The Flaws of Progressive Political Theory

President Woodrow Wilson

THE following is a work in progress.  The main present purpose is simply to develop a comprehensive list of logical, epistemological, moral and practical problems with modern Progressivism. The individual sections may me expanded upon in future posts.  The point is not to denigrate the humanitarian aims of Progressivism, but ultimately to argue they may be better obtained by other means.

As an explicitly defined political ideology Progressivism has four main assumptions:

i. We can achieve continual and unlimited improvement of the human condition using science, technology, economic development and social organization;

ii. These advancements are chosen and designed by elite intellectuals and academics;

iii. Social reform policies are administered and enforced by a central government with absolute power;

iv. The mass public, being less educated than the elite and incapable of choosing their own destiny, may and must have their attitudes shaped by the elite, supported by the government and by state-controlled media and education.

This is pretty much where we’re at today in the US.

There are several obvious and important dangers of this philosophy, which we will be content here merely to list:

1. Untended side effects. Progressivism habitually fails to ask the question, “What unintended effects might a government-run social reform have?” We can take war as a paradigmatic example.  Woodrow Wilson, one of the fathers of modern American Progressivism, brought the US into World War I as a ‘war to end all wars.’  Yet in addition to killing millions, it set the stage for a still greater world war.

2. Intellectual hubris. Along with the above, Progressivism as a political ideology commits the cardinal sin of thinking it knows more than it does.

3. Flawed epistemology. Being strongly rationalistic, there is no place for the role of individual human conscience. Conscience springs from elements of the human soul that science does not understand. Progressivism relies on one little organ of human thought — rationalistic science — to develop primitive, limited theories. It then acts as though these theories are completely comprehensive and correct.

4. Playing God. Progressivism is oblivious to the possibility that there is some kind of divine (or perhaps natural evolutionary) design and plan for the human race. Would we not be better off to follow Nature’s model, and let progress occur in a more organic, gradual, harmonious and wise way?

5. Groupthink. In Progressivism, an elite cadre of intellectuals develop a theory, but never ask other opinions. Status within the elite community is contingent on promoting the consensus opinion.  Structurally the system works to produce a monolithic, limited, unchallenged set of assumptions and beliefs. Progressivism inherits and intensifies the problems that plague academia (dogmatism, narrowness of perspective, cliquism, faddism and ivory-tower disconnection from the actual experience, and needs, sensibilities and potentials of the ‘common person’) and of large bureaucracies.

6. Self-defeating authoritarianism. Liberal democracy emerged in the Enlightenment with human freedom as the ultimate social value. Its basic argument was that: (a) human beings are naturally good; (b) governments are naturally bad, and obstruct the natural tendency of free individuals to seek and gain their own happiness; and (c) therefore the ultimate and true role of government is to maximize human freedom and self-determination.  But Progressivism completely inverts this: it assumes individuals are not able to decide for themselves how to attain happiness; and that in the interests of government led social-reform programs, individual liberty may and must be actively limited.

7. Power corrupts. If power is given to an elite, then no matter how benevolent the original goals, there is no way to prevent the rulers from using the power unjustly. Even if the elite itself retains ideological purity, the authoritarian institutions it sets up will likely be co-opted and corrupted by special interests.

8. Reductionism. It’s claim to being scientific and its invoking of the authority of science requires it to ignore or deny alternative or competing paradigms. There is no room for religious or metaphysical mysticism. There is no metaphysics at all, in fact. Idealism, Transcendentalism and Romanticism are eliminated, despite the fact that these were instrumental in the 19th century social progress movement.

9. Social outcomes must be quantifiable and empirically observable, which necessitates them being materialistic and economic. Human progress is equated exclusively with things like jobs, years of school education, income and wealth. There can be no place for the sorts of things that humankind has traditionally considered most important: happiness, a meaningful life, love, self-respect, and inner moral virtue. This hyper-rationalism leads to policies that are superficially plausible ‘in paper,’ yet in practice defy common sense.

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Related Reading

Max Leyf, Seven Reservations with Utilitarianism. Theoria Press Website, 2021-05-10.