What is progressivism? What does reactionary mean?

[Internal_Strife]

I have two different questions here.

What is progressivism, exactly? The people who I see that get called progressives are people like Thom Hartmann, Cenk Uygar, Rachel Maddow, etc., who are liberals basically. So is the word for a synonym for liberalism or something or does it mean something else? :confused:

And what does it mean exactly to be a reactionary? Is it when someone is so far to the right that they want to go back in time to the way things used to be?

[Blake's Baby]

I have no idea who any of the people you've mentioned are, but never mind. 'Progressives', now, generally are those who want a slightly nicer capitalism, so yes 'liberal' would often be a fairly accurate synonym.

'Reactionaries' are people who oppose 'progress' (whatever progress might mean). If at any given time, 'progress' is revolution, then a 'reactionary' would be someone that wanted to stop the revolutionary process. If there's no real progress going on, but someone wants to roll back progress that has already happened, then yes, reactionaries could want to actually turn the clock back to some earlier state of affairs.

[thriller]

Current day progressives are people like Rachel Maddow and Thom Hartmann (basically liberals as you have pointed out). Progressivism (at least in the US) started in the early 1900's and competed with the social-darwin types in that capitalism can be modified to help rather than hurt. Modern day liberals have adopted the "nice" ideas of progressivism (like emphasis on education, welfare, technical schools) and have thrown away the awful policies (such as re-segregating the army, Palmer Raids, supression of speech, anti-immigration, etc).

As Blake's Baby pointed out, reactionaries are people who wants to roll back rights or policies in a non-revolutionary time. However in a revolutionary time, I think one could consider some counter-revolutionaries to not be reactionaries. Take for example Russia. Many White Guard's and counter-revolutionaries wanted the aristocracy to retake power (reactionaries) but some counter-revolutionaries wanted a industrialized capitalist nation with a bourgeois-constitutional democracy (counter-revolutionary, but not necessarily a complete roll-back).

[Red Commissar]

American progressivism typically had a higher value on the role of government in society to resolve societal ills. A greater emphasis on economic regulation and labor protection was typically instituted in some form too. This was coupled with a perception of meritocracy as the guiding principle of the bureaucracy, they were very much big on the role of the government in society. In a sense the liberal Democratic appropriation of progressive ideas was probably as close as the United States ever got to the social democratic policies that were in Europe that was at its peak from the 30s to the 60s.

Thriller mentioned some of the oddities of progressivism that went from eugenics to racism towards less 'civilized' people- this was essentially their principles taken to the extreme, as they viewed people from certain parts of the world as inherently backwards and thus bad... this continues to this day I think. Some socialist groups were involved in progressive movements but only to get some common objectives like certain laws passed for labor rights or nationalization of some sector.

"Progressive" means anyone who supports the "progress" of society towards some lofty goal, but the figures you mentioned are pretty much the very liberal types that most Americans think of when they hear the word. Generally a "progressive" would also refer to someone who is going to fight for those changes through the existing political system rather than through revolutionary or extralegal means. This has generally been the case historically with groups that were considered progressive and how they differentiated themselves from radical groups. So yeah, I might hold some "progressive" views on certain things but I probably wouldn't be classified as a political progressive due to my opinion on bourgeois political structures.

[Comrade #138672]

Current day progressives are people like Rachel Maddow and Thom Hartmann (basically liberals as you have pointed out). Progressivism (at least in the US) started in the early 1900's and competed with the social-darwin types in that capitalism can be modified to help rather than hurt. Modern day liberals have adopted the "nice" ideas of progressivism (like emphasis on education, welfare, technical schools) and have thrown away the awful policies (such as re-segregating the army, Palmer Raids, supression of speech, anti-immigration, etc).

As Blake's Baby pointed out, reactionaries are people who wants to roll back rights or policies in a non-revolutionary time. However in a revolutionary time, I think one could consider some counter-revolutionaries to not be reactionaries. Take for example Russia. Many White Guard's and counter-revolutionaries wanted the aristocracy to retake power (reactionaries) but some counter-revolutionaries wanted a industrialized capitalist nation with a bourgeois-constitutional democracy (counter-revolutionary, but not necessarily a complete roll-back).I thought they were all reactionaries.

[thriller]

I thought they were all reactionaries.

You're right. By the very definition, they'd have to be reactionaries. This is somewhat what I meant to express:

Look at the February and October revolutions. In the February Revolution, there were many people who sought to over-throw the current monarchy and move towards liberalism. Just because they didn't support socialism doesn't mean they were reactionary, they were in a feudal, aristocratic society that was mainly agricultural. They wanted to change society in a very fundamental way. In fact, as most of us know, Marx felt the bourgeois revolution, and thus many elements of liberalism (such as constitutionalism) must happen before socialist revolution. I don't think one really could be considered reactionary if they were a supporter of the February Revolution since they were supporting the destruction of feudalism with the replacement of a new class. Only after that class has gained some ground and implemented their policies and ideas, can one be considered reactionary for supporting them.

[Ostrinski]

Of course context is important. A progressive in relation to modern mainstream political discourse is one who is content with riding the existing forward trajectory of social progress however fabricated that trajectory might be or seem to be. Meaning, bourgeois society can only sustain so much social progress and so much of certain sorts. The existing state of things will only facilitate as much as progress as it can adapt to.

As communists and as Marxists no less we should understand that social progress as an infinite forward movement can only fulfill its more fundamental tasks upon smashing the contradictory relationship of capital and labor and by extension bringing labor to victory as capital exists only in relation to labor, and the smashing of the state (collective administrative organs that exist to preserve the status quo).

A reactionary is one who not only wants to roll back on social progress but recreate the status quo ante, recreate the past, recreate what existed before, often communicating through a romantic idealization of the past. In this sense the ideology of fascism is the natural conclusion of reactionary logic because it very explicitly calls for a recreation of the past glory of the nation.