The term progress enters philosophy around about the time of the Enlightenment. Its basic idea was that the world was, or should, be heading toward universally shared values. It has sustained a lot of counter-argument since the Enlightenment - the Romantic movement, Schopenhauerian pessimism, post-structuralism,for example - but it still has resonance in some quarters of philosophy and politics today; most particularly left-leaning politics and ‘philosophy’. Today’s ‘progressivism’ often finds itself in ‘liberating’ minority groups - ethnic minorities, gays, women, for example, even though these minority groups, in Western countries, already have equal opportunity. So my question is, is this really progress? What is it they are progressing toward? What are they liberating them from?
The term “progress” implies a movement toward a presumed better future.
Liberals follow the Marx notion of establishing world socialism and then letting it fall into Communism, thus liberals are referred to as “Liberal Socialists” rather than “Left-wing Extremists”. Both terms are frowned upon because the influence pushing the “drive toward progress” (into that socialist scheme) don’t want to be seen or blamed for what is happening. Homeland Security supports the notion by labeling right-wing extremists in a variety of ways (the “right-wing” being those who support the conservation of the older ways, “anti-progressive” by the view of the socialists/communists).
So “Progressivism” means they are being liberated from Constitutional independence and herded into dictatorial socialism.
Yes. I should have added this to my opening post.
The inevitable question arises from this, whose better future?
This is a reasonable summary. The Marxists definitely believed they were carrying the torch of progress, and still do.
Progressivism is a post christianity doctrine. There is also the “progressive” economy that is supposed to grow and “progress” forever. But it has less power than capitalism has. So it sort of works below capitalism, and partially for capitalism. The liberals would never say kill the bankers. They would say something like we need to slightly increase welfare for the old unable to work. Capitalism can take anything and control it, such as taking control of democracy and turning it into a muppet show.
It got started with Kant’s cosmopolitanism, a rational argument that society must be improving continually as a product of normal human interactions, and that this progress was moving towards an increase of community and empathy and so on. Hegel basically destroyed that, but Marx reinvigorated it.
The Progressive movement now has basically replaced the prediction of Kant with a mandate- they have a vision of the future, and in line with Marx (and against Hegel) the achievement of that vision is a moral imperative. They’re utopians, in other words- and what is good, and what is evil, boils down to what helps us all move towards their utopia and what does not. The most dangerous thing about this approach is that intellectual virtue has no place in it. That is to say, how do you interact with progressives on an academic level when, to the progressive, there is absolutely nothing immoral about lying, falsifiying data, or presenting intentionally bad arguments if these actions advance the cause? That’s why, for example, the progressive proclaims that gender is a flexible creation of culture that is imposed on us by society except when the transsexual makes their mystical claims about being trapped in the wrong body, then gender is so rigid that mutilating one’s body to conform to it is the only reasonable course of action. Sure the perspectives completely contradict, but undermining traditional gender roles is the goal, not a coherent or good-faith understanding of reality, so therefore the ends justify the means.
Uccisore: It got started with Kant’s cosmopolitanism, a rational argument that society must be improving continually as a product of normal human interactions, and that this progress was moving towards an increase of community and empathy and so on. Hegel basically destroyed that, but Marx reinvigorated it.
The Progressive movement now has basically replaced the prediction of Kant with a mandate- they have a vision of the future, and in line with Marx (and against Hegel) the achievement of that vision is a moral imperative. They’re utopians, in other words- and what is good, and what is evil, boils down to what helps us all move towards their utopia and what does not. The most dangerous thing about this approach is that intellectual virtue has no place in it. That is to say, how do you interact with progressives on an academic level when, to the progressive, there is absolutely nothing immoral about lying, falsifiying data, or presenting intentionally bad arguments if these actions advance the cause? That’s why, for example, the progressive proclaims that gender is a flexible creation of culture that is imposed on us by society except when the transsexual makes their mystical claims about being trapped in the wrong body, then gender is so rigid that mutilating one’s body to conform to it is the only reasonable course of action. Sure the perspectives completely contradict, but undermining traditional gender roles is the goal, not a coherent or good-faith understanding of reality, so therefore the ends justify the means.
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K: The notion of progressivism was in the air long before Kant got hold of it. Everyone here makes the mistake of
tying progressivism with Communism (leaving aside communism, socialism, Marxism, Stalinism, and the other
versions of communism) Progressivism has different aspects depending on who is doing the counting. You have
communism and liberals and anarchist all of whom label progress differently and that is the key part of progressivism.
The word progress. You want tomorrow to be better then today and this is one of the key aspects of liberalism,
this idea of progress. What Ucciscore said is true of the USSR under Stalinism which is one version of communism.
As for his example of progessives saying gender is a flexible creature of culture imposed on us by society,
that is in fact true. Men work out of the home and traditionally the breadwinner and women are barefoot
and pregnant in the kitchen, that is culture/society deciding the roles of gender whereas we know that
gender is what we make of it. More then likely we will have a women president in 2016 and that expands
the role of women in society which means gender is imposed by society or said another way the idea of gender
is artificial. As for his follow up idea of a transsexual wanting to have a sex change is not about undermining the
traditional gender roles which by the way is artificial but about becoming the person inside of you. The agenda
if there is one is simply become the person you are both inside and outside of you. If you feel you are male
on the outside and female on the inside then you must change one aspect to reach agreement between
your inside and your outside. Surgery is often the only way to achieve this goal of unification between
what you feel and what your body is and that boys and girls is the agenda, not undermining the traditional
gender roles which by the way, needs to be undermined but surgery on this scale has no effect of any kind
on society/culture in a large enough scale as to actually undermine society. That will come in other ways.
Kropotkin
But I connected it to Kant and Hegel...just like you're saying. Kant wasn't a Communist. Marx just ran with an idea that other, previous people already had. We're saying the same thing here.
So my gender identity was determined by society, the transsexual's gender identity was deep inside him all alon.g Look, people who want to see the contradiction will, the last thing I want is to turn this into another thread about sexual ethics, so we can talk about other examples: how they treat Christian fundamentalism vs Muslim fundamentalism, for example. Supporting abortion rights even though abortion is demonstrably used in racist, sexist, and classist ways.
But if you are male on the inside and male on the outside, that’s because society is enforcing paternalistic, oppressive gender roles. Women who want to be men are victims that the Government needs to buy surgery for, men who want to be men are sexist. I get it, it’s just a contradictory mess that serves a political end rather than a rational one.
Right. So you admit the progressive goal is to undermine traditional gender roles, but deny that this specific example of progressives working to do so, is in fact an attempt to do so. Like I said to UPF once, you are trying to deny that an action you advocate will lead to a result you desire. This is precisely the kind of thing that is only acceptable from the perspective of an ideology that advocates positions for reasons other than their truth. I can't think of a non-progressive example of this kind of thing- maybe a creationist advocating the abolition of evolution from schools, admitting that while yes, he DOES want to instill a Christian theocracy, he denies that the abolition of evolution and teaching of creationism are steps to that goal. But then, what Christian fundamentalist does this? They admit their crazy goals, and explain their crazy reasons why as clearly as they are able.
Now, not all progressives do this. There are some that are still shackled to their Christian (or otherwise) pre-progressive moral systems, who would like to realize a future like the socialists describe, but would like to get there in an ethical way. BUT, the important point here is that they are relying on non-progressive moral ideals to be in that position, the very ideals the core progressives want to strip away. No political position rooted in Marxism has an ethical reason to tell the truth, when a lie functions better. You can skip all of this by being a Kantian progressive of a Hegelian progressive, but the problem there is that they weren’t ADVOCATING progress, they were merely predicting it, optimistically and pessimistically respectively.
It's hard to separate this from a personal attack, because it amounts to calling progressive liars. But this is a serious problem in political theory as I see it, and I know of no other way to express it: My thesis is that Marxists and their cousins have nothing in their moral systems obligating them to tell the truth, and it's not merely academic, this lack actually affects their behavior, their policy. That is a big deal.
A lot of people would disagree that there is actually equal opportunity.
As far as I can tell Uccisore, there are two issues in your post,
A. Kant and hegel and marx, and progress.
B. progressive’s lack of morality to tell the truth.
We can run this one of two ways, focus on the kant, hegel, marx aspect
or discuss the morality of the progressive’s.
Kropotkin
Whichever you like, PK. I have more to say about the second issue, but it’s mostly my own thoughts and observations- I won’t be citing much. The Kant stuff is pretty academic.
What year did they have equal opportunity? IOW when did they reach that threshhold and how did you determine this?
Uccisore: Whichever you like, PK. I have more to say about the second issue, but it’s mostly my own thoughts and observations- I won’t be citing much. The Kant stuff is pretty academic."
K: Academic? Isn’t that another word for boring as hell?
As a liberal/progressive, (although I prefer liberal) I have found everyone lies regardless
of their conservative/liberal stance. I don’t understand why you would hold liberals to task when
by political stance everyone lies. Let us begin there.
Kropotkin
The liberal’s belief in that (that everyone always lies) is what is used to justify lying: “they do it, so we can do it”, even if they weren’t actually doing it. The lack of morality and honor is thus spurred by the liberal, liberating people from even being rational. But even though common sense and rationality is lost, it is still okay to call that “progressive” because lying is justified. 
I was attempting to give Ucc. a starting point, a point to start the conversation.
Kropotkin
so it seems that progressivism means favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, especially in political matters.
I find it strange that this is suddenly about lying, liberal or conservative, because improvement seems to me something that is always worth while, and virtually always possible.
Am I a progressivist?
This is a simplistic view, not simple, simplistic. Progressivism requires a predetermined future. It is little different in its blind spots than those that “wish to maintain things as they are.”
Improvement yes, change no. Improvement is defined by an increase in “value.” Progressivism all to often is change, not improvement. Progressives work towards utopia, which almost literally means, unreachable place. This is why I am not a progressive, I live in this place and wish to deal with these issues. This makes me a conservative.
Lying comes in because to many progressives the ends justify the means, anything can be done in the pursuit of an unreachable place. This is not a insult, there is a progressive book, called Rules for Radicals, in which they describe doing exactly that. And, if you are creating the perfect future, is not a few eggs worth breaking? I don’t believe in perfect, I think we live in a place of limited resources, that the best we can do is apply them as effectively as possible, while doing our best to get people to be free… This makes me a conservative.
Liberal is a descriptive word that was taken on by the progressives when their ideas where shown to be failures, via application. Sadly, when you believe in perfection, proof of it’s absence is not available. So, instead progressives change the labels on the failed ideas, and re-apply them… The acknowledgement of this makes me a conservative.
I don’t know. I work to know what I am, you are your own responsibility, please enjoy.
It may be simplistic, but I feel that this is the way a large majority of human beings think and it is up to those less simplistic to explain themselves.
Improvement brings change and change is what life teaches us to cope with. I disagree with your definition of improvement, which to me is a betterment of hitherto existing circumstances. Value is also part of the process, but improvement may simply reduce the amount of effort to reach a desired outcome, which saves time and trouble.
Wasn’t the modern world once Utopia to people living in the past? I’m convinced that those who described utopian conditions (including Sci-Fi writers) have often given people a direction – even if it hasn’t turned out completely as they were describing it – and very often it has been a good job too, that they haven’t.
I see that conservatives have their fair share of liars too!
Liberal seems to mean something very different in America than it does in Europe.
Politicians of all stripes lie, no denying that- conservative and liberal. My point isn't that Marxists lie and others don't. My point is that there is nothing in Marxist ethics/political thought that makes lying bad. It is the progressives you will find doing things like putting the word 'truth' in quotation marks, or saying reality is subjective, perception is reality, the winners write the history book, and so on. Not only do Marxists not value telling the truth, they roll their eyes at the notion that there is a difference between telling the truth and lying. These are all progressive mantras used to defend the notion of [i]lying[/i]. If a conservative lies, he has violated his core principles. If a liberal lies, he has gotten caught, and the independents he was trying to manipulate might resent it, but the only thing he did against his principles is [i]get caught[/i]. The idea of the left pushing towards a socialism that the masses are against through incremental steps they can't argue with- that is deceitful, and it's [i]the entire premise[/i]. Everything flows from that, and it's both increasing in frequency and filtering down to the little people- I'm not just talking about politicians and academics hiding their real motives. I'm talking about everyday people who happen to be leftists making arguments they know to be false because, tactically, they are the strategic arguments to make.
The gender wage gap is an example of a lie that isn’t even well hidden. It takes like 5 minutes to realize it’s a lie, if you’re inclined to think about it. But creating a situation in which women get paid radically less than men for the same work suits a political purpose.
James makes a good point too- that the leftist's presumption of equality means they are going to [i]declare[/i] that whatever bad habits they have- lying and such- are just as common on one side as the other. To the extent that they make this declaration without evidence,[i] it's another lie. [/i]
This is what I’ve been getting at. I could tell numerous stories of college professors advocating lying for a good cause, right in front of me, because they didn’t think there was a conservative in the room. One classic example that everybody should be familiar with is taking a religious teaching- doesn’t have to be Christianity- that the progressive has absolutely no belief in themselves, and reinterpreting it to advocate some position the progressive wants to convince the devout of. This is a deceptive disregard for the truth in the name of political gain, and progressives do it constantly- not because they are evil, per se, but because their foundations don’t give them any reason not to.
And now ‘progressive’ is a word the liberals are taking, now that ‘liberal’ is a dirty word for the same reason. More deception- are people onto us? Let’s change what we’re called so we can drag the sham on a little longer.
Ucc, you don’t think the winners write the history books?
What do kids history books have to say about the native americans and how we took hold of north america? Do you think the losers of that conflict had a big say in what the kids are learning now?