"Progressivism"

2002

INTRODUCTION Imagine it is the year 1887 and you are a forty-five-year-old white middle-class man traveling by train into a medium-sized American town. You would likely see some new buildings going up. Perhaps the biggest is a factory, and nearby are the shells of houses for the ...

Society

With the tide of progressive reforms facing strong headwinds today, this essay offers a retrospective look at the progressive movement in the U.S.A. and reflects on the lessons to be learned from its triumphs and failures. The case is made that major advances in the progressive agenda came at historical junctions precipitated by dramatic events. The stretch between 1900 and 1920 saw the first wave of social reforms following the late nineteenth century recessions and upsurge in labor unrest. The New Deal took shape in the 1930s in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The Civil Rights movement burst onto the scene in the 1960s in the face of bitter attempts to shore up segregationist practices in southern states. And the 2020s spike in progressive activism gained momentum against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6 Capitol riots. Special attention is paid to the interfaces between Social Gospel theology and efforts to ground progressive rhetoric in what John Dewey called "common faith," Robert Bellah "civil religion," and Richard Rorty "liberal pragmatism."

2009

The Journal of Markets and Morality, 2016

2005

The progressive education movement, which promoted the philosophy of school reform that prevailed among waves of educational innovators throughout the 20 century, has been associated historically with John Dewey and has prided itself on implementing his ‘childcentered’ principles. However, there were major differences between many of the progressives’ attitudes and Dewey’s ideas about learning. To better understand why issues that originally separated Dewey from other progressives continue to be a source of conflict and confusion even today, as exemplified by an article that appeared in an edition of Education Week (Spencer, 2001; Weiner, 2001), this paper examines the philosophy and practices of some significant early progressive thinkers in light of Dewey’s theory of experience. John Dewey and Progressive Education: How Have Practicing Teachers Understood Progressive Education? In keeping with the United Federation of Teachers statement displayed prominently on its website that “....

This paper was delivered in April 2013 at the convention of the Organization of American Historians in San Francisco. It argues that the Age of Reform, which Richard Hofstadter famously identified as extending from 1890 to roughly 1940, lasted instead from the 1890s into the 1970s. The paper sees the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the Great Society as the three great outbursts of progressive reform in twentieth-century America.

Britain and Transnational Progressivism, 2008

British history. This is even true of recent studies of Anglo-American attitudes. 1 Given the interest of scholars in other Anglo-American cultural connections in the nineteenth century-abolitionism, revivalism, immigration, temperance reform, and political ideology-what explains this paucity of research? 2 Perhaps, British historian C. L. Mowat reflected, it is because historians in each country write history differently. In the United States, historians conceptualized reform as emanating from a constellation of ideas, whereas those in Britain viewed it as entirely isolated from other issues, and thus as the product of individuals or organizations. 3 Though American historians studied reform as a form of a history of ideas, they ironically failed to see the cultural exchange between Progressives in each country. Abandoning this compartmentalized approach to studying these years and using Progressivism as an organizing concept produces an entirely new way of seeing these years, both in Britain and the United States. Though the term Progressive is most commonly associated with the United States, it in fact appeared first across the Atlantic. In 1889, Liberal, Fabian, and socialist members of the London County Council (LCC) were referred to collectively, if awkwardly, as Progressists, a term that eventually metamorphosed into Progressive. Reformers unconnected with the LCC such as Clementina Black and members of the Fabian Society likewise used the term to describe themselves. So did Manchester Liberals, who in promoting a Progressive alliance with the Independent Labour Party from the D. W. Gutzke (ed.

American Communist History, 2011

This is an unpublished, undated and incomplete memoir that covers James S. Allen's tenure (1962-1972) as President and Editor-In-Chief of International Publishers (hereafter, IP), the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) publishing house; reminiscences of his on and off work at IP in previous decades, telling character sketches and anecdotes regarding IP's legendary founder, Alexander Trachtenberg, 1 in effect makes Allen's memoir into something like an informal, if incomplete, history of IP. Allen's commitment to professional standards, and pride in his accomplishments is clear, as he discusses both his strategic vision for IP and the nuts and bolts of its operations. Allen also addresses the sometimes difficult relationship between IP and the CPUSA, his relationship with William Z. Foster, and how IP was affected by and responded to the political and legal repression of the Communist movement, as well as to the opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of the New Left. The memoir is part a book-length unpublished and undated autobiographical typescript, ''Visions and Revisions,'' in the James Allen Papers at the Tamiment Library (TAM 142; Box 5, folder 20, contains ''Marxist Publisher''), and is preceded herein, on a separate page, by a thank-you note, presumably from Allen's son Jesse, to Allen's good friend and comrade Gil Green, for his talk at a memorial service for Allen.

2022

leaves behind a complex legacy. As perhaps one of the most lauded presidents, matched only by President Washington, the legacy of President Lincoln is one heavily associated with Americana in terms of the impact Lincoln still has on the popularised history of America. Culturally, President Lincoln is less a historical behemoth like Alexander the Great and more like a mythological man of impeachable stature like Heracles. It is difficult to assess President Lincoln in an objective manner as the disambiguation of the man and the myth is often a displeasing task as it forces one to confront all the aspects of President Lincoln that had been over exaggerated and mythologised 1. In fact there are aspects of analysing such a pivotal figure in American history that are deeply unappealing. The narrative forged around President Lincoln, the founder of the Republican Party, the warrior for the African American race, and the heroic president of the Civil War cut down in his prime after winning a landslide election in 1864 is quintessentially something all Americans claim and aspire towards. In the modern political climate, even though the Democratic and Republican Party disagree wholeheartedly due to political partisanship and polarisation, it is still a fundamental cornerstone of American politics that the legacy and heritage of not only the founders but that of president Lincoln remains a bridge between both parties. They may disagree on which parts of Lincoln's legacy to focus on and quite frankly, the selective historiography has many equivalences although neither side will admit it, but President Lincoln's legacy being claimed remains an important aspect of American political culture. This introduces the question set out by this essay to answer, the claiming of President Lincoln's legacy by the Democratic Party, historically his adversaries, and their assertions that President Lincoln would have aligned more with their party because of their progressive ideals and their vanguardism for racial equality 2. This essay shall analyse whether that claim, the claim that President Lincoln would have been a progressive holds historical verity or whether it is simply a figment of the historical imagination attempting to fit a historically complex and nuanced president into a caricature of progressive modernity for political gain.

I argue that some American authors confronted what Audre Lorde calls the "triumphs and errors" of the 1960s by producing literature that conceptualizes methodologies of resistance within sustainable models of community organization. Instead of succumbing to the inherent cynicism of the postmodern era, this literature encourages readers to adopt activist practices and to remain vigilant against oppressive government actions that intrude on civil liberties. Referring to selective works by Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Charles Johnson, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Lorde, among others, I show how these authors-many of whom were shaped by their personal experiences of the sixties-reject naïve idealism while remaining hopeful of the possibility of progressive social change. Accordingly, they offer readers a chance to participate in the spirit of their work by fostering empathic connections with activist characters in worlds meant to serve as models for our own. By advancing a sense of cautious optimism in their work, the authors in this study reclaim the activist spirit of the 1960s while revealing to readers the many ways in which the social movements of the decade were flawed. Taken together, they also reclaim the need for resistance in a post-1960s period in which the gains of the civil rights and women's movements were met with conservative efforts to brand such resistance as anti-American and social activists as dangerous revolutionaries. The authors I discuss respond to such tactics by defining freedom as a practice, the conscious observance of which is in the service of progressive notions of social democratic governance and human rights. This practice extends to reading as well; as participatory texts, the works in this study command active reading that results in the critical questioning of standard, popular modes of discourse and academic theorizing. How one reads is therefore as important as what one reads, since to read radically is to imagine new ways of approaching the word and the world that account for the needs of marginalized, oppressed peoples as well as the communities we build and the values we promote. This particular group of "activist texts" thus redirects the indeterminate nature of value systems in mainstream postmodern literary and cultural theory to a project that remembers the potential of 1960s organizing-despite its shortcomings-to produce a better world for us all. Drawing from work in literary theory, historiography, cultural studies, and performance studies, my methodology is grounded in an interdisciplinary project that mirrors the inclusive social paradigms of the texts I discuss. Like Marjorie Garber and Elizabeth Ammons, I am involved in literary analysis but incorporate ethical pronouncements that at times take the form of a manifesto for pragmatic literary scholarship. I argue that literary study is often too focused on aesthetic or stylistic value in text and should do more to uncover and promote the value of text in encouraging critical questioning and in shaping civic ideals and expectations. I conclude that locating examples of social praxis in American literature after the 1960s can benefit the efforts of contemporary movements such as Occupy Wall Street as they move forward in addressing the needs of marginalized peoples in the twenty-first century. Lastly, I argue that the relevance of such a project is reaffirmed by the recent turn in literary studies toward work relating to neoliberalism and global capitalism, which threaten to widen the disparities that reproduce inequality and make resistance necessary to human rights and social progress