I have some dim awareness that the term "Progressive" is discredited and bankrupt. Yet I use it because I was trying to get away from more narrow terms such as "communisms" and "anarchisms" which may often be regarded as discredited and bankrupt as well. I wanted broader a broader term than any particular ism or ideology because I am studying a variety of liberation frameworks which I find progressive in the sense that they have values supporting liberty and liberation. Such ideologies or liberation framework must also support the goal of liberty for all and liberation for all or I tend to think of it as somehow compromised or even flawed.
Different liberation frameworks have grown up around different forms of oppression and the actual struggles against that oppression and some form of liberation. These diverse struggles and resulting ideological formations seem to share something like rebellious ideas, an analysis of the oppression suffered and struggled against, and some history of rebellion against that oppression, some struggle against some system or social structure of oppression. So the goals of what I regard as progressive includes a real concern about equal justice for all regardless of station or legal expertise. While equality is a principle value so is a grounded understandings based on facts, real peoples history. Sometimes a liberation struggle has well defined variants of progressive\revolutionary ideology. Oppressed groups guide form their world view and guide their practice with their liberation framework and its particular ideological and historical significance. This is to be expected if we recognize that something like variation in Darwinian theory applies to an ideology which exists in this or that particular expression.
Furthermore, I don't like and reject the concepts put forward by Teddy Roosevelt, about what was progressive, nor do I applaud the broader "Progressive" sellout of the workers/farmers struggles in the early twentieth century.
There are other ways the term "progressive" is used that I don't cotton to. I don't think there is such think as evolutionary or historical progress, certainly not by any invisible hand. Scientist Venter may design and produce an improved bacterium and thus improve nature a little bit, he and we hope. We will value it as progressive or not, we will value it ourselves. Will the new life serve the people? Will the new life help society or just an elite? Is the technology a threat to liberty, liberation and/or nature herself? These are some of the standards we ought to apply to our analysis and evaluation of the value proffered to us as undiluted wonders that make us better, happier and more wonderful ourselves.
I don't believe that all new technology is for the better. Certainly military technology is the most terrible use of our human wizardry. A liberation framework that think war is the same as liberation or liberty is not progressive to me. You gotta want a just and humane peace for all peoples everywhere, even in Israel and Saudi.
Women's liberation and youth liberation are also nonnegotiable requirements for a "progressive" seal of approval from myself.
I don't think technology always makes life better, necessarily but I have to admit that there is still something heady to me that anyone in the United States can pretty much get a cell phone and have better communication than the President did in the 1950's. At any rate such communication abilities were too expensive and rare as hens teeth until recent decades.
I guess that makes for a certain kind of progress. Maybe there is something good in everyone talking but I am not sure what it is. Folks do like to talk.
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