Why Progressivism is a bad thing

This modern snake oil claims the authority of boundless knowledge

I think we all get the feeling sometimes that nothing ever changes: that everyone just keeps doing the same things over and over; thinking the same thoughts, making the same arguments and responding to the same things in the same way. I certainly feel that way a lot – especially when engaging with the media, both mainstream and social.

However, sometimes the old memory gives you a jolt, showing how things do change, significantly, both in that ‘external world’ and in yourself.

I remember around a decade ago writing a comment on a Labour Party blog supporting the idea that Labour should change its name to ‘The Progressive Labour Party’. I genuinely thought it was a good idea. I have no idea why now, but suspect it was down to just liking the sound of it. ‘Progressive’ just sounds good. It means ‘moving forward’, going forward, being optimistic, believing in things getting better and trying to make things better. Who could dislike that?

Well, things have changed a bit since then. For my own part I now have a clue what the word ‘progressive’ actually means. Indeed I’ve come to recognise how it has different, social meanings. There’s the soft, vaguely nice kind of meaning that I latched on to in my comment back in the day; then there is a much harder, ideological version that is steeped in theory, in an idea of history and inevitable progress over time – the various forms of Marxism providing the classic example. You can call this type not just ‘progressive’ but progressive-ism.

In my blissful ignorance, I thought I was advocating for the first version. However I was advocating for the latter too without knowing it. I thought I was using language, but language was also using me. The ideologues who grasped the harder meaning had, indirectly, got me advocating on their behalf without me having the slightest awareness of it. ‘Progressive Labour’ is very different to ‘Labour’. Yet I thought it was just a little adornment or icing on the cake.

There’s a remarkable and remorseless logic to progressivism. From the core idea of progress, an awful lot follows. From the assumption that the future will be better than the past, it logically follows that the people of the future will be better than the past. From this it follows that we should value young people higher than older people, even seeing them as more historically developed or mature.

However there’s another layer of existential logic which I think is more significant for the persistent success of progressive ideology in our world. For theory alone is never enough.