It is almost rhetorically impossible to avoid the word "progress" while debating current political activity -- but the word is so poisoned and reeks so of a vicious historical theory that the effort to avoid it should be made. It was Gould whose essays weaned me from the concept many decades ago.
I don't think Darwin any more than Marx believed in "Progress," but as I think I've noted before, both Darwin & Marx, being Victorian 'Gentlemen' as it were, could not avoid letting terminology with the Progressive reek infiltrating their writings. Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eubulides Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 8:43 AM To: Progressive Economics Network Subject: Re: [Pen-l] economic growth: Sam Gindin and the cause of crises On Mar 21, 2014, at 9:28 PM, Tom Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > Economic progress was not my choice of words. Note that I put the word "progress" in [ironic] quotation marks. I don't, however, eschew small-p progress as a synonym for "better than this," as distinct from the triumphal capital-p March of Progress. But you already knew that. > ========== Sorry; I misread your second sentence as implying that the term could still be meaningful if it was re-purposed. Would progress occur if we had a much more humble family of meanings conveyed by the term progress? It seems to be a term lots of people would be loathe to consign to the dustbin. E. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
