Progressivism! Periodization! and other thrills....

by Cliopatria

A while ago I stuck a comment about Republicans and progressives in a footnote of a looong post on distinctions between progressivism and liberalism. Then, Rob McDougall called my bluff, in the course of a rather nice post of his on the value of my recent work to his teaching. (In case you were wondering, that's purely intellectual value, not monetary; as Rob carefully pointed out, the way in which my books are worthwhile to him accrues no"book sales or royalties" to me. I feel so ... noble.) And Ralph Luker kindly invited me to post a response here (thanks for the gracious introduction, Ralph). So, for those of you dying to know what I meant when I said I had some reasons to regard progressivism as, properly understood, more radical than what we now call liberalism, even though -- or rather, maybe because -- some of its partisans were Republicans, this post is for you.

Now, I'm assuming that introduction has cut the readership of this post down to about three people. Which is fine by me; what I'm writing here is in the spirit of History-as-beta, and is for early adopters. But the following discussion has very little in the way of narrative or context and is meant for real history nerds. Consider yourselves warned.

So what I said was something about c19 Republican progressives being to the left of c20 Democratic/New Deal liberals, and having a historical idea about explaining this to students or readers. The first point to make is that c19 Republicans, progressive or not, were pretty much all to the left of c20, late-New-Deal Democrats, in the sense that they believed the state should have had a highly interventionist role in the economy. Let's, as short-hand, accept John Gerring's definition of c19 Republicanism as mercantilist heirs to Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, who wanted to use the power of the state to shape the economy to increase the health of the state.

There's a sense in which, from this angle, you can characterize Republican progressivism as Bismarckian, as a conservative effort to outflank radical movements by turning workers into clients of the state. And indeed, some progressives talked this way (see, e.g., Albert Beveridge attesting, albeit after the fact, to TR's historical significance).

Okay, now we have the idea that a statist/mercantilist party, in reaction to industrialization, might look a little radical -- might even be a little radical. This is not a terrible explanation of progressivism, at least for a first approximation. But, neither is it really satisfactory, mainly because it sets up progressivism as a response to a socialist or communist threat. Which in the main it probably wasn't. The major radical threat wasn't socialism or communism, it was populism. Maybe we should say that the move toward progressivism in the Republican party isn't so much class-oriented as it is sectionally oriented.

Let's take a second run at this explanation. How did the Republican Party change? It changed by becoming a party that appealed more to the West. The GOP had in effect to re-win the West: Benjamin Harrison and the Republican majority in the 51st Congress both drew support from the West. But between the 51st and the 56th Congress, the Republicans' ability to win the new states of the West diminished. Only once Roosevelt entered the White House did the Republicans begin to re-win those States.

So it was the West that tugged a mercantilist, statist party to the left, making it progressive. Which is one major reason American progressivism didn't really look Bismarckian -- those Westerners didn't want the same things that European workers did. (There are other reasons. I wrote a book about some of them. Did I mention this? Excuse my crass flacking, but I mean, if McDougall isn't going to net me royalties....) And as to why this set of policies were to the left of New Deal liberalism, I guess I can refer you to again to the above-mentioned post and its spinning-out of distinctions. (By the way, Casey Blake disagreed with me. And I disagreed with him. And he disagreed with me. And Geoff Nunberg disagreed with both of us, but especially me.)

For kicks, we could go a step further than this, though, and venture into the great historiographical morass of periodization. Sometimes I try to sell my undergraduates on the idea that you can explain pretty much everything that happens between the Civil War and World War II with reference to two factors: the admission of the West and the failure of Reconstruction. What's more, I sometimes say, these factors give you a really neat break point in starting the Progressive era. In 1888, the Republicans narrowly regain the Presidency and the Congress. Immediately afterward, you get both parties reaching for sectional coalitions. The Democrats launch their legal disfranchisement efforts in the South. The Republicans get the admission of six Western states, most of which are supposed to be electorally favorable to them. These sectional obligations determine what both parties can and can't do for quite a while.

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Kevin C. Murphy - 11/7/2006

On the distinction between progressivism and liberalism, I've always found Michael Sandel's argument in Democracy's Discontent particularly rewarding. In his argument, progressivism is rooted in republicanism (and, I'd argue, Emersonian perfectionism -- progressives from Addams to Croly to Borah love Emerson) -- it is concerned primarily with maintaining self-government by preserving the moral and civic prerequisites of citizenship. Because of this, it offers a critique of corporate power that contemporary liberalism, which is concerned primarily with the equal distribution of justice and envisions a value-neutral government (a la Brinkley's argument in End of Reform), doesn't include: Corporate power may be good for consumers, but bad for citizens.

Having this critique of capitalism's effect on citizenship built into progressivism, to my mind, makes it much more resonant and radical than contemporary liberalism. (I tried to explain this in a post here, but it was written years ago and may suffer from too much youthful enthusiasm.)

Oscar Chamberlain - 11/6/2006

"Influences come from everywhere" Quite true, and you are also correct that it is one thing to be influenced but it is another to translate that influence into policy.

However, the case of Wisconsin raises some interesting questions. While it is not a western state in our eyes now, it was somewhat western in the American mentality of the 1890s and early 1900s. Wisconsin's approach to Progressivism shared the western Progressive emphasis on Democracy as well as the elitist progressive emphasis on expertise.

In short, it's at least arguable that Wisconsin was a model for a western solution as well as an influence. The more one accepts the idea that Wisconsin was one model for a solution, the greater the possibility that the internal "logic" that gave rise to Wisconsin's progressivism may have alse been influential or have reflected common concerns.

Eric Rauchway - 11/4/2006

Yes, but I don't think this is really an exception to the proposed formulation. Influences might come from anywhere. There's a nice line in Drift and Mastery: "Social legislation is to-dy a world-wide interest, so that reformers in Oregon may draw upon Australasian experiment." Just so: but what I'm proposing is a formula for understanding outcomes. This requires a model of how those influences get translated through legislative processes into law, and at the national level that means reckoning with sections.

Eric Rauchway - 11/4/2006

On point 1, I'm using Brinkley's flavor of New Deal liberalism (which I cite in the linked, older piece), which I take to be uncontroversially less radical in approach and intent than progressivism; to the extent that you dispute the thesis of End of Reform you will not buy this argument.

On point 2, as I read my post, I don't see any explanatory dependence to a Republican high command -- and I certainly didn't mean one. But you can find a general awareness that these sectional compromises are being brokered in the Congressional Record and other sources of the period and certainly, the sectional coalitions are a matter of practical fact for electing Presidents &c.

HAVH Mayer - 11/4/2006

1) The Progressives were, in general, in favor of extensive government action, and opposed to collectivism; their constitutional radicalism (if that's what it was) was in the service of a broad program that was (obviously) "progressive" as opposed to "radical." Since neither Progressivism nor the New Deal was fundamentally radical in intent, we can best assess their relative radicalism by their results -- and the New Deal wins that comparison.

2) The sectional explanation seems persuasive up to a point, but it should not be presented even in brief summary as if it resulted from explicit strategy from some party "high command." The breakdown of such authority, particularly in the Republican Party, is one of the salient political facts of the Progressive era.

Oscar Chamberlain - 11/4/2006

Perhaps it is an exception that proves the rule, but Charles McCarthy's The Wisconsin Idea, an extremely influential Progressive tome, suggests that in Wisconsin at least, both a concern with Marx and the influence of German ideas were central to the development and articulation of Progressive policy.

See chapters 1, 2, and 10 in McCarthy, in particular: http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/WIReader/WER1650-Chpt1.html

Eric Rauchway - 11/3/2006

I think the answer to the regulatory question is pretty persuasively answered in Elizabeth Sanders's _Roots of Reform_. Throughout the populist/progressive period you have continuous sectional pressure for regulation that leads to legislative outcomes; you don't always get what the more radical elements want but the pressure produces results.

David Lion Salmanson - 11/3/2006

I'm a regionalist in training, so I'm partial to this explanation from the get-go. But can you explain how this might work in a concrete example. For example, how do you get from the Populist call for government ownership of railroads to the Progressive regulation of railroads? I see more of a link in the attempt of Progressives to enforce/create whiteness in the West by regulating health, land, immigration, and especially Native Americans. But Populists were pretty interested in whiteness too, or at least defending white privilige as they understood it. It's the difference between the anti-Chinese movement described by Alexander Saxton, and the claims for whiteness made by Nuevo Mexicanos described by Pablo Mitchell (and others).