Todd Suomela's Library tagged radical progressivism →  View Popular

If American history teaches anything, it is that the "dangerous" epithet is the last and most banal refuge of those who seek to preserve the status quo. From Joe McCarthy slandering progressives as dangerous communists to George W. Bush saying anti-war activists were dangerous terrorist sympathizers, Estasblishmentarians have been painting their foes as threats to the nation for decades.

This chart can be critiqued at two levels, from within its frame (the outcome-oriented vs. process-oriented pairing seems to be flipped, as can readily be seen by comparing that with the conversation vs. action-oriented pairing) and from outside its frame: Nate naturally takes an abstract analytic approach, whereas I introduced a somewhat similar distinction in terms of historical processes, contrasting the "progressivism" of the post-60s era (which named itself in opposition to the Cold War liberals who brought us Vietnam) with the "classical progressivism" of the early 20th Century, that was a modernizing, rationalizing philosophy that existed in tension with populism,

This is further complicated by the fact that Nate's so-called "rational progressives" tend to deny that politics is a battle at all.  Isn't that, after all, the whole point of Obama's bipartisan crusade?  In contrast, I've been going on for quite some time about politics as a battle of ideas--an idea that comes from Gramsci, just the sort that Nate goes on to warn against:

The first type of progressivism has its philosophical underpinnings in 18th Century, Enlightement-era thought. It believes that politics is a battle of ideas. It further believes that through the use of reason and the exchange of ideas, human society will tend to improve itself through scientific and technological innovation. Hence, it believes in progress, and for this reason lays claim to the term “progressive”. Because of its belief and optimism in the faculties of human reason, I refer to this philosophy as rational progressivism.

Rational progressivism tends to be trusting, within reason, of status quo political and economic institutions -- generally including the institution of capitalism. It tends to trust these institutions because it believes they are a manifestation of progress made by previous generations.

The second type of progressivism is what I call radical progressivism. It represents, indeed, a much more radical and comprehensive critique of the status quo, which it tends to see as intrinsically corrupt. Its philosophical tradition originates in 19th Century thought -- and specifically, owes a great deal to the Marxist critique of capitalism and the Marxist theory of social change. It also finds inspiration in both the radical movement of the 1960s and the labor and social movements of late 19th and early 20th centuries (from which it borrows the label "progressive").

Radical progressivism is more clearly distinguishable from "conventional" liberalism and would generally be associated with the "far left" -- although on a handful of issues such as free trade, it may find common cause with the "radical" right. Radical progressivism embraces the tradition of populism and frequently adopts a discourse of the virtuous commoner organizing against the corrupt elite.