition, technocratic government, direct election of senators. anti-corruption, infrastructure spending, and investment in education.
This was much more moralistic that the liberalism that followed it. Trends you still see today include taxing sin (cigarettes, alcohol, gambling), banning trans-fats and unhealthy foods, environmentalism, support for massive stimulus projects, calls for higher taxes on the rich and corporations, more regulation of Wall Street, calls to break up big banks and reject large mergers, efforts at campaign finance reform, muckraking, protection of all citizens’ right to vote.
Liberalism was more accommodating of big business. They relied on labor unions but basically cut them off at the knees after 1947. It was about building up the nation for the war and then for the Cold War. It was mainly about building up the middle class while providing some protections for the most vulnerable, but with modest proposals that sought the cooperation of business. See employer-provided health care, for example. To a degree, by mid-Century, liberalism wasn’t a faction anymore. It was a consensus. It was how America was built up to be what it is today.
We’ve had thirty years of chipping away, but the edifice is still standing.
Libertarianism is basically a rejection of everything that happened in the Progressive Era. That’s why they focus so much on the income tax and the Federal Reserve. It’s a belief that everything went wrong, especially, after Woodrow Wilson was elected. Some elements go back even further to the Civil War.
There is, of course, civil libertarianism, which is quite distinct. That’s what the ACLU is all about. There are overlaps. But libertarianism is mainly a rejection of the entire 20th-Century American Project that puts the individual above all else and opposes any kind of coercion on a person to act for common weal.
OK, as you describe it, would any of us be liberals? Some of us are willing to accept that that is the best we can get at the moment, but generally the left tends to refer to anyone who truly advocates for those positions as sell outs. What am I missing?
I frankly think that the liberal/progressive split in America (for other countries like Japan and the U.K., it’s a much different story) is frankly overblown. Yes, there was a divergence in the 30s-60s but a few things caused the movements to converge and become as distinguishable as neo-chartalists and circuitists.
Interesting points, BooMan!
I kept stubbornly calling myself a Liberal as the term became more and more demonized.
But, I am probably a bit more Progressive than I am Liberal.
So, what do I call myself?
A Progreberal?
A Libgressive?
Someone help me out here.
With the likes of Glenny, Rush and Bill-O using ‘Progressive’ as a club to beat erstwhile liberals with, I’m tending towards calling myself a DFH, or Driftglass’ ‘The Left: Taking shit for being right since before you were born’.
The dead giveaway in that article is the mention of ‘Tea Party liberal’ which is so flammably made of straw, no smoking should be allowed within 100 miles of it.
I don’t know about those “dying remnants” of the conservative movement. I suppose I need more definition. If anything, I see conservatives and their friends,the Koch libertarians, moving to take apart the liberal/progressive framework and leave us with a privatized government and infrastructure under the banner of winner take all and the devil the hindmost. Just sayin.
you should look closer at the way the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, can no longer get the GOP to spend money on infrastructure or to pass immigration reform or to pay our bills on time without causing a credit downgrade.
or try looking at the a future GOP where social conservatives are totally marginalized on gay rights and yet are still expected to serve as the backbone of the party.
Everything would change if the party could somehow win back the presidency, but, failing that, the party is becoming increasingly worse than useless to the business community. The Democrats are friendlier on agricultural subsidies, they want to invest in research and infrastructure, they pay our bills on time, and they’re basically business-friendly (enough) to be tolerable.
The left is going to be uneasy about this for good reason, but the GOP is beginning to drift away from the business community, and it’s not just because they’re opposed to bailouts and government spending. It’s because they don’t win national elections.
Right now, the majority of the right’s positive agenda is being conducted in the courts, but even that is slipping away from them and will not work at all if they lose control of the Supreme Court.
And the next generation simply does not think like the Reagan generation on race on gender on human sexuality or even on religion.
The Conservative Movement is spent, and all they have left right now is their residual power. But that residual power is only strong enough to alienate themselves from the business community.
Good points. I like the one about them losing the business community. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The conservatives control the money and the corporations and unless they really do jump a shark ( thanks THD) they will probably control congress for years to come and the ideologues who work for Koch et. al. will continue to tear down the infrastrucure. I am by no means sanguine of a fast or easy way out of this. We may have a long road of deadlocked government and more spectacles like the events leading up to the sequester. But I will be most happy to celebrate each time one of the idiots falls on his face. Next up: Rand Paul.
Admittedly, I am talking on a time scale here. My generation is just coming to power and beginning to lead corporate America, and the next generation is just getting started in their careers. The midterms aren’t going to help anything. And we’re locked in a death grip with the Conservative Movement at the moment. But the Conservative Movement is in the beginning stages of losing control of the Republican Party. Either that, or the party itself will sink beneath the waves. Both will not survive.
I guess I put it this way: Progressive is used:
3 Because liberal has been beaten up as a term.
I am a liberal, not a progressive. I guess one of the dividing lines for me is Chomsky. I am not a socialist of a social democrat.
Liberal: a political attitude towards the speed and direction of change, with a general attitude that human beings can create positive change.
Liberalism: a political ideology that favors freedoms over equality.
These two words are very different in political science textbooks.
Liberalism – think Thatcher’s neo-liberalism – is the same everywhere, it’s a series of ideological beliefs.
But a liberal in Saudi Arabia may be someone who thinks that women should be allowed to drive. Whereas that is properly a conservative position in the US. Because to be conservative means to prefer the status quo.
As someone who teaches Comparative Government and political theory, the misuse of terms drives me crazy.
Progressive and liberal mean roughly the same thing in the US as they prefer more of a social democratic system.
While I like your definition of ‘liberal,’ it doesn’t seem consonant with what US elite ‘liberals’ of the past few decades have espoused and more or less been endorsed by ‘liberals’ in the general public. Seems to have been distilled down to “open to change,” often at a snail’s pace, but without the necessary core values that inform the vision for change. Thus, they are rely on those of other political/economic persuasions to define the direction of change that they are willing to go along with.
Progressive and liberal were so similar for a few decades (roughly 1932-1972) that for ordinary citizens, the lines between the two were blurred. And progressive vision/thought/action were extinguished within the Democratic Party. That began the period of the Democratic Party offering the status quo with ever so slight tweaks. Vision and change is an easier sell and by 1980, it was Republicans/conservatives that won the debate on the direction the country should take. (
Carter did have more vision than most liberals/Democrats but it was an odd stew of progressive/status quo/regressive and as he articulated it, it was depressing. Since then liberals have championed the status quo (keep Social Security, Medicare, and the National Security State) and regressive (kill off the New Deal financial legislation and chip away at social-welfare programs). The 1996 votes on DOMA in the House and the Senate (and signed by the ‘liberal’ Bill Clinton) illustrates how open to regressive social change ‘liberals’ had become since the 1960s. Legislating second class citizenship for any group is anathema to core liberal/progressive values.
Being open to change, liberals have come around on the question of same-sex marriage a decade and a half later, but a considerable portion of the vision/drive and money for the change came from libertarian leaning Republicans.
GWB got trounced when he touched the political third rail, but that hasn’t dissuaded Democrats from sidling up to it. Again, taking the vision thing from conservatives. As was the PPACA (with some progressive/liberal tweaks).
The Big Dog also got all us liberals to sign up to his welfare and NAFTA and repeal of Glass-Stegall too. He, HRC and Obama leave a lot to be desired to be called liberal or progressive in my book., Could that mean we need to look a little harder before we sign up?
The Bill Clinton backed/supported list of Republican/conservative and anti-New Deal legislation is very long. None of which Hillary Clinton has distanced herself from. But liberals/Democrats close their eyes and ears when presented with the list and go “la la la” or accuse the presenter of being a troll, Naderite, or libertarian-fascist; so, it’s easier for me just to throw it out piecemeal.
Used the DOMA example in my comment because I think it gets closer to illustrating the vision bankruptcy in the Democratic Party than specific DINO legislation does and might have had more DEM votes than some of that legislation.
Hillary Clinton is like LBJ and Nixon combined without any of the good social/economic bits. Not what this country needs even if it comes with a vagina.
Yes.
Liberals I like are progressives.
Liberals I don’t like aren’t progressives.
It’s not that complicated.
Leaving aside the fact that the establishment is what has caused many of our civilazation threatening issues…
The only people that should hold power are those who are suspicious of it.
but if you’re suspicious of power would you ever pursue it?
I think the answer to that question for the most part is no
So then what?
There’s enough confusion that I think people put their own spin on these terms.
I’d break it down along the organizing vs activism axis: progressives work toward an actual real-world goal and will take changes in the direction they seek even if imperfect, while liberals aim for a public statement of ideals with less willingness to compromise.
Except on the internet, where it’s the other way round…
Of course.
Liberals are older.
Duh.
A little richer, too.
But not much.
AG