In this recent article, political commentator Michael Lind argues that "progressives" should drop that label and start calling themselves "liberals" again -- revive that once-honorable name, instead of trying to distance themselves from the RW's demonization of it by rebranding. Reasons given:
1) It's futile -- the RW is going to bash the center-left based on its policies, whatever name it uses.
2) Neoliberals have tried to appropriate the name "progressive" for themselves, which makes it rather confusing.
3) Radical leftists -- socialists and Communists of various stripes -- have done the same. (See Henry Wallace' 1948 presidential campaign, as a "Progressive Party" candidate, and also endorsed by the Communists.)
4) There is also risk of confusion with the early 20th-Century Progressives, whose politics were substantially different from all of the above.
5) The word "progressive" is "too German," deriving as it does from Germany's bureaucratically-oriented 19th-Century Deustche Fortschrittspartei (the word Fortschritt means "progress), whereas liberalism proper is rooted in values and civil liberties, not state action.
6) The most interesting objection: The world "progressive" implies "progress," which is not necessarily a liberal value.
7) "Liberal" is, or could be once again, a badge of pride. It describes an American political tradition with an honorable history and great achievements to its credit.
All very good reasons, to be sure; very persuasive and cogently argued; but I object for the following two reasons:
1) The word "liberal" also is prone to ideological confusion. In the 19th Century it meant more or less what we call "libertarianism" today, which, at least in its modern incarnation, is also very, very different from what Lind considers "liberal" as described above. Some still speak of "classical liberalism."
2) In my judgment, in contemporary American political discourse, the word "progressive" actually means something, and not what Lind seems to think it does. Specifically, it means something well to the left of "liberal" and well to the right of "socialist." It is the political position of Canada's New Democratic Party, and of America's erstwhile NDP-inspired New Party, or the Working Families Party, or the Vermont Progressive Party -- any of which is easily distinguishable from even such a moderate socialist organization as the Democratic Socialists of America. Their politics is that of the social democrats of Europe. They don't envision wholesale expropriation of wealth or socialization of all means of production, but they do regard greater socioeconomic equality as an important end-in-itself, and they do regard movement in that direction as a form of "progress," and they do believe in the idea of "universal progress in general." The American Greens -- at least, the main body of them, the Green Party of the United States -- are a branch of American progressives. (There is also a smaller and distinctly far-leftist, Marxist-influenced party, the Greens/Green Party USA.) And progressivism so defined is an important political tendency, far more important in American politics today than socialism as such -- and, I think may become much more important in coming decades, potentially more important than any other, especially now that conservatism, however defined, has been so thoroughly discredited by events (and, more importantly, doomed to very slow political marginalization due to permanent demographic, generational and cultural changes -- see here, here and here). The word "progressive" is worth preserving in American political discourse because it denotes that political tendency as no other term in current usage adequately does.
1) It's futile -- the RW is going to bash the center-left based on its policies, whatever name it uses.
2) Neoliberals have tried to appropriate the name "progressive" for themselves, which makes it rather confusing.
3) Radical leftists -- socialists and Communists of various stripes -- have done the same. (See Henry Wallace' 1948 presidential campaign, as a "Progressive Party" candidate, and also endorsed by the Communists.)
4) There is also risk of confusion with the early 20th-Century Progressives, whose politics were substantially different from all of the above.
5) The word "progressive" is "too German," deriving as it does from Germany's bureaucratically-oriented 19th-Century Deustche Fortschrittspartei (the word Fortschritt means "progress), whereas liberalism proper is rooted in values and civil liberties, not state action.
6) The most interesting objection: The world "progressive" implies "progress," which is not necessarily a liberal value.
7) "Liberal" is, or could be once again, a badge of pride. It describes an American political tradition with an honorable history and great achievements to its credit.
All very good reasons, to be sure; very persuasive and cogently argued; but I object for the following two reasons:
1) The word "liberal" also is prone to ideological confusion. In the 19th Century it meant more or less what we call "libertarianism" today, which, at least in its modern incarnation, is also very, very different from what Lind considers "liberal" as described above. Some still speak of "classical liberalism."
2) In my judgment, in contemporary American political discourse, the word "progressive" actually means something, and not what Lind seems to think it does. Specifically, it means something well to the left of "liberal" and well to the right of "socialist." It is the political position of Canada's New Democratic Party, and of America's erstwhile NDP-inspired New Party, or the Working Families Party, or the Vermont Progressive Party -- any of which is easily distinguishable from even such a moderate socialist organization as the Democratic Socialists of America. Their politics is that of the social democrats of Europe. They don't envision wholesale expropriation of wealth or socialization of all means of production, but they do regard greater socioeconomic equality as an important end-in-itself, and they do regard movement in that direction as a form of "progress," and they do believe in the idea of "universal progress in general." The American Greens -- at least, the main body of them, the Green Party of the United States -- are a branch of American progressives. (There is also a smaller and distinctly far-leftist, Marxist-influenced party, the Greens/Green Party USA.) And progressivism so defined is an important political tendency, far more important in American politics today than socialism as such -- and, I think may become much more important in coming decades, potentially more important than any other, especially now that conservatism, however defined, has been so thoroughly discredited by events (and, more importantly, doomed to very slow political marginalization due to permanent demographic, generational and cultural changes -- see here, here and here). The word "progressive" is worth preserving in American political discourse because it denotes that political tendency as no other term in current usage adequately does.
