Today’s Non-Progressive Progressives

They’re not on the right side of history anymore.

The Democratic Party is in sad shape, by its own self-report and in the view of most observers. At the same time, the party is seemingly more progressive and more dominated by progressives than it has been for a good long time. Are the two things related?

Yes, they are—but not in the way most people think. The problem isn’t that progressives have made the party too progressive; the problem is rather that today’s progressives aren’t really progressive in the true sense of the term and as a result have led the party into a number of political cul-de-sacs that have nothing to do with progress and dramatically undermine its appeal. Consider:

American progressives used to embrace a number of universal values and aspirations that defined their political project. They sought to make life better for ordinary people by emphasizing their universal interests across racial, ethnic and cultural divisions, ensuring universal fair treatment in daily life and throughout society, promoting universal standards of merit, achievement and truth and providing universal access to the bounty from scientific achievement and economic growth. The core concept was that all Americans could prosper when treated in this fashion and that existing social and governmental arrangements should be pushed in that direction.

Making progress along these lines was what being a progressive was all about. Today’s progressives are different. They have rejected the universal approach for particularistic defense of professional class cultural priorities and policy preferences. In that sense they have lost the right to call themselves “progressives.” Instead they now stand in the way of progress as progressives used to define it—and progress as most ordinary voters would recognize it.

Here are some of the ways that “progressives” have bid farewell to progress.

Colorblindness, anti-discrimination and equal opportunity. The quintessential moral commitment of midcentury progressives was to make American society truly colorblind. It was unfair and egregious that racial discrimination could truncate the life chances of black people and visit misery upon them. Therefore, progressives advocated and marched for ending discrimination and unequal opportunity. They won the argument. Not only was legislation passed to make such discrimination illegal but anti-discrimination and equal opportunity became as close to consensual beliefs as you can get in America.

Americans today believe, with Martin Luther King Jr., that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In a 2022 University of Southern California Dornsife survey, this classic statement of colorblind equality was posed to respondents: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin.” That view elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public.

Similarly, a 2023 Public Agenda Hidden Common Ground survey found 91 percent agreement with the statement: “All people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter their race or ethnicity.” This is what Americans deeply believe in: equal opportunity not, it should be noted, equal outcomes.

And it is what progressives used to believe in—indeed, mounted the barricades for. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century. Instead of treating the colorblind society as a noble ideal that progressives should strive for even if its perfect attainment is impossible, progressives lost faith in the ideal because racial disparities did not immediately disappear. Instead, they began to favor color-conscious remedies like affirmative action that went far beyond anti-discrimination and equal opportunity and to oppose colorblind policies if they did not produce desired outcomes by race. As eventually formulated by Ibram X. Kendi:

There is no such thing as a non-racist or race-neutral policy…The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination…The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

This inversion of traditional progressive principles is still with us today as progressives tenaciously defend affirmative action and DEI programs despite their lack of connection to consensual values of anti-discrimination and equal opportunity. Progressives view the very use of the term “colorblind” as right-coded, evidence of supporting racism rather than opposing it. If they no longer support progress toward a colorblind society, in what sense do they still qualify as “progressive”?

Merit and achievement. Progressives’ traditional theory of the case ran like this: discrimination should be opposed and dismantled and resources provided to the disadvantaged so that everyone can fairly compete and achieve. Rewards—job opportunities, promotions, commissions, appointments, publications, school slots, and much else—would then be allocated on the basis of which person or persons deserved these rewards on the basis of merit. Those who were meritorious would be rewarded; those who weren’t would not be. No more would people be rewarded because of who they were instead of what they accomplished.

But 21^st century progressives have lost interest in the last part of their case, which undermines their whole theory. Merit and objective measures of achievement are now viewed with suspicion as the outcomes of a hopelessly corrupt system, so rewards should instead be allocated on the basis of various criteria allegedly related to “social justice.” Instead of dismantling discrimination and providing assistance so that more people have the opportunity to acquire merit, the real solution is to worry less about merit and more about equal outcomes—“equity” in parlance of our times.

Arguments can be made in defense of the anti-merit approach. You can’t swing a dead cat on most university campuses without hitting some progressive academic who will give you 10,000 words on why this is actually a great idea. In my view, these arguments are universally specious but what shouldn’t be debatable is that ordinary people—ordinary voters—don’t buy the idea. They believe in the idea of merit and they believe in their ability to acquire merit and attendant rewards if given the opportunity to do so. To believe otherwise is insulting to them and contravenes their common sense about the central role of merit in fair decisions. As George Orwell put it, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

If progressives no longer believe in helping individuals progress, how is that progressive? The original progressive idea was to remove barriers so that people could accomplish what they are capable of, not to disregard the importance of accomplishment. A progressive society—a fair society—is one where people can count on the former not one where they have to worry about the latter. Today’s anti-merit “progressives” are no longer progressive because, in essence, they no longer believe in fairness.

Free speech, cultural pluralism and the open society. Progressives used to be steadfast defenders of free speech. Free speech was viewed as integral to advancing the progressive agenda against those who opposed that agenda and sought to suppress organizing efforts for social change. But the tables have turned and now in institutions where progressives dominate, such as the universities, the arts, NGO-world and the Democratic Party, the commitment to free speech has become very shaky indeed. Conflation of speech with “violence” and “harm” and making people feel “unsafe” has put a damper on the free expression of ideas.

Today’s progressives may be happy with this situation but voters are not. They have a different model of discourse in mind, such as that suggested by this poll question tested from April to June in 2023 among over 18,000 registered voters by RMG Research:

Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith. (76 percent agree/14 percent disagree)

Progressives used to err on the side of free speech, not its suppression. They thought that the universal open exchange of ideas would benefit their cause and was a fundamental progressive commitment. But as with a colorblind society, a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century. Instead of judging ideas by their truth content, it became increasingly common for progressives to judge ideas by who was putting them forward. If the idea came from people in an oppressed/powerless/marginalized group, the idea should be supported; if not, it should be opposed.

From there it was a short step for progressives to consider ideas they disagreed with hateful or “misinformation/disinformation,” inflected with racism or sexism or xenophobia or transphobia or whatever and therefore not part of legitimate discourse. And therefore it was “progressive” to suppress the expression of those ideas wherever possible.

This inversion of a traditional progressive commitment is shocking—especially since it undercuts cultural pluralism, which progressives hitherto supported. They believed their ideas would freely prevail over the long haul because they were better, even if cultural traditionalists in the working class temporarily resisted. They could, and would be, eventually convinced. Today’s progressives skip that step and now consider only their own culture acceptable.

So can today’s progressives be considered “progressive” when they don’t really support free speech, cultural pluralism and the open society? They cannot and voters, especially working class voters, are unlikely to consider them so.

Working-class prosperity. Speaking of the working class, surely no goal was more important to progressives back in the day than promoting prosperity for the working class and disadvantaged. Progressives believed in the future and the possibilities for dramatic improvement in human welfare, to be fully realized among the working class. That was progressives’ central goal.

No longer. Progressives now prize goals like fighting climate change, procedural justice, and protecting identity groups above prosperity. Take climate change. Progressives’ theory of the case on the economy leans heavily on the idea that a rapid move to a clean energy economy to fight climate change will—eventually—result in strong growth, a burgeoning supply of good jobs and a rising standard of living for all.

This theory reflects what is now an overriding priority among today’s progressives: action on climate change. But the working class is not especially interested in this issue and has predictably material priorities: more stuff, more growth, more opportunity, cheaper prices, more comfortable lives. They do not believe that progressives’ green economy prescription will provide that.

The question of growth is worth dwelling on. This is another funny thing that happened on the way to the 21^st century. It used to well-understood that growth, particularly productivity growth, is what drives rising living standards over time. Midcentury progressives sought to harness the benefits of growth for the working class, not to interfere with the economic engine of progress. But over time progressives developed a general suspicion that the fruits of growth are poisoned. Growth encourages the accumulation of unneeded material possessions and a consumerist lifestyle rather than a truly good life, their thinking went. And, worse, it is literally poisoning the Earth, driving the climate crisis that is hurtling the human race toward doom.

Some progressives have gone so far as to argue that our capitalist economy based on growth must be replaced with a “degrowth” economy focused on simple, healthy communities; efficient resource use; and the elimination of wasteful consumerism. If that means no or negative economic growth, so be it. Most progressives don’t quite go this far but the jaundiced view of growth—and the technological change that enables it—remains.

Indeed, today’s progressives are basically techno-pessimists. Progressives are now distinctly unenthusiastic about the potential of technology, tending to see it as a dark force to be contained rather than a force for good to be celebrated. This is very odd indeed. Almost everything people like about the modern world, including relatively high living standards, is traceable to technological advances and the knowledge embedded in those advances. From smart phones, flat-screen TVs, and the internet, to air and auto travel, to central heating and air conditioning, to the medical devices and drugs that cure disease and extend life, to electric lights and the mundane flush toilet, technology has dramatically transformed people’s lives for the better. It is difficult to argue that the average person today is not far, far better off than her counterpart in the past. As the Northwestern University economic historian Joel Mokyr puts it, “the good old days were old but not good.”

Economists debate endlessly about the exact mechanisms connecting technology to growth, and about the social and institutional conditions that must be met for technology to maximize its effect on growth, but at the end of the day the growth we have seen—and the living standards the mass public enjoys—would simply not have been possible without the massive breakthroughs and continuous improvements we have seen in the technological realm.

Given all this, progressives should logically embrace techno-optimism rather than techno-pessimism. If the goal is working class prosperity, rapid technological advance is surely something to promote enthusiastically. But progressives are now lukewarm at best about the possibilities of new and better technologies, leaving techno-optimism to the libertarian-minded denizens of Silicon Valley. As British science journalist Leigh Phillips has observed:

Once upon a time, the Left…promised more innovation, faster progress, greater abundance. One of the reasons…that the historically fringe ideology of libertarianism is today so surprisingly popular in Silicon Valley and with tech-savvy young people more broadly…is that libertarianism is the only extant ideology that so substantially promises a significantly materially better future.

There are two main reasons for progressives’ current techno-phobia. One is that progressives simply underestimate the importance of economic growth, believing incorrectly that its social objectives are achievable with slow or even no growth. That leads naturally to an underestimation of the importance of technological change, since one of its chief attributes is promoting growth.

Second, and worse, progressives now tend to regard technological change with dread rather than hope. They see technology as a force facilitating inequality rather than growth, destroying jobs rather than leading to skilled-job creation, turning consumers into corporate pawns rather than information-savvy citizens, and destroying the planet in the process. We are far, far away from the midcentury progressive attitude, which welcomed technological change as the handmaiden of abundance and increased leisure, or, for that matter, from the liberal optimism that permeated the culture of the 1950s and ‘60s with tantalizing visions of flying cars and obedient robots.

Instead, today’s progressives seem to envision a socially liberal ecotopia of dense housing powered by renewable energy. This very much includes the progressive “abundance” advocates who are having a moment in the discourse. This is abundance as today’s progressives envision it, not as working-class people desire, who would prefer a big house in the suburbs with plenty of money and lots of nice stuff and perhaps a “big-ass truck” or two in the driveway. Here as elsewhere progressives are dedicated to progress as they define it, not as normal people would and as they themselves used to.

The fact of the matter is that today’s progressives have abandoned their former goals of universal uplift based on universal values and aspirations. That’s why today’s progressives are no longer progressive except in their own eyes.

Editor’s note: This is a longer version of an essay that originally appeared in The Free Press, where Ruy is a contributing writer.