What to do with Progressivism?

Anthropocene meets the Gilded Age

Apr 11, 2024

For those of you, dear readers, who are looking for posts on Anthropocene issues like climate, energy, saving biodiversity, land and water use, megatrends of population, economic growth, and so on — I hate to disappoint you, as I keep diving into the history (and possible futures) of political thought. Analysis of issues, both scientific and social, is necessary. Weighing the possibilities of technological solutions and wild sci-fi futures is worth the imaginative effort, even financial investment.

At the heart of the dilemma of the Anthropocene, though, is anthropology. Who are these humans who have taken over the planet? What self-understandings have driven us to arrive at our present conundrums? What present and future anthropologies, philosophical, religious, economic, cultural, political, are on offer?

When I think of Anthropocene politics, it’s not a problem of realpolitik, how to gain political power to control carbon emitters and restore some chance of adhering to the Paris Accord and 1.5 degrees.

It’s not about defeating Trump and authoritarian populism to give left Green politics a chance to defeat climate deniers and the propaganda and deep pockets of Big Oil.

It’s more philosophical than that. It has to do with who are these humans who have taken over? What have we learned in the modern era, now getting rather long in the tooth, as the Anthropocene has definitively taken off? Or, if you prefer, what have we learned going back to the beginnings of agriculture and the rise of permanent settlements, cities, and “civilizations”? (Cue James C. Scott and the Davids, Wengrow and Graeber.) What perennial wisdoms exist concerning human passions and interests, or what economic and political arrangements are there to foster freedom, growth, justice? What lessons are there from human ecology, and the cultural and environmental impacts of world exploration, globalization, and the ever-expanding Human Web?

Was the Enlightenment right about anything: scientific, political, moral, epistemological?1 It started out as a reaction to terrible Wars of Religion in Europe, together with the scientific breakthroughs of Bacon, Newton, and others — who used the power of Reason to combat dead scholastic authority (Aristotelian) that eschewed empirical investigation. No more religious violence and manipulating superstitious people for corrupt clerical and ecclesiastical ends. No more drowning or burning of witches and heretics, Inquisition and torture, shaming and guilting to extract money and silence criticism. Reason! Science! Freedom of thought!

So the Enlightenment story goes…

(One doesn’t have to despise all religion, whether Protestant or Catholic, to admit widespread abuse and misanthropy.)

It’s no wonder an Enlightened human ambition for Progress emerged. Arguably, it has succeeded in many respects!

But considerable cost.

That’s part of the Anthropocene story…

If early American political thought around the time of the founding of the United States was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment (or more than one Enlightenment, plus a countervailing reaction — as

Seth David Radwell

argues in American Schism), nevertheless a major inflection point occurred after the Civil War.

This brief survey captures the new Progressive Era well.

By 1890, huge manufacturing corporations employing a succession of revolutionary new machines and processes had begun to create the modern American economy of mass production and consumption. Millions of farm workers had left the countryside for the cities to labor for the new industrial giants, and vast quantities of material wealth were being produced by American businesses and consumed by ordinary people across the country. With these rapid economic changes came an array of new conditions and problems that alarmed and confused Americans of the time: unprecedented disparities in the distribution of newly created wealth; the transformation of previously independent, entrepreneurial artisans and merchants into wage-earning workers in large, hierarchical organizations; a growing industrial proletariat increasingly composed of immigrants crowded into urban slums; and the disproportionate, often corrupting influence of wealthy industrialists in the political system. The political reaction provoked by these economic and social changes in the years between 1890 and the First World War defines the Progressive Era, a quarter century of reform in which Americans attempted to adjust their traditional system of political economy to the new realities of the industrial age.

Source: Progressive Era: A Libertarianism.org Guide

→ The essay is five dense paragraphs and well worth a full read.

The Progressive Era, prompted by the Gilded Age, didn’t last for a mere quarter century of reform, however. It’s still with us today and to a large extent defines modern politics, especially the ambitions of progressive big government. The Biden administration, and Obama’s before him, are classic examples of Progressivism at work.2

What if the Anthropocene is a new Gilded Age? What if Climate Leviathan desires to launch a different sort of Progressive Era?

Pre-Enlightenment authority and corruption → Enlightenment
Gilded Age → Progressive Era
Anthropocene → ??

A new more “interesting” and diverse conservativism — or even a new progressive right (!?) — offer potent criticisms of the by now Old Left. For the sake of an inevitable post-Trump and post-Biden future, four years from now, it’s important to listen and push the debate forward.