Progressivism is making a comeback in the US, becoming the choice self-descriptor of President-Elect Barack Obama. But does it mean what it’s always meant? Is it just a replacement for the thoroughly vandalized ‘liberal’?

Untying the string that holds together the concepts in the word progressive, as it has been variously used, I find that these are what spill out: Increased government efficiency and benevolence through techno-scientific enlightenment; increased direct influence of citizens on government; increased leftward direction of policy towards socialism; change we can believe in. The string holding them together is apparently the notion of increase toward some final hopeful asymptote.

Historically, the word is definitely more than a synonym for leftism, given its bipartisan introduction to American politics led by Theodore Roosevelt. Reforms associated with early progressivism range from the left (women’s suffrage) to the right (prohibition). Perhaps the 17th amendment is most characteristic of this movement: by taking the power to elect Senators from the House and giving it to voters, progressives expressed their faith in the ability of the expanding middle class to use knowledge to govern itself rationally. There was supposed to be something good about this.

In the early twentieth century, progressivism was often a synonym for applied positivism—the notion that scientific knowledge is absolute, infallible, and ought to be used by government to perfect social order. The concept of social perfectibility via scientific rationality would eventually lend itself to eugenics movements in Europe and the United States, ironically culminating in unspeakable human rights violations and that death of positivism which we call post-modernism.

Since the end of the Second World War, ‘progressive’ has been used more vaguely. As in its previous incarnations, it is closely tied to the notion of changing the status quo, though now we judge the way to change more reluctantly. Only when conservatives have control over the status quo do we think of progressivism as anti-conservative.

After twenty-eight years of manifest conservative desire for government failure, progressives can change government simply by making it work — not necessarily by moving it left. Maybe the model for late progressivism is another policy we inherited from Theodore Roosevelt — progressive taxation (which was also endorsed by famed communist Adam Smith). As Roosevelt said, progressive taxation implies “not the slightest sympathy” for socialism, but seeks simply to restructure and level the playing field of our capitalist economy.

I think progressive taxation shows that the critical concept for progressivism is that government should be reflexive, responding to evidence of its own effectiveness or lack thereof. To summarize verbosely, late progressivism entails the reflexive use of empirical principles to build effective government support structures that promote capitalist competition and provide basic services for an individualistic society.

Photograph contributed by: Michaela Muscat