Those of us who are at middle age or beyond have lived through a revolution
in political and economic theory and practice, a revolution so profound that
few of us can even begin to appreciate its significance, much less its
peril.
Future historians, however, will understand and appreciate this revolution
and will wonder at the passivity of the public today and the ease with which
those who instituted this upheaval achieved their success. The same
historians, I would venture, will be equally or more amazed at how this
moment played out. But this we cannot know, for their past is our immediate
future. We are the agents of that still-to-be written history. The United
States of America, in this year of 2006, is at a hinge of history. Our fate,
and that of our successors, rests directly in the hands of all of us who are
politically alert and active today. As Edward R. Murrow famously said, “we
can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility
for the result."
Those factions and interests now in control of the United States government
declare that their policies, which they choose to call “conservative” and I
prefer to call “regressive,” are an advancement in the course of human
history. Those who disagree, and the pollsters tell us that they are a
majority of the American people, believe that in the past five years, and
arguably in the past twenty-five years, the people of the United States and
their government, have suffered a grievous setback.
I count myself among this dissenting majority. In my book,
"Conscience of a
Progressive," now nearing completion, I attempt to articulate that dissent,
criticize the foundational dogmas of the regnant, “regressive” regime that
now controls our country, and justify the principles of “progressivism” –
the political-economic ideology that distinguished and honored our past, and
if we are both determined and fortunate, may once again guide and enrich our
national future.
Here, briefly, are the “players” in this political contest.
The Regressives:
To begin, it is important to note that the regressivism that controls and
supports our present government is not a unified political doctrine. Rather,
it is a coalition, some factions of which are in strong disagreement with
others, most notably “the libertarian right” and “the religious right.”
In general, most regressives tend to believe that the ideal society is
merely a collection of autonomous individuals and families in voluntary
association. In fact they assert that strictly speaking, as Dame Margaret
Thatcher once proclaimed, “There is no such thing as a society -- there are
individuals and there are families,” and Ayn Rand, “There is no such entity
as ‘the public’ ... the public is merely a number of individuals. ” It
follows that there is no such thing as “public goods” and “the public
interest,” apart from summation of private goods and interests. Moreover,
there are no “victims of society.” The poor choose their condition;
poverty is the result of “laziness” or, as the religious right would put it,
a “sin.”
Each individual, by acting to maximize his or her personal self-interest,
will always act “as if by an invisible hand” (Adam Smith) to promote the
well-being of all others in this (so-called) “society:” that which is good for each, is
good for all. Accordingly, the optimal economic
system is a completely unrestricted and unregulated free market of
“capitalist acts by consenting adults.” (Robert Nozick) Moreover, private
ownership of all land, resources, infrastructure, and even institutions,
will always yield results preferable to common (i.e. government) ownership
and control. Finally, the regressives firmly believe that because economic prosperity and growth are
accomplished through capital investment, the well-being of all is
accomplished by directing wealth into the hands of “the investing class;”
i.e. the very rich, whereby that wealth will “trickle down” to the benefit
of all others.
The libertarian right insists that the sole legitimate functions of
government are the protection of the individual’s unalienable natural rights
to life, liberty and property. The libertarian’s demand for individual
autonomy and government non-interference entails a tolerance and respect for
privacy, and thus the libertarian has no use for sodomy and drug laws, for
laws prohibiting gay marriage, abortion, voluntary euthanasia, and least of
all for government endorsement of religious dogma or enforcement of
religious practice. Thus the libertarian fully endorses John Stuart Mill’s
pronouncement that, “over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.” In general, the libertarian advocates the fullest
possible freedom of the individual, consistent with equivalent liberty of
all others. In these respects, there is much of libertarian thought that
should be attractive to the progressive.
The religious right, of course, vehemently rejects the libertarian’s
uncompromising tolerance and insistence that the government has no right
whatever to interfere in the private life of the individual. The religious
right, to the contrary, believes that the government is entitled to enforce
moral behavior and even to support religious institutions and “establish”
religious doctrines in the law. In the most extreme cases, the religious
right advocates the establishment of “biblical law” in place of our present
system of secular Constitutional law.
With the exception of the dispute between the libertarians and the religious
right regarding private behavior, all the other tenets of regressivism share
this characteristic: They all lead to policies that benefit wealth and power
(“the masters”), to the disadvantage of all others; i.e., the “ordinary
citizens.
The Progressives:
“Progressivism” is essentially the “liberalism” of most of the twentieth
century, as promulgated by both Roosevelts, by the Kennedy Brothers, and by
many Republicans, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Jacob Javits and Earl Warren.
“Progressivism,” to put it simply, is “liberalism,” free of the slanderous
connotations heaped upon it by contemporary right-wing propagandists.
In general, progressives endorse the political principles of our founding
documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as
the fundamental moral precepts of the great world religions and the ideas of
many secular moral philosophers – precepts most familiar to the American
public through the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Accordingly, progressivism is founded on enduring “conservative” principles.
Thus the familiar “liberal vs. conservative” dichotomy is a hoax. Moreover,
the Right, far from being “conservative,” in fact endorses a radical
political doctrine, with policies designed to return society and the economy
to a condition of autocracy, wealth and power for the privileged few, and
servitude, poverty and ignorance for “the masses” – a condition which, until
recently, was generally believed to be permanently discredited and relegated
to the distant past. Hence my preferred term, “regressive.”
In contrast to the regressive, the progressive regards society not as an
aggregate of autonomous individuals but as an “emergent” entity that is more
than the sum of its individual human components. In this sense, a society is
like a chemical compound such as table salt or water: substances with
properties that are separate and distinct from the properties of their
component elements. It then follows that there are “social goods” and
“public interests” that are demonstrably separate from the sum of private
goods and interests. Moreover, there are genuine “victims of society” who
are in no way responsible for their suffering and poverty. (The illegitimate
child of a teen-age heroin addict did not choose her parents. The decision
to “outsource” a job was out of the hands of the worker who loses that job).
Because society (or “the public”) is demonstrably distinct from the sum of
its component individuals, behavior that might be good for each individual,
may be bad for society as a whole; and conversely, what is “bad” for the
individual (e.g., taxes and regulations) may benefit society at large. These
fundamental precepts: “good for each, bad for all” and “bad for
each, good for all” are of essential importance to the defense of
progressivism, and by implication to the refutation of regressivism.
The progressive is not “against” free markets, but rather believes that in
the organization and functioning of society and its economy, markets are
invaluable servants. But markets can also be cruel masters. Thus, in the
formulation of public policy, markets should count for something and even
for much, but not for everything. There is a “wisdom” of the marketplace,
but that “wisdom” is not omniscient. Adam Smith was right: each individual
seeking his own gain might act, “as if by an invisible hand,” to the benefit
of all. But as Adam Smith also observed and regressive economists tend to
forget, there is a “back of the invisible hand,” whereby self-serving action
by each individual can bring ruin upon the whole – a warning that was
vividly presented by Garrett Hardin in his landmark essay, “The Tragedy of
the Commons.” (1968)
The progressives are so much in favor of a market economy that they are
determined to protect it from its excesses and from its inborn tendency
toward self-destruction. The progressive recognizes that the natural
tendency of “free markets” is toward monopoly and cartels, which are, of
course, the end of the free market. Thus the progressive endorses anti-trust
laws, which means, of course, a rule of law enforced by government.
The progressive also recognizes that market transactions, especially those
by large corporations, affect not only the parties of those transactions
(the buyers and sellers), but also unconsenting third parties, the
“stakeholders;” for example, citizens who reside downwind of and downstream
from polluting industries, citizens who are enticed by false advertising to
endanger their health, and parents whose childrens’ minds and morals are
corrupted by mass media. “Stakeholders” should thus have a voice in these
corporate transactions, and the only agency with a legitimate right to
represent the stakeholders is their government; hence the justification for
regulation of corporations.
The progressive agrees that economic benefits “trickle down” from the
investments of the wealthy. But he also insists that the wealth of the
privileged few “percolates up” from knowledge and labor of the producers of
that wealth – the workforce – and from the tranquility and social order that
issues from a public that is served well by, and freely consents to the rule
of, its government. The progressive insists that the workers are most
productive and prosperous when they participate, through collective
bargaining, in determining the conditions of their employment. The
progressive also recognizes that the productivity of that workforce results
from public education and from the publicly funded basic research that might
otherwise be neglected by private entrepreneurs.
In addition to the libertarian’s defense of government’s function of
protecting the rights of “life, liberty and property,” the progressive
believes that it is also the function of government “to establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, ... [and] promote the general Welfare." Critics
from The Right, who choose to call themselves “conservatives,” should note
that these words are quoted directly from the Preamble to the Constitution
of the United States.
Also, along with the libertarians, the progressive endorses the “like
liberty principle” which affirms that each individual is entitled to maximum
liberty, consistent with equal liberty for all. Likewise, the “no-harm
principle,” expressed in the familiar folk maxim, “my freedom ends where
your nose begins.” However, the libertarians fail to come to terms with the
full implications of these principles, for their program results in freedom
for the privileged few at the cost of the freedom and welfare of the many.
To put the matter bluntly, the progressive disagrees with the libertarian,
not because the progressive values liberty less, but because he values
liberty more.
The progressive insists that certain institutions and resources are the
legitimate property, not of private individuals, but of the public at large.
These include, first of all, the government itself: the legislature, the
executive, and the courts. In addition, the natural environment – the
atmosphere, the waterways, the oceans, the aquifers, wildlife – can not be
parceled out, marked by property lines, and sold to the highest bidder.
Language, the arts, literature, the sciences, are common heritages which
must be protected and nurtured for the common good, and not be used and
exploited exclusively for private gain.
Finally, the progressive demands that government belongs to the people, and
not exclusively to those interests that can afford to “buy into” access to
and influence upon the government. “Governments,” the progressive reminds
us, “are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed,” and that “whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government.” And if the (self-described)
“conservatives” find such sentiments to be treasonous, they should again
take note of the source. These words are from the founding document of our
republic: The Declaration of Independence.
Accordingly, far from being “traitors,” as Ann Coulter would have us
believe, progressives are among the most authentic of patriots.
Copyright 2006 by Ernest Partridge
