Progressive Agendas in America

The political history of America shows that progressive agendas are born out and passed in periods of crisis.  Roosevelt’s progressive agenda was the response to the economic devastation the Great Depression had wreaked on Americans.  Johnson’s Great Society was the response to the accumulated racial injustices and the abuses of the voting rights of Black Americans.  Today’s progressive agenda comes at a time when despite enormous wealth creation the country fails to provide many of its citizens acceptable living standards or the opportunities to gain control of their lives and enjoy basic economic security and quality of life.    

Past progressive agendas aiming at economic security and social justice have been met with loud denouncements from conservative or rich politicians and economic elites.  Roosevelt was accused of introducing socialism, if not communism, and wealthy Democrats and Republicans ganged up against him.  The powerful Morgans were so incensed by FDR’s programs that they would be happy, if they could, to set up the Morgan financial empire anywhere else but the US.*  But Roosevelt, like Johnson after him, was tough enough and willing to give back as much and more as he took from his detractors.  In the end, both prevailed over their opponents.

Interestingly, neither FDR’s New Deal or Johnson’s Great Society had to include the progressive initiatives, like Social Security and Medicare, respectively.  The pressing issue for FDR was to extricate the US from the thralls of a declining economy and high unemployment.  He could have done that by merely relying on monetary and fiscal policies to boost purchasing power and energize the business sector.  Johnson also created Medicare and Medicaid while the US economy was experiencing robust economic performance.  Nonetheless, both FDR and Johnson realized that saving democracy (in FDR’s case) and creating a more equitable and healthier society (in Johnson’s case) justified institutions and government programs that provided essential benefits that were beyond the reach of many individual citizens.  This is actually what we find at the core of progressivism: civic and state initiatives that lift up the individual in order to create a stronger whole.

So, one point to make is that progressive agendas have been met with opposition from counter interests that reside with both parties and the business elites of the country.  Therefore, we should not be surprised by the opposition we now see against the progressive agenda in the Build Back Better plan despite the popularity of its components.  Notwithstanding this popularity, there is though something the present debate lacks but both FDR and Johnson had going for them.  What they had was an intellectual or moral voice that would make the case for their progressive agendas. 

Roosevelt’s intellectual mentor and influencer (to use a modern term) was none other than John Maynard Keynes, arguably the greatest economist of the last century.  Keynes had come to see economics as the means to secure the good life for everybody.  And the power to do that rest in the hands of the government.  Johnson’s powerful moral voice was that of Martin Luther King, Jr.   Although King’s message was for racial harmony, the moral force it projected was so inspiring as to extend into a call against poverty and for improving the well-being of the common man, Black and White.

Despite the promises of the Great Society, the subsequent direction of the economy in America has been toward a “winner takes all” mentality that leaves too many people on the wayside of economic progress and security.  This in turn has had significant and dire consequences for individual lives and the social fabric of the country.  Thus, today’s imperative for a progressive agenda gathers force from the present state of inequity across the educated and less educated, the wealthy and poor, the urban and rural Americans.  The unprecedent concentration of wealth and the differences in incomes are not mere statistics.  They signify entirely different levels in the quality of life between the well-to-do and those (a sizable portion of the population) that find themselves at the lower rungs of the ladder. 

The problem is not that some make too much money.  The real problem is that a lot of people make too little.  Worse even is the uneven distribution of opportunities.  Supporting an earlier start in education, or a more affordable access to it, or having a more secured and healthier childhood is not granting privileges but making sensible investments in the well-being of the entire country.  Likewise, enabling mothers to go to work thanks to affordable child care is a boon to the economy.  The scourge of opioids, the suicides of despair, poor health indicators, high mortality rates, and child poverty, all together, paint the picture of a society that fails to live up to the expectations justified by its unprecedent national wealth.

Is there a moral dimension in how we appraise a progressive agenda?  An austere, conservative view advocates that individuals compelled to make choices under financial constraints become better citizens.  The progressive view is that freedom from having to make choices among essential goods due to financial constraints is the superior organizing principle a society ought to adopt.  Roosevelt had called this “freedom from want.”  What about a political dimension?  When a system does not produce equitable outcomes, it risks losing its legitimacy.  Between the two world wars, Keynes advocated policies that would protect the legitimacy of democracy and capitalism.  To his dismay, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic went the opposite way and the result was the rise of populism and authoritarian strongmen, like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. 

Successful economies without progressive institutions and standards betray their mission.  When private enterprise, society, and the state working together reach a point where scarcity is no longer justified by aggregate wealth, all citizens should enjoy a decent living standard.  Keynes, the visionary of a good life for all, had envisioned the decent life to extend from meeting basic human needs to enabling the common citizen to partake of culture and the arts.

Setting such a progressive vision and priorities is possible only in societies in which economic performance is the handmaid of society, not the other way around.

* Parts of this post drew information from The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes of Zachary Carter.