Sheesh.  You return from the woods and find the Was Pareto a Fascist? thread has turned into a discussion of the Progressive Era progressives and eugenics and all that.

The first thing to bear in mind in that there is not much historiographic terrain as heavily contested as the Progressive Era; no other corner of American history has attracted as much historical talent.  Why is an interesting question, not answerable at SHOE-list length, but it has much to do with the remaking of the American reform tradition that occurred 1890-1920.  The (massive) literature is, like the progressives themselves, fractious (which is why Edward Filene, notoriously, wished to throw up his hands in despair).

The second thing to bear in mind is, and here we should heed Roy Weintraub’s thoughtful intervention:  the original progressives weren’t that progressive.   The original progressive economists defended human hierarchy, promoted Darwinian explanation in social science, advanced the claims of nation over individuals, and preached a moralistic conception of human action, first grounded in the social gospel idea of bringing a kingdom of heaven to Earth.  They portrayed themselves as non-partisan, objective scientists above the political fray, rather than as representatives of any special interest.

 21st century progressives, in marked contrast, emphasize racial equality, minority rights, an expansive conception of individual freedom, a wariness of biology in social science, and a bafflement that their namesakes were evangelical Protestants keen on American manifest destiny.  They also are, politically, left of center, often (if not always) partisans of the Democratic and sundry left parties.  What happened, of course, is that, the American reform tradition, called “liberalism” for most of the 20th century, has changed in the last one hundred plus years.

The American reform tradition has been protean and evolving (should historians expect anything else?), which is why it’s worth writing and reading the history, rather than projecting backwards upon the original progressives, as Alan Isaac does, an ahistorical reading of the progressives as, you know, folks like you and me who wished to harness state power to uplift the poor, which is identified with organized labor.  The actual progressives (unlike Alan) were deeply ambivalent about the poor (organized and other), regarding them simultaneously as worthy of social uplift but also as threats in need of social control.   Faced with this ambiguity, Mason Gaffney opts to read Richard T. Ely out of the progressive canon. He’s not the first to try.

To Malcolm Rutherford:  come on.   You well know that the history of Progressive Era economics literature was mostly silent on eugenics, racism and all the rest until a decade ago. The extraordinary eugenics vogue of the first three decades of the 20th century in the US (as elsewhere) was then well documented in a vast literature, but the history of economics too often proceeds oblivious to work in adjacent historical fields.   Now that the evidence is presented, and accepted, you say: well, not all of the many eugenically-minded economists and their allies were “progressive.”     (The scare quotes are yours).  Progress, I guess.

It is, of course, true that eugenics attracted conservatives like TN Carver, and socialists like Scott Nearing, as well as a Who's Who of progressive social scientists.  The set of Progressive Era social scientists publicly opposing eugenics is very small indeed. So, how to sort the sheep from the goats? It’s not easy, but Rutherford, no less than Alan Isaac, commits the Whiggish error of reading the original progressives in the 21st century sense of Left of center politically. 

 May I suggest, thirdly, that here we flag not only the standard Whig problem of reading contemporary categories into the past, but also the inadequacy of one-dimensional variables for thinking about intellectuals from a century ago?  Do we really want to arrange our figures along a putatively time-invariant Left-Right line and then posit some cut off for progressive/not progressive?  I have offered my own view of what makes for a Progressive Era progressive, and I am prepared to defend it.  But it requires more than one dimension, and it thereby includes some conservatives, such as Theodore Roosevelt, where, I think, he, and others, rightly belong.    

Tim Leonard  

     

           

 

On Jul 21, 2012, at 1:48 PM, Malcolm Rutherford wrote:


Who, among progressives, argued for "investment to be directed by a central authority"?

Malcolm Rutherford. 



Sent from my iPad

On 2012-07-21, at 10:35 AM, "Crmccann" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

True, eugenics was not confined to Progressives, but it did represent a means by which, for many, the population could better be made to "fit" into the model of the Great Community.  Also, that some such as Commons, Cooley, and Wolfe may have made allowances for those at the bottom who were capable of "social uplift," the fact remains that eugenic measures were also on the table -- social reform may have been the first choice, but if that failed, there was always Plan B!

As to Fascism, once again, the corporation per se was not the problem, only the manner of its direction.  Private ownership was allowed, but investment was to be directed by a central authority.  Given the definition as provided by Einzig, which is as good as any, the label "proto-Fascist" seems appropriate.  That it is today in bad odor should not matter.

CM



-----Original Message-----
From: Malcolm Rutherford <[log in to unmask]>
To: SHOE <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sat, Jul 21, 2012 1:03 pm
Subject: Re: [SHOE] allusion to Pareto

On 21/07/12 9:31 AM, "Malcolm Rutherford" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I would like to jump into this discussion.  Eugenics was adopted by many progressive economists, but not only by progressive economists.  One of the problems with Tim Leonard’s work on this subject is that he includes in the category of “progressive economists” several individuals who were not really “progressives.”  For example, Frank Fetter, T. N. Carver, and Irving Fisher.  All these people adopted eugenic ideas but Fetter’s economics was a subjectivist type of neoclassicism, Carver was known for his extension of J. B. Clark’s distribution theory, and Fisher’s economics was
also neoclassical.  Carver was a well known conservative in most of his political opinions and Fisher was certainly no progressive in any general sense.  Moreover Fisher was the economist who was by far the most closely and intimately involved with the eugenics movement.  There were, in addition, eugenic enthusiasts who basically denied that other social reform policies could have much effect on the problems of “social degeneracy.”  People such as Commons, Cooley, and A. B. Wolfe thought that while there was some proportion of the population who were beyond the reach of social uplift, the vast majority of those at the bottom of the ladder could indeed be lifted up through social reform.  Leonard talks about this as the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, but the point is that many of the progressives were, in the context of the time, arguing for the relative effectiveness of social reform.

Eugenics at that time seemed to be scientific, endorsed by the leading statisticians, and in line with Darwin and the evolutionary thinking of the time.  It was extremely widespread and not the property of progressives alone.

As for Fascism, one can find some amount of paternalism in the progressive writings, but on the whole they were attempting to preserve democracy while also using the state to find solutions to the problems created by industrial development.  Generally they did not take corporatist positions, but were suspicious of corporate power.  To see the progressives as proto-
Fascists I think is a serious distortion.


Malcolm Rutherford.




On 21/07/12 7:37 AM, "E. Roy Weintraub" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Which dismantles your attempts to e.g. associate
progressivism with eugenics. Eugenics was a fad.
Some progressives were susceptible. Some weren't.
(As with conservatives. E.g., Popenoe.)

Alan Isaac

One can't sensibly discuss this subject from a priori convictions like "eugenics was a fad". These are historical issues, and some historians on this list have had much to say. Bateman's glorious article on "Clearing the Ground" in the Morgan-Rutherford volume should be required reading here, as should Rutherford's new volume on Institutionalism, and Tim Leonard's articles. Progressivism was a evangelical Christian response in the second religious reawakening, attempting to construct the kingdom of God here and now. The perfection, thus perfectibility, of men and institutions was needed to remake society as the Kingdom of God, and eugenics was just as much a natural tool to perfect humankind as were the anti-trust laws for the "social control" of business. (Thus the US and UK versions of eugenics are not the same in the sense of having arisen from identical sources.) Am I the only American on this list whose high school hygiene text talked about, and had photos of, the Jukes and Kallikaks?