Why Progress supporters need to make progress their #1 goal
Yeah, I know that should be obvious, but some people apparently did not get the memo.
I have been an enthusiastic member of the Progress Studies community (or some call it the Abundance movement) for about 5 years. The goals of Progress studies as I see it are to:
Promote an awareness and understanding of progress.
Understand the origins and causes of progress.
Apply that knowledge to develop policies and practices that promote future progress.
Build a coalition to implement those policies in the real world.
I am happy to say that the movement is starting to gain some traction. Two recent conferences on opposite coasts got some media and social media attention this fall:
Abundance 2024 in DC
Progress Conference in Berkeley, CA
I hope that there are more to follow.
One of the things that I have noticed with Progress supporters is that they tend to come in two flavors. Though we rarely talk about electoral politics, I get the impression that the vast majority of Progress supporters are either Center-Left (for example,
, , and ) or Libertarian (for example, , , and Marian Tupy).I am sure that there are some Progress supporters on the Right and Left (as opposed to the Center-Left), but my impression is that those people are in the distinct minority. If you disagree, leave a comment.
A brief interruption for shameless promotion: Four of the six thinkers listed above wrote recommendations for my first book, “From Poverty to Progress.”
Now back to our regularly scheduled program…
This article is part of my ongoing series on Progress Studies. You can read more on the topic in the following posts:
You should also check out my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
I have no problem with differing ideological opinions being within the Progress Studies movement. Indeed, intellectual diversity should be a goal.
As strongly as I believe in my Progress-based Perspective (which you should read), I do not want it to degenerate into a mindless ideology. Intellectual diversity is essential for dismissing bad ideas that do more harm than good to society. But that intellectual diversity needs to be within a common goal: promoting human material progress.
My concern is that I have seen a number of instances of people joining the Progress Studies movement and then trying to pivot its goal towards their favored ideological vision. I will not name names as I do not want to start an unnecessary spat. This is called entryism, and it can potentially destroy a new intellectual movement.
For those who are not familiar with the term “entryism, ” I will include the definition from Wikipedia:
Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, infiltration, a French Turn, boring from within, or boring-from-within) is a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. If the organization being "entered" is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge and subversion to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right.
This is a pretty good definition, but I have one fundamental objection: Entryism does not require an organization or an individual to make a conscious decision. In fact, I think that most instances of entryism are not initiated by a deliberate decision.
For example, over the last 60 years, there has been a tremendous change of American institutions and the upper class in general shifting toward the Left ideologically. Now I know that some conservatives claim that this is the result of a deliberate strategy and point to Rudi Dutschke, Herbert Marcuse’s famous quote calling for a “long march through the institutions” in the late 1960s:
To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by 'boring from within', rather by 'doing the job', learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one's own consciousness in working with others.
The long march includes the concerted effort to build up counterinstitutions. They have long been an aim of the movement, but the lack of funds was greatly responsible for their weakness and their inferior quality. They must be made competitive. This is especially important for the development of radical, "free" media. The fact that the radical Left has no equal access to the great chains of information and indoctrination is largely responsible for its isolation.
The term “Long March” refers to the Long March in China from 1934-35 that enabled the Chinese Communist party to survive Nationalist oppression. The Long March is now part of Chinese and Communist mythology.
Conservatives point to the apparent success of this long march as proof that the ideological transition was a conscious decision.
I disagree.
I seriously doubt that many college-educated professionals decided at age 22 that they would take a boring occupation and work in that occupation for 40 years, so that 40 years later that institution would become Leftist. Perhaps a tiny percentage did.
Far more likely is that these college-educated professionals had Left-of-Center (but not necessarily Leftist) ideological views before entering the workforce, and as those types of people became the majority within the profession, this created a cultural tipping point within the institution. Hitting this tipping point meant that a small minority of real Leftist could shame the broader Left-of-Center employees and particularly managers to publicly embrace Social Justice and climate activism in the Public Relations and hiring, firing, and promotion policies (i.e. DEI). It was only recently, say after 2010, that Leftists tried to change organizational goals to DEI and fighting climate, and only because the Center-Left majority allowed them to do so.
In other words, it was more of a cultural shift within the organization that eventually created a tipping point than a deliberate attempt to infiltrate the organization. Once a critical mass of members in an organization acquire a specific ideology, then that organization is captured regardless of whether there was any prior strategy or conscious action.
So let me make this perfectly clear: all members of the Progress movement should believe that promoting human material progress should be the #1 goal for government (though not the only goal). In addition, all members should acknowledge trade-offs between promoting human material progress and other goals. In other words, acknowledge trade-offs.
While I do not fully agree with the famous Thomas Sowell quote, I do think it carries a powerful and useful message:
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
―Thomas Sowell,
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
As an aside, I actually do believe that technological innovation can solve problems or at least mitigate them, so Sowell’s quote is not 100% accurate. But in the domain of public policy, which is I think what Sowell is focused on for this quote, Sowell is 100% correct.
This is particularly true for ideologies. Ideologies establish pure visions of morality that are supposed to guide government policy. The stronger one believes an ideology, the less likely one is to acknowledge trade-offs between the moral vision, other possible goals, and material reality.
Even worse, because that moral vision requires action in the material world to implement that vision, ideologues want to spread their moral vision to other individuals and organizations. That is exactly the motivation that drives entryism and cultural shifts within instutitutions.
So who gets to join the Progress movement?
I have no authority to include or exclude those who want to join the Progress movement.
In general, we should open (dare I say “inclusive”) of all those who support the goal of human material progress. I do not want to be the guy driving other people out of the movement, but I do believe that as a group we must make clear that certain beliefs are required to be accepted informally as contributing members, particularly if that person is speaking to the media or posting on social media as though they are a member of the Progress movement.
If we fail to do so, then at the very least, this will cause confusion among the public as to what we stand for. Given that we want to convince the public to support certain policies and practices, this is a problem. An even bigger problem is that people will change to goals of the Progress movement to adopt policies that actually conflict with the main goal of promoting material progress.
So I have no problem with Libertarians being members of the Progress movement, but not if they say that the government can take no actions to promote human material progress because it is a threat to Liberty. A Progress movement that refuses to take any government action is doomed to fail or at least be irrellevent.
Fortunately, I think that it is pretty clear that most of the actions that the government must take to promote human material progress consist of rolling back government policies that undermine the foundation of material progress. Most of those policies were implemented by the Center-Left. Libertarians (and Rightists) are great allies in this endeavor.
I also have no problem with any Left-of-Center people, whether they be Center-Left or Leftist. joining the movement. But not if they try to change the definition of progress so that it focuses on achieving large increases in social spending, regulations, taxes, or other policies advocated for by the Left. I also object to them making Equality the prime goal over material progress.
Government programs are a means to an end. The result of any given government program may or may not promote material progress. The Progress movement should be agnostic on means, as long as they do not conflict with the constitution or human decency, and should stay focused on the end of promoting material progress.
Above all, Progress supporters need to identify what the results of government policies are before we support or oppose them. Good intentions are not enough. It is results that matter because that is what affects people.
In my experience, there are many Left-of-Center supporters of the Progress movement that essentially argue for Left-of-Center policies while calling it “Progress.” For them, the term “Progress” or “Abundance” appears to be a great marketing strategy that helps forward the exact same Left-of-Center policies that they supported for decades.
Given that the Left often adopts the label “Progressive,” particularly in the USA, this can cause a great deal of confusion.
As Steven Pinker has pointed out, those who call themselves “Progressive” in the United States are often the greatest opponents of actual material progress. Pinker even wrote an entire chapter called “Progressphobia” in his excellent book “Enlightenment Now.” By the way, if you have not read the book, you should check out my summary on my library of online book summaries.
Now let me be clear that I am not saying that members of the Progress movement cannot support those methods and goals, but they must:
Make material progress the #1 goal for the movement and be willing to abandon policies to implement greater equality or liberty if there is clear evidence that those policies undermine the goal of progress (i.e. acknowledge trade-offs between progress and equality/liberty)
Focus on the goal, not the means to achieve it.
Virtually everything that the Left supports is supposed to be a means of achieving Equality. Unfortunately, as is so often the case for ideologies, the end gets forgotten and the means becomes a goal unto itself. Progress supporters should always be flexible about the means to promote human material progress, but inflexible on the goal itself (unless new information emerges that the original goal is not desirable).Be willing to challenge your prior assumptions and fundamental goals that may conflict with promoting human material progress.
If you cannot acknowledge trade-offs and are unwilling to give up on other cherished beliefs in favor of promoting human material progress, then you should join another movement. This is particularly true for climate activism, Green energy, DEI, and a host of other ideas popular on the Left that undermine human material progress. And this also goes for Libertarians who believe that government policy should not promote human material progress even if those policies are effective.Don’t try to change the definition of “Progress” in order to smuggle in your prior ideological or philosophical convictions.
Because the Left has a long history of entryism, I am particularly sensitive to this issue. As Robert Conquest once said
“Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”
The Progress movement is not explicitly right-wing, so it is vulnerable to eventually becoming left-wing, which will destroy any chances of a positive impact on society. I would argue that the entire concept of Progress conflicts with conservative principles. It is both Anti-Left and Anti-Right. It introduces an entirely new dimension into political discourse.
As I see it, whereas the Left offers the goal of Equality, the Progress movement offers an entirely new goal:
Material progress, which is largely though not exclusively about long-term widely-shared economic growth.
Upward Mobility, which is ensuring that as many people as possible choose to participate in society and therefore enjoy the benefits of the material progress that surrounds them.
I strongly believe that these two goals are both achievable and will benefit the working class, the poor, racial minorities, and developing nations far more than government programs advocated for by the Left.
So Progress supporters should be Anti-Left (at least as the current Left is defined), but it must not be Pro-Right. The Right also has fundamental problems with it when viewed from a Progress-based Perspective.
Why the Progress movement is not conservative
Ideologies on the Right offer no real alternative to the Left because conservatives are no more positive about the concept of progress. As Josef Schumpeter has noted, material progress works through a process of “creative destruction.” As new technologies and organizations are created, they drive old technologies and organizations to extinction. This destruction affects many of the very institutions and values that conservatives hold dear.
For this reason, ideologies of the Right tend to be skeptical of the concept of progress. They are often even hostile to the concept. Conservatives believe that the most important recent trends have been:
a decline in moral values
the relentless expansion of government
the decline in religious observance,
the decline of patriotism
the decline of traditional institutions.
Most importantly, the Right tends to have no alternative policy solutions. I believe that Conservatism is best summarized by the famous William F. Buckley Jr. quote:
“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history yelling ‘Stop’…”
Many conservatives see Progress as a constant decline in moral standards and traditional institutions. Most conservatives look back with a rosy nostalgia at a past that, upon examination, was far less rosy than conservatives imagine.
While conservatives are correct that some change is bad, it is not true that all change is bad. The fundamental problem with Conservatism as a worldview is that has no means to separate good change from bad change.
More sophisticated conservatives, such as Edmund Burke, believed in cautious reform.
But reform to what end?
Reform by what means?
How do conservatives know whether a specific reform is good or bad?
In practice, this has meant that conservatives oppose whatever proposal the Left has to offer at any given time. This has resulted in the Left ever so slowly winning victories, and the Right caving into each of the arguments that had previously been made by the Left. The result is a conservative base that is bitter, skeptical of progress, and willing to follow less-than-reputable leaders.
Though conservatives (and also libertarians) oppose the practices of the Left, neither offers a coherent alternative. Supporters of both world views seem resigned to constant political defeat and focus on rallying their base during elections. Once in power, they do little to fundamentally change anything. They are opposed to everything the Left does, but they make few fundamental policy reforms once they win elections.
Why progress disproves Conservatism
The entire history of material progress over the last two centuries that I documented in the first book in this series, From Poverty to Progress, invalidates much of the conservative viewpoint. If the world had stayed the same in 1820, as conservatives at that time believed was necessary, virtually all of mankind would be:
living in absolute poverty
living much shorter lives
eating less food
being educated less than one year per person
experiencing a life of sheer physical drudgery.
Anti-progress views are amplified
The combination of hostility to progress from the Left-wing, misunderstanding of the causes of progress by the Center-Left, and skepticism of progress from the Right have undermined our collective belief in and understanding of progress. Despite what ideologues claim, it is not progress that is the problem. It is our politics, ideology, and government policy.
Unfortunately, these anti-progress viewpoints on both the Left and Right are magnified enormously by the media, social media, and interest groups. Whereas these institutions once tended toward the political center, the vast majority are affiliated with the ideological Left, while a few are affiliated with the ideological Right. Their ideological viewpoints have corrupted the original purpose of the institutions that they dominate.
Progress is a third option
So the Progress movement offers a fundamentally different worldview with different goals than either the Left or the Right. Anyone who shares those goals is welcome. But anyone who tries to turn the Progress movement into a different flavor of Left or Right should look elsewhere.
Having said that, the Progress Studies movement should have a rigorous debate on:
The most effective means (policies, practices, and cultural attitudes) to promote human material progress.
Trade-offs between doing so and other goals, particularly Equality and Liberty.
The extent to which Progress supporters should cooperate with the Left, Right, and Libertarians in building electoral supporters to implement our policies.
The limits of how far the government should be willing to go if those means to promote human material progress bump up against individual rights, democratic governance, human flourishing, or constitutions.
I will have more to say on this important topic, but that is enough for now.
This article is part of my ongoing series on Progress Studies. You can read more on the topic in the following posts:
You should also check out my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
I’ve been wanting to reply in length to this post, but have been otherwise occupied.
In the meantime, I was wondering if you saw and/or would be interested in this…
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/is-progress-always-good-a-response/comments?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&publication_id=828904&post_id=149280603&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&isFreemail=true&comments=true&utm_campaign=email-half-magic-comments&action=post-comment
Institutions also have to be reformed to serve their individual purpose instead of promoting a political agenda . First and foremost movies should value entertainment,scientists and media should value truth, and teachers should value critical thinking and political neutrality . Until those things happen any grassroots movement is facing an uphill battle.