Carrol Cox wrote: > A couple weeks ago on lbo-talk I argued that "Progress" (or the Idea of > Progress) was a reactionary concept. an ideological barrier to the > development of socialist thought. (I don't think it an accident, for > example, that The Great Progressive, T.R., thought all strikers should > be treated as the French had treated the Communards after the fall of > the Commune.) The Idea of Progress has its roots in the 18th century but > its flourishing in the Victorian Age, and it is inseparable from the > delusion of history as teleology. Capitalism becomes only one more > "stage" in the Onward March of Humanity towards a Better World, with > nothing left for individuals OR Movements to do than to occasionally oil > the machinery.
Yes, but different people use the same words in a lot of different ways. A lot of views of "Progress" refer to the extension and perfection of capitalism, in the sense of more commoditization, globalization, extension of capitalist class relations, etc. But some "left" Progressives instead use the word in the sense of allowing the current system of capitalism to live up to what they see as its positive potential (social democracy, sustainable economic growth, or whatever). "Progressives" include not only TR but also Robert LaFollette and FDR, along with the current crop of what used to be called "liberals" (of the New Deal or Welfare State variety). This latter kind of "progressive" does not have to be a reactionary. Under the right conditions, he or she may become a socialist: for example when social democracy is threatened by reactionaries, some of its advocates (the ones who really believe in the goals of social democracy more than its methods) go left rather than right. I, for one, avoid the term "progressive," since it has so many different meanings. BTW, there's a lot of teleology in Marx's work, or at least stuff that can be interpreted as teleological if one is looking to do so. It became the "official Marxism" of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. Alternatively, in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, Marx and Engels _assumed_ (implicitly) that the working-class movement was growing in size, strength, and class consciousness, optimistically extrapolating from Western European events of the time. This gave the CM an air of inevitability. Later interpreters on the left and right made this into a mechanical formula for a seemingly automatic movement to socialism. But even in those case, it should be noted, that the road to progress was seen as only a _road_, so that there could be regression, retreat. The only thing that was inevitable was that capitalism would throw up crises of various sorts, representing _opportunities_ for forward movement. There was then a conflict between the reactionaries who wanted regress and the "progressives" who wanted to move forward. The typical formula used was that the only way to make "progress" (moving toward socialism along the road) was to follow the "correct" line or program or slogan. In this vision, the individuals in the party leadership were quite important in deciding the "correct" path, telling the party membership and the broader movement (the "masses") how to "oil the machinery" for forward movement. (It's a trickle-down of the truth from the elite to the masses.) > The Idea of Progress, I believe, was what kept the late > Jim Blaut from understanding what Capitalsim was. He saw it only as an > intensification of this Onward March of humanity: thus his grotesque > Weberian conception that grounding the origin of capitalism in Europe > was to claim superiority for Europeans rather than to see them also as > the victim of a terrible explosion. I've never quite understood it. To Blaut (if I've read him correctly), when someone like Brenner or Marx points to places like the British rural sector as the origins of the motor of capitalist accumulation (M-C-M'-C-M"-C-M"' etc), it's seen as _bragging_: "we Europeans are better than you unwashed masses of the third world, because we invented capitalism!" But that's assuming that capitalism is a _good_ thing (representing "progress") rather than being like a disease. To Marx or Brenner, the "invention of capitalism" in the British countryside was like an invention of cancer. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
