In the Biden thread, there has been debate over how progressive certain appointments are. We are probably working off of different definitions of progressive. So what does it mean to be progressive? I’ll start off by naming a few people and you tell me if you think they fit the definition of progressive.
You tell me why NJR changed his mind on Liz based on M4A which she explicitly supports and a tweet about Bolivia. I’d say it has more to do with bitterness that she didn’t drop out and endorse Bernie (an act that is now considered illegitimate collusion by the same people that demanded it from her) than any serious analysis of the issues.
I don’t feel strongly about any them except HRC. Cuba, Iran, backing off the pipeline, expanding protected areas pushes Obama into weakly progressive imo, but that’s meant in the context of the status quo.
I’m not really sure that Warren doesn’t still believe some of the things that made her a Republican when Reagan was POTUS. She has talked about changing her mind on bankruptcy, but I have by heard her talk about much else insofar a when and how she changed.
I don’t like the term “progressive” precisely because it’s so ill-defined, so I don’t use it anymore. I think a truer question of ideology is whether you support capitalism or think it needs to be replaced with some form of socialism or communism.
For some people, “progressive” is an attempted re-branding of “liberal”, so the two are synonymous. Others define “progressive” as synonymous with “leftist” and in opposition to “liberal”. A third way is to view “progressive” and “liberal” as overlapping, with some people capable of being described as both, while there are non-progressive liberals and non-liberal progressives.
David Sirota had this definition for this difference between progressives and liberals.
It seems to me that traditional “liberals” in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A “progressive” are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.
Do we define who is a progressive by having a checklist of progressive policies and using those as a litmus test or is it a governing philosophy which some flexibility for different policy preferences?
I agree that pro capitalism/anti-capitalism is the better ideological demarcation. Many people who self-identify as liberal or progressive are on the right of that divide. It’s similar in ways to the Koch brothers’ libertarian astro-turfed movement.
With the libertarians, they are ostensibly conservative on fiscal issues and liberal on social issues. But when push comes to shove with a libertarian true-believer, and they have to choose between infringing on the “rights” of the property owner or enacting equitable policies, well first principles state that if we trust the free market, eventually equitable policies will win, so in the mean time let’s not unduly impose upon the wealthy.
Meanwhile, people who self-identify as “liberal” or “progressive” while being pro-capitalism; they ostensibly want policies that address the inequities, but because their prior assumptions include capitalism as a given–this leaves them prone to a similar struggle that the libertarians have–hoping that if we apply enough policy band-aids to capitalism we’ll resolve the endemic problems without having to change the system.
This is why some liberals and some progressives(again depending upon definitions) advocate for reformist policies, rather than abolitionist policies. If someone believes that there is no alternative to capitalism, and therefore its rules need to be enforced, then they tend to find movements like “Abolish the police” to not only be ill-conceived, it may very well make no sense to them whatsoever because it’s easier for them to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism, and with it the goons that enforce it.
This is really a discussion for another thread though. I don’t see the value in turning the term progressive into a synonym for anti-capitalist especially since the vast majority of people don’t see it that way.
All progressives aren’t anti-capitalist but all anti-capitalists are progressives?
I agree it’s a broader, but not completely unrelated discussion. Personally, I’m not trying to make “progressive” synonymous with “anti-capitalist”.
As you and I are currently using the term “progressive”, I agree, but with the caveat that this is in general and there may be those who use the terms or identify with them, that use them otherwise.
This is a good point as well. Once we are dealing with a term/concept like “capitalism” that has been subject to so much PR(both positive and negative), we are dealing with people’s personalized idea of it, and so it’s better to state exactly what real world phenomena and relationships we are pro vs anti.
Like take a powerful central state that owns everything. Some people think that is the only alternative to capitalism and some people think it’s not anti-capitalism at all, but “state-capitalism”.
I mean if we’re grading on a scale, it is completely laughable to me that people on this board think that Obama is more progressive, based on this polling, than Pete Buttigieg. It’s just proof that the word has lost all meaning. (This is probably a bit of recency bias, too. And the fact that apparently those people never actually bothered to read either person’s platform)
There are people on this board who base the definition of “progressive” by their stance on one single method to reach one single goal on one single issue.
I tend to define it based on the root word “progress.” Like, do they want to make progress toward a more free, fair, and just society? Then yeah, they’re progressive.