The Progress Factory: a second book is on the way

On how progressives turn apparent knowledge of history into power.

I am pleased to say that have a second book on the way.

Ben Cobley @bencobley

Some news: I recently signed up with @_ForumPress to produce a second book, THE PROGRESS FACTORY: THE MODERN LEFT AND THE FALSE AUTHORITY OF HISTORY. It will be out in November 2023. You can already pre-order hardback and Kindle versions here: amazon.co.uk/Progress-Facto…

In The Progress Factory: the Modern Left and the False Authority of History, I’m taking a similar approach to that of my first book, The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity. I want to get beyond the daily and sometimes superficial judgements we make of good and bad to get into the existential insides of progressivism, to explore how progressive politics works. What makes it tick? What makes it so powerful? And what are its weaknesses?

While The Tribe focused on the role of identity politics in binding the ‘liberal-left’ together and the consequences of this, The Progress Factory will focus more on this idea of ‘progress’; on how it helps to manufacture authority and therefore political power.

Progress is a sociological idea that sees time as a vehicle of improvement. It offers us a story of how things are getting better over time, treating this as inevitable, albeit with the odd bump in the road (c.f. Brexit, Trump, massive wars, famines, etc).

It’s quite a seductive idea. However, crucially for my argument, it also elevates the theorist as a leader with superior knowledge, not just over a limited area of expertise but across the whole of society and history. Progressive theory may preach inevitability, but it naturally creates authority figures who claim huge overarching insight into what is happening in the world – and what will happen in the future. You only need to look at the history of Marxism, to how Lenin, Stalin and Mao presented themselves as intellectual leaders as much as political ones. They preached inevitability, but this justified giving themselves absolute power and eliminating opponents with apparently lesser knowledge.  

I think we can see a pretty similar thing among progressives in the West today. They base their entitlement to rule on claims to know better than others: about the sweep of history into the future (just check out any Tony Blair speech for examples).

This isn’t just a trait of the left of course – and I won’t just be focusing on the left in the book. However no doubt these traits are much more developed and organised on the left, both in theory and organisation. Academia and ‘research’ play a crucial role.

The book itself

There will likely be three main parts to the book. However this is subject to change.

I am proposing to call Part I A Matter of Technique. It will look at how progressive political activity appears as a mere consequence of sociology; how progressivism has merged into the promotional industries of PR and advertising; how progressive ideologues present themselves as experts in society; the role of predictions in creating this authority; the need to get rid of opponents to allow progress to occur; and perhaps something on the self-creation of the ‘moderate’, ‘centrist’.

Part II will look at what I call ‘progressive sprawl’: on how progressivism expands as a part of its nature; looking into specific areas including its treatment of national identity; the merging of art into activism; the technocratic state; progressive capitalism; and controlling the workplace.

Part III is titled The Trap. It will start off considering the nature of progressive logic as revolutionary (seeing the past as bad and the future as good, so naturally seeking to overturn existing ways of being in favour of new, invented ones). It will look at the narcissism of many activists and consider how progressivism’s problems replicate those of Christianity in certain important ways. I will also explore the denial of reality that naturally follows claiming to know but not actually knowing; lastly the reaction to progressivism and the problems I think we can see in this.

The Progress Factory is not going to be a gloom-fest. In the daily life of progressivism, there is plenty to laugh at, plenty of mirth to be found. In the response to The Tribe I was struck by how many people said they enjoyed it, not least the humour in what is otherwise quite a serious book. I am looking to write this one in the same spirit: hard-hitting but also light-hearted.

The publisher + pre-ordering copies

To get this book published, I am grateful to Forum Press. Forum is a new non-fiction imprint of Swift Press, itself a relatively new and insurgent presence on the publishing scene. It is run by George Owers, who has an excellent track record from his time at Polity Press, recruiting a number of writers from what I call the ‘Rebel Alliance’ in British culture, like Maurice Glasman, Mary Harrington, Paul Embery and Louise Perry; all offering different and energetic perspectives on what’s going on in our world.

George himself wrote a blogpost on The Progress Factory which you can read here. In it, he offers a pretty decent critique of progressive politics of his own, for example this passage:

Progressives gain control of any institution that doesn’t involve having to be popular or democratically accountable – quangos, charities, corporations etc – and then seek to present themselves as ungainsayable experts who can or should not be questioned when they seek to impose progressive dogma on the majority without debate. This explains their rather extraordinary valorisation of expertise and technocratic knowledge. The management-class Left now sees the politics of promoting and upholding the rights, interests and instincts of the common man and woman, which used to be the basis of much left wing politics, as simple ignorance and bigotry: ‘vulgar populism’.

The Progress Factory will be available in Autumn 2023. You can already pre-order it from Amazon here.

For latest news from Forum, sign up for a newsletter here.