Progressivism

It seems that the entire Left has decided that they are “Progressives” rather than “Liberals”. Hillary Clinton has described herself as a “Progressive”; so has the President and many of his Czars. Progressivism is the “New Liberalism”.

So where did this “Progressive” term come from and what does it mean? As with most political questions, a study of history helps provide answers, but to get a true picture it’s necessary to go back much further than the emergence of Progressivism.

Our Founding Fathers, under the influence of the Enlightenment thinkers believed that all men by their nature deserved equal opportunity under the law. Certainly some would be born into more fortuitous circumstances, some more clever, some more talented, but all should be equal before the law with none set above it or specifically protected by it more than their fellows. They believed that some men would rise above others due to their talents or labors and become leaders among men, and that these men would form a Meritocracy of Gentlemen, but that no man could claim this status as his birthright or hold it perpetually without maintenance.

Unfortunately, as early as the Washington administration, government began the practice of “helping” one part of society or another. Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was so anxious for America to take her place among the wealthy nations of the world that he pushed for high tariffs along with other subsidies and measures to help American manufacturing. Ever since, through westward expansion, the civil war, reconstruction, into the 20^th century, the New Deal, and beyond virtually all politicians have sided with big business, agriculture, labor, or some other social entity. Of course as soon as politicians begin favoring one part of society at the expense of another corruption follows. Levels of corruption varied with time and location but became a constant in American politics.

This is not to say that all politicians were corrupt or were motivated by anything but conscience or desire to represent constituents, but as the country made the transition from Republic to Democracy as typified by the election and administration of Andrew Jackson, more and more lacked the sophisticated philosophical background of the Founders to avoid being influenced by expedience.

 “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx was published in 1848 during a time of war and hunger in Europe and mass emigration to the United States.  In the following 50 years millions of European emigrants came to the United States to escape poverty, war, and persecution. Many of these people had been exposed to various varieties of Socialistic theory and accepted its idealism. Over time a popular attitude emerged, even among many prominent politicians that Meritocracy embraced by the Founders was evil and that all men should not just be equal before the law, but truly equal in their economic circumstances; that accidents of birth such as inherited wealth, cleverness, or talent should not make one man rise above another; that even personal life choices such as education or hard work should not distinguish one man from another; that all men should be created and should remain equal in wealth or lack thereof. They believed that this was the natural order of things and that any step toward this ideal was Progress, the philosophy was called Progressivism, and politicians holding these beliefs to a significant degree came to be called Progressives.

The Progressive Party of the early 20^th century sprung from the People’s, or Populist Party of the late 19^th century which in turn evolved from the two major Farmer’s Alliance Organizations that were formed during the depression of the late 1870s.

Southern farmers, poor whites and blacks alike, were trapped in the tenant farm system that evolved during reconstruction as a method of farming large tracts of land that had previously been tilled by slaves. Tenant farmers typically owed the proceeds from their crops to the store or landowner that provided basic necessities before the crop was harvested. Each year tenant farmers tended to go deeper into debt. In 1877, primarily as a social outlet, farmers in Texas formed “The Knights of Reliance”. Similar organizations sprung up across the south and they became loosely allied into The Southern Farmer’s Alliance, and began trying to influence local Democratic politics, that party being virtually the only one in “The Solid South”. This was, of course, only white farmers, there was also a Colored Farmer’s National Alliance, but it was kept separate and never had significant political clout.

In the north farmers felt themselves at the mercy of low wheat prices, debt, and high transportation costs. The United State Government had granted large tracts of land to railroad companies to encourage the building of railroads across the nation in areas where it otherwise would have been economically unfeasible to do so. To a large degree, railroads were financed by selling the land to farmers. Such land was relatively valuable simply because of the proximity of transportation, but once the land was under cultivation and the railroad was operational, the farmers were extremely dependant on the railroad because no other form of transportation was available. So, also in 1877, the Northwest Farmer’s Alliance was born out of previous organizations such as The Grange. Initially their focus was social and on cooperative buying and selling, but they were soon trying to have influence on local Republican politics.

After some years of attempting to effect local politics to little benefit, the Farmer’s Alliances met in Ocala, Florida and formed what became The Populist Party, called The Peoples Party in some States. This effort was primarily by Northern Alliance membership because the southerners were reluctant to challenge the Democratic Party that they credited with maintaining white supremacy. The Populist Party’s “Ocala Platform” called for a progressive income tax on the rich, a loose money supply, and nationalization of the railroads. The Party had significant influence in several States north and south, though in the south there was no Populist Party to speak of, only sympathetic Democrats.

One of the Populist Party platform’s most popular planks was adoption of what became known as “bimetallism”, a plan to back American dollars with silver as well as gold, and fix the value of silver at 1/16 the value of gold. Since silver was not nearly this valuable, the effect would have been to devalue the dollar by about 50%. Populist farmers were in favor, because it would double the price of their crops when sold, while their debts remained constant, and agricultural States found ready allies in the silver mining States. Bimetallism became the indentifying issue for the Party.

Ironically, it was the depression of the 1890s that led to the extinction of the Pluralist Party when, in 1896, the Democratic Party was in need of a way to distinguish itself from the Republicans, and in spite of there being a large percentage of “Gold” Democrats they virtually adopted the Pluralist Party Platform including bimetallism causing a serious rift in the Party. They nominated William Jennings Bryan, a known Pluralist in all but name, as their Presidential candidate. The Pluralists were left with the choice of backing the Democrats or splitting what had come to be called the “Progressive” vote. The adoption of the Pluralist platform by a major party ushered in what became known as the “Progressive Era” with many progressive politicians in both parties who believed in more power to the central government, control and regulation of big business, trust busting, a weak dollar, government support of unions, farm subsidies, conservation, and other “liberal” policies. This growing progressive movement found allies in the labor unions which the Pluralists had not represented.

The Pluralist went on to nominate Presidential candidates through 1908, but were never again a political factor other than their influence on Progressive politicians in the other parties. This was a time when both major parties were split ideologically with little to distinguish the parties from each other, but much to distinguish the splits within each party. It’s as if people were Democratic or Republican by habit, or heritage, and what they actually believed determined which faction within the party they would support. There were many Progressives in both parties that had spent a political career wandering in and around of the Pluralist Party or growing Socialist Party – a product of European emigration at a time when Socialism was gaining popularity in Europe.

In that convoluted election of 1896 Republican William McKinley, certainly not a progressive, was elected to the Presidency, and yet again in 1900 when, with even more irony, his running mate was the progressive, Theodore Roosevelt, who would be elevated to the Presidency when McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist only a few months into his second term.

Roosevelt was elected on his own in 1904, and was followed in the White House by his friend William Howard Taft. Then in 1911 a progressive faction of the Republican Party formed the “National Progressive Republican League” to oppose the 1912 nomination of Taft for a second term. Instead they backed Theodore Roosevelt for a discontinuous third term. When they failed to nominate Roosevelt, they broke from the Republican Party and formed The Progressive Party and nominated Roosevelt as a third party candidate. Roosevelt the Progressive did much better at the polls than Taft the Republican, but Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected and through a World War and the following business boom the Progressive Party ceased to exist, but its policies and many of its members would be absorbed by the Democratic Party in the 1930s and from this the modern personalities of the two major parties would emerge.

A corollary to Progressive beliefs was that capitalism, the nominal economic system of the United States, has failed, forgetting that the United States from its earliest days never followed laissez faire capitalism. Always there has been government interference in one form or another, attempting to help business or control it. The amazing accomplishment that is the United States of America is the product of Almost Capitalism – one wonders what might have developed under true capitalism.