Whatever its hopes and illusions, the American left has been (predictably, in my view) marginalized–in fact, demonized–in the age of Obama. There are sensible explanations in terms of the capitalist moment, the media, and the cynical nature of the Obama deception itself. Nevertheless, at some fundamental level it wouldn’t hurt for serious leftists to look in the mirror and address the development of an informed leftist discourse and terminology that makes some consistent sense in terms of history, ideology, principles, enemies, and proposals. Whatever the diverse and global philosophical heritage of popular movements for social justice, we could aspire to a discourse specific to the American left, reflecting its unique history and tribulations in relation to the most ruthlessly capitalistic and militaristic country in history, facilitated by dis-organized and racialized labor, as well as by the professional-managerial class. 

 

But the conventional, pervasive, careless, and mindless use of the label “progressive” to describe those who claim to be to the left of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party in no way contributes to such an effort, and instead has for the past two years and longer shaped a slippery, evasive, disingenuous, self-serving, and faux-leftist discourse that functions to avoid fundamental issues of class struggle, war, and the incorrigibility of two-party politics.

 

The failure of “progressivism,” such as it currently is, partly reflects confusion about the history of the Progressive Era, ignorance of the historiography about that era, and the putative principles of the current movement in relation to the largely sordid genealogy of the ideology. It is remarkable that those who now claim to represent the left seem to be unable or unwilling to consider that the discourse of “progress” has most often been employed by elitist ideologues in order to promote capitalist “creative destruction” and technological innovation (government-funded or otherwise) instead of social justice, obviously to the long-term benefit of corporations and the ownership class, and to the detriment and ongoing immiseration of the working classes.

 

The Progressive Era (1890-1920) included the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. During that Era, regulatory power was consolidated at the federal level, mainly to the benefit of corporate power, stability, and the accumulation of wealth. Thus the 1960s revisionist historian James Weinstein described an era of “corporate liberalism.” The dominant ideology of this period was defined by the founders of The New Republic, including Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann; they were organic social theorists, elitists, and technocrats who defined “progress” in managerial, administrative, and orderly terms, not in terms of social struggle and social justice. They responded in some ways to genuine popular movements, but they also feared them and loathed them; the result was most often the pacification and co-optation of such movements, including the labor movement. Weinstein’s analysis was consistent with the seminal revisionist work of Gabriel Kolko and many others; Kolko described the result of the Progressive Era as the triumph of “political capitalism.”

 

The Progressive Era featured a Progressive Party that was co-opted by Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” party in the complicated election of 1912. Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette, upstaged by Roosevelt, later ran a much more authentically populist and leftist campaign for president in 1924, also under the banner of the Progressive Party; his resounding defeat also signaled the demise of that party at the national level. The journal he founded in 1909, The Progressive, has for over a century promoted views, including those of Howard Zinn, that bear little relation to the “progress” of the Progressive Era, which of course also included Wilson’s entrance into World War I.

 

Those who currently describe themselves as progressives, or those who routinely employ the term in their description of ideological differences between Obama and his “base,” display little understanding of these historical problems of the American left, and thus become subject to similar pitfalls.

 

Thus the term “progressive” is currently a disingenuously “non-ideological” ideological placeholder, a vague and posturing term of connotation and convenience—ironically appropriate in the Age of Obama. It shuns socialist ideology for programmatic instrumentalism, even if their programs (pubic option, etc.) have never become so much as a glimmer in the eye of Obama. For the past two years, progressivism has consisted of a futile programmatic agenda without either an organization or a movement, and certainly without consistent principles, especially in relation to our wars.

 

As a result, current progressivism is increasingly defined by what it claims—implicitly or explicitly—not to be. It signifies not-radical in its failure to clearly name and address class struggle and warfare, not-socialist in its technocratic, elitist reformism, and not-antiwar in its willingness to place our imperial adventures on the back burner. Most of all, progressives are not-left in their dogged support for Democratic Party candidates. That is to say, progressives—like their worst historical antecedents—are not serious about democracy, and contemptuous of the people.

 

Not-left progressives nevertheless try to appeal to those “idealists” whom they perceive to be further to their left, in terms of two-party pragmatism and lesser-evilism. The “good Obama” is still thought to have a potentially “progressive” (i.e., liberal reformist) bone in his body, and the Democratic Party is claimed to oppose those who are assumed to be much worse than corporatists and militarists: racist Tea Partiers, religious fundamentalists, and mindless critics of “big government.” There seems to be no awareness of the historical “irony” that the principled (and populist) William Jennings Bryan resigned as Secretary of State upon the U.S. entrance into World War I, and later represented religious “creationists” in Tennessee.

 

When progressives finish defining themselves in terms of what they are not, it remains clear what they are: creatures of the corporate, two-party system. At their worst, progressives resort to explaining the “failures” of the pro-corporate Obama administration with words such as “weakness,” “stupidity,” “cowardice,” and “betrayal.” They claim, disingenuously, that Obama is a stranger to them. At this point progressivism becomes, if nothing else, an ideology of calculated outrage and the provocation of fear. The frequency of this terminology and these tactics has increased exponentially during the final weeks of the current election campaign; the Democratic Party will still be a major party, but progressivism will be mercifully unraveled.

 

The progressive movement, such as it is, increasingly reflects the Tea Party, such as it is, in defining itself in terms of what it is opposed to, and what it is afraid of. But interestingly, the Tea Party seems to more genuinely reflect a rejection of the (rightfully feared) two-corporate-party system, while progressives come to sound more like Thomas Friedman in their desperate and cynical efforts to save the Congress from the Republican Party; they revert to elitism, if in fact it can be called a reversion.

 

If those who currently call themselves progressives and take the term seriously have an alternative framework with which to help me to understand their behavior, I will gladly and seriously consider it.

 

Barring that, when the coming debacle is complete and the bodies are buried, it is to be hoped that one of them will be this habitual reliance on a term that merely reveals that in this country, many of those who claim to constitute the left nevertheless lack either the clarity or the courage of their convictions, and thus fail to act on them in a serious manner.

 

David Green (davegreen84@yahoo.com) lives in Champaign, IL.

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