Progressivism: An Idea Whose Time has Gone?

Abstract

All three main parties at the 2010 British election attempted to describe themselves as ‘progressive’. While this term has generally been reserved for left-of-centre politics, such claims compel some re-examination in order to establish whether the term still has any meaning or analytical value. The author's earlier study of the progressive tradition during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century located it in a range of organisations, and especially in the shifting boundary between the Liberal and Labour Parties. Progressivism in this period was characterised by profound commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-sectionalism, combined with an empirical approach to the possible benefits of state intervention in the economy, and an open and fluid attitude to organisational affiliations. Progressive principles have enjoyed little success in recent years, especially with respect to the Iraq War and government support of the City's sectional interests. While these defeats do not in themselves signify the disappearance of progressive principles or even the progressive tradition, which are clearly manifest in many contemporary movements, the constellation of beliefs that characterised ‘progressivism’, together with its underlying moral purpose, has disappeared, as has the specific political context that gave rise to it.