The Progressive Dilemma

Many progressives are anxious and even skeptical about the emerging Obama administration. As a card-carrying devotee of the (cardless) progressive movement and a charter member of the (unchartered) counterculture, I sympathize. The late night Grant Park dreams of a new era of change now slowly give way to the day-after realities of governance.

This recently energized constituency, undoubtedly a factor in Obama's overwhelming victory in November, now has cause to wonder whether it will in fact have any voice in the new political order. The disjunction between promise and delivery appears to be another dispiriting sign of this social movement's failure to reach hearts and change minds.

The limited appeal of the larger progressive agenda, however, should not be treated as Obama's limitation. American society is little more ready for a full-blown cultural revolution now than it was forty years ago when the movement first surfaced. The counterculture dream of a post-industrial society was seriously entertained by at most 15 percent of the population then, and by scarcely more today. A brief listing of the aspirations nursed over the past decades reveals its marginal impact on contemporary political debates: automated production, the diminishing burden of meaningless toil, expanding human services, cooperation and community rather than competition, holistic education, flourishing arts and creativity, open and decentralized public institutions, a democratized family, a revitalized relation to nature, lifestyle diversity, demilitarization, and the replacement of addictive consumption with enhanced forms of self-determination and pleasure.

In fact, it was the initial appearance of this movement that propelled conservatives to electoral success in recent decades. By exploiting the reactive cultural politics of the centrist fifty percent of the population, Barry Goldwater's quixotic campaign against the realities of modern governance was transformed into Ronald Reagan's mandate to restore a cultural golden age.

Reagan had gained national visibility as an opponent of the counterculture in California, and never -- as we see now from the collapse of his 19th century notion of small government -- had a serious alternative to the organizational state. But by using culture as a wedge, he was able to bring to the permanent anti-big government minority (about a third of the electorate at best) large elements of the culturally conservative center (Reagan Democrats) for economic retrenchment as well. In the process, the counterculture was driven figuratively (and often literally) into the wilderness.

Obama understands the electoral math. Given that the population remains similarly divided today, what would progressives have him do?

The collapse of free market Republicanism into a regional, largely rural, party provides an unparalleled opportunity for political realignment. But is it realistic to imagine a turn to what noted political scientist Ronald Inglehart calls the post-materialist society so popular in Europe? The progressive dilemma is that such an agenda would breathe new life into the right, whose only hope now in its resistance to a modern political order is to pick off centrist defectors from the Obama coalition.

Obama is organizing a broad mandate to permanently establish the public will as an indispensable partner in promoting the common good. It is obvious that there are vast -- and growing -- areas where individuals can no longer effectively protect themselves on their own. Working alone, they cannot provide an economic and social safety net, equal opportunity, market regulations, economic growth, technological innovation, just management of the government bureaucracy, social justice and inclusion. Nor can they insulate themselves from job dislocations, environmental hazards, or corporate economic and political dominance.

Progressives can -- and will -- argue that these priorities represent little more than the fulfillment of the New Deal and Great Society initiatives. And they are right. But the past failure -- owing to a fundamental lag in American political culture -- to achieve a modern governmental system has made it a matter of greater urgency now, and the precondition for any more sweeping changes.

This does not mean that progressives should be complacent. Even as we criticize Obama for his pragmatism, we must continue to light the way toward more far-reaching change. We must together re-imagine and experiment with post-industrial ways of life. The day for such alternatives will come sooner once they prove viable. This faith, spurred on not by federal programs but by initiatives in local communities, businesses, families and schools, can be the contribution provided by those who march as fellow travelers rather than partisans of the Obama coalition.

Block is a professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago, and author of A Nation of Agents: The American Path to a Modern Self and Society (Harvard/Belknap, 2002).

Comments

[vjoseph]

If only other card carrying would understand like you do, we would be much better

[NordicSci]

Much agreed that progressives (and I include myself in that category) tend to have an over inflated view of our broad appeal and suffer from a good deal of naïve idealism when it comes to the real politics necessary to advance such an agenda. I would caution many progressive critics that things aren"t always how they appear and sometimes they are meant to appear so as to build political capital. One must also be careful of pushing too hard at the wrong time or in the wrong way so as not to deplete political capital and mobilize the opposition. Progressives would do well to view the progress of this yet-to-take-power administration with greater circumspect. Better yet, work to build a broader progressive movement and the policy changes will come easier.