Progressivism: An Idea Whose Time has Gone?
| Author | David Blaazer |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12040 |
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Progressivism: An Idea Whose Time has Gone?
David Blaazer
University of New South Wales, Canberra
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 disap-
pearance of progressive principles or even the progressive tradition, which are clearly manifest in many contem-
porary 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.
Keywords: progressivism; liberalism; Labour Party; Liberal Party; Conservative Party
The call for papers for this symposium drew our attention to the fact that the three main
parties at the 2010 election all described themselves as ‘progressive’, or tried to lay claim
to the ‘progressive tradition’. For people on the left of politics, such claims coming from
the Conservative Party tend to arouse an instinctive cynicism. My own understanding of
the progressive tradition leads me at first in the same direction: to an automatic assump-
tion that claims by Conservative leaders to be progressive are simply untruthful and
insincere, while similar claims from Conservative lesser lights are merely naïve and woolly
headed. Such responses cannot be left unexamined but, rather, should provoke self-
reflection on our understandings of the term. In my own case, as the author of a
monograph on the history of the progressive tradition, it leads me to wonder whether my
own usage signifies merely that I am among those whom Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt
(2007) have accused of using the term ‘lazily to refer to left-of centre politics’. Alter na-
tively, could it be argued that any characterisation of ‘progressive’ that refers to any other
kind of politics is so broad as to be meaningless? Or indeed, is the category simply useless
anyway: a piece of analytical mar shmallow suitable only for politicians to serve up to
uncritical supporters and potential voters?
Asking these questions forces me to some sort of reappraisal of the ways in which I have
used and understood the term progressive in my own earlier work, and whether that usage
has any relevance to the political circumstances of today.This paper is therefore a recapitu-
lation and meditation on that work, which aims to discover whether the concept of a
progressive tradition retains any current meaning or analytical value, whether it remains
useful only as a historical category,or whether the cur rent promiscuous use of the term has
merely exposed the fact that it never had any meaning, and that attempts to use it as a
category of political analysis or historical inter pretation have always been misguided.
POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2014 VOL 12, 6–16
doi: 10.1111/1478-9302.12040
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