N.B.: The Progressive Congressional Caucus is not socialist

[KingOrfeo]

Followup to this thread. Please, let no one else repeat Allen West's mistakes. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is not a socialist organization. Oh, of course, some individual members could be socialists -- Bernie Sanders always calls himself that, at any rate -- but that's not what the caucus is for. "Progressive," in American politics today, means a position well to the left of "liberal" and well to the right of "socialist" -- it is more or less what Europeans would call "social-democratic." The Progressive Congressional Caucus is progressive in that sense. (And social democracy, BTW, is pretty much the only system tried since the Industrial Revolution that actually works, in a way that pure capitalism or, that far different and rarer thing, a pure free market, does not.)

This would be socialism:

The Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) is a multi-tendency democratic-socialist party in the United States. The party states that it is the rightful continuation and successor to the tradition of the Socialist Party of America, which had lasted from 1901 to 1972.

The party is officially committed to left-wing democratic socialism. . . .

Opposing both capitalism and "authoritarian communism", the Party advocates bringing big business under public ownership and democratic workers' self-management. It does not advocate the unaccountable bureaucratic control of Soviet communism.[6]

We're never gonna get anything like that out of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, not if the next election returned a progressive majority to both houses.

 

[islandman]

*subscribes*

 

[Frizzle_Fry]

. "Progressive," in American politics today, means a position well to the left of "liberal" and well to the right of "socialist" -- it is more or less what Europeans would call "social-democratic."

http://alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/jpg/laughing-lol-crazy.jpg

 

[KingOrfeo]

In a 2008 article, political commentator Michael Lind (a former National Review editor, BTW, who ultimately broke with the conservative movement for reasons recounted in this book) 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.

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.

Unlike progressivism and conservatism, liberalism is not a name that implies a view that things are either getting better or getting worse. Liberalism is a theory of a social order based on individual civil liberties, private property, popular sovereignty and democratic republican government. Liberals believe that liberal society is the best kind, but they are not committed to believing in universal progress toward liberalism, much less universal progress in general. Many liberals have been skeptical about the idea of unlimited progress and have believed that a liberal society is difficult to establish and easily changed into a nonliberal society.

Because liberalism refers to a particular kind of social order, and does not depend on any implied relationship of the present to the past or future, liberals can be either progressive or conservative, depending on whether they seek to move toward a more liberal system or to maintain a liberal system that already exists. For that matter, liberals can be revolutionary, if creating or establishing a liberal society requires a violent revolution. Liberals can even be counterrevolutionary, if they are defending a liberal society from revolutionary radicals, including anti-liberal revolutionaries of the radical right like Timothy McVeigh or Muslim jihadists.

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.

Those, then, are six arguments in favor of using liberalism to describe the center-left. I've reserved the seventh for last. The word "liberal" is a badge of pride. What is more embarrassing in 2008, to be associated with self-described liberals like Roosevelt and Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Barbara Jordan, or with conservatives like Reagan and George W. Bush and Tom DeLay? I much prefer the public philosophy of the mid-century liberals, for all their blunders and shortcomings, to that of the three movements in American history that have called themselves progressive: the moderate-to-conservative progressives of the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s and 1990s; the deluded pro-Soviet progressives of the mid-20th century; and the Anglo-Protestant elite progressives of the 1900s, who admired Bismarck's Germany and wanted to keep out immigrants and sterilize the native poor.

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.

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, of America's erstwhile 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. 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.

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

Repeat after me...
http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/w/j/3/communism-fascism-socialism.jpg

 

[KingOrfeo]

Repeat after me...
http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/w/j/3/communism-fascism-socialism.jpg

I hope you're not asking vetteman to say that -- he would be lying.

 

[KingOrfeo]

...but now that he's been outed, a committed leftist.

What, outed? He left the conservative movement on his own initiative, for very good reasons, and without changing his personal politics. And his present political position is well to the right of what I call "progressive."

 

[KingOrfeo]

Look, the political ideological spectrum (insofar as it can be characterized as a one-dimensional spectrum*) runs roughly, from left to right, like this:

Anarchist**
Communist
Socialist
Progressive/social-democratic
Liberal
Neoliberal
Neoconservative
Paleoconservative
Libertarian
Fascist

* For more nuanced, two-dimensional schemes, see the Nolan Chart and the Pournelle Chart, among others.

** Anarchists are not Libertarians, they are LWs with an ideology heavily influenced by Marxism. The Spanish Revolution (wherein the workers took control of the factories -- for real) was an Anarchist project mainly.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

This from the DSA website, Where We Stand, Section 4, A strategy For A New Left:

Many socialists have seen the Democratic Party, since at least the New Deal, as the key political arena in which to consolidate this coalition, because the Democratic Party held the allegiance of our natural allies. Through control of the government by the Democratic Party coalition, led by anti-corporate forces, a progressive program regulating the corporations, redistributing income, fostering economic growth and expanding social programs could be realized.

http://www.dsausa.org/about/where.html

No read all the way through their harangue of political bullshit and tell me how their goals differ in any substantial way from those of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Let's see:

Ideology

According to its website, the CPC advocates "universal access to affordable, high quality healthcare," fair trade agreements, living wage laws, the right of all workers to organize into labor unions and engage in collective bargaining, the abolition of significant portions of the USA PATRIOT Act, the legalization of same-sex marriage, US participation in international treaties such as the climate change related Kyoto Accords, strict campaign finance reform laws, a complete pullout from the war in Iraq, a crackdown on corporate welfare and influence, an increase in income tax rates on upper-middle and upper class households, tax cuts for the poor, and an increase in welfare spending by the federal government.

Whereas the DSA:

Section 2: Democratic Control of Productive and Social Life

<snip>

Vision of a Socialist Economy

The operation of a democratic socialist economy is the subject of continuing debate within DSA. First it must mirror democratic socialism's commitment to institutional and social pluralism. Democratic, representative control over fiscal, monetary, and trade policy would enable citizens to have a voice in setting the basic framework of economic policy--what social investment is needed, who should own or control basic industries, and how they might be governed.

While broad investment decisions and fiscal and monetary policies are best made by democratic processes, many argue that the market best coordinates supply with demand for goods, services,and labor. Regulated markets can guarantee efficiency, consumer choice and labor mobility. However, democratic socialists recognize that market mechanisms do generate inequalities of wealth and income. But, the social ownership characteristic of a socialist society will greatly limit inequality. In fact, widespread worker and public ownership will greatly lessen the corrosive effect of capitalists markets on people's lives. Social need will outrank narrow profitability as the measure of success for our economic life.

Very different from the CPC's ideology/vision on that subject, and much more ambitious. Here, once again, we see the essential difference -- not only in degree, but in direction -- between socialism and social democracy/progressivism.

 

[mercury14]

"Progressive," in American politics today, means a position well to the left of "liberal" and well to the right of "socialist"

Meh. Don't really agree.

 

[miles]

What group other than liberals works so hard denying who they are?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Republicans. That's why a lot of them pretend to be libertarian.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Meh. Don't really agree.

Neither "liberal" nor "socialist" perfectly fits the Working Families Party; each term represents its own tradition, and the WFP stands about midway between those two traditions and represents a third. What (technical and non-disparaging) word other than "progressive" or "social-democratic" would you use for that position?

 

[KingOrfeo]

What group other than liberals works so hard denying who they are?

White racists work a lot harder at that.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Neither "liberal" nor "socialist" perfectly fits the Working Families Party; each term represents its own tradition, and the WFP stands about midway between those two traditions and represents a third. What (technical and non-disparaging) word other than "progressive" or "social-democratic" would you use for that position?

Why would you use a non-disparaging term for something so vile?

 

[KingOrfeo]

The problem here is that RWs have a habit of viewing the whole left side of the spectrum through the wrong end of a telescope. We on the left (most of us, most of the time) don't have that problem (quite so bad), we can tell libertarians from theocons from paleocons from neocons from bizcons from Main Street Republican moderates, and we don't think they're all the same really.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Why would you use a non-disparaging term for something so vile?

Click the WFP link, look at the platform and tell me what's "vile," and we will all politely point and laugh at you.

 

[Sean Renaud]

It's not polite to point or laugh.

 

[miles]

White racists work a lot harder at that.

Like who?

 

[KingOrfeo]

It's not polite to point or laugh.

It is, in your case, compared to any more appropriate reaction. ("Polite" and "appropriate" being not always quite the same.)

 

[KingOrfeo]

Like who?

Jared Taylor actually denies he's a racist.

 

[miles]

Jared Taylor actually denies he's a racist.

Jesus fuck, Oreo.

Gumby is more well known than this guy.

 

[unregistered]