The Bellamy salute....
Another thing the left wants you all to forget.
Ping.............
John Dewey
Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.
- P. J. O’Rourke
Not a philosopher in the strict sense, but Charles Beard contributed his share of mischief.
I say it is Saul Alinsky.
Croly was probably the chief political theorist among the progressives, but much of what was done grew out of practical politics. In other words, Croly described what was happening as well as inspired what would happen.
Herbert Croly provided what the politicians were looking for, just as John Dewey provided a philosophy that the intellectuals could use if they wished, but progressivism didn't depend on any one philosopher in the way that Marxism did, and one could be progressive without having read Dewey or Croly.
The country had seen years of socialist and populist thought and activism, and those who led the progressive movement were already inclined towards social reform whether through Bellamy or George or William Jennings Bryan or Darwin or Hegel or Marx or Lester Ward or Veblen or Ruskin or the Social Gospel movement.
I should qualify-the foundational thinker for what “progressivism” exists as today.
And I take issue with the label. They are liberals and leftists. I am sick and tired of their appropriation of language.
What about Robert La Follette, the actual creator of the Progressive Party?
The Bellamy salute....
Another thing the left wants you all to forget.
Doubtless the SJWs think they just invented it.
It was American, Charles Davenport, who expanded on Galton's scientific theories to make it a popular concept world wide. Margaret Sanger borrowed from these ideas to make them the basis of Planned Parenthood. These theories inspired the American Progressives working for an Utopian world through the might of Big Government. When life is subordinated to others, the ideology of fascism is born. When Democrats in America adopted the eugenics ideology to apply to American Indians and Blacks, they became fascists and what I call DemonRATS. The eugenics ideology had great influence on another monster of history: Adolf Hitler.
John Dewey.
D’Sousza and some others have a fixation on Wilson. Dewey was far more influential as a philosopher.
The more you know, the more you find out you don't know.
Giovanni Gentile was “Mussolini’s Philosopher” of Fascism.
FDR handed out Gentile’s book to his cabinet members.
Had been swimming in the public pools(s) in Genesee Valley Park (they had separate pools for boys and for girls) and had bought a Sugar Daddy before getting on the bus. The driver noticed I had a whole candy unit and the kid in the next aisle had none so he came back, brought out a pen knife and cut my Sugar Daddy in half because "it wasn't right for someone to have so much while someone else had nothing. For all he knew, the other kid's old man might have been making multiples of what my Dad was but it didn't matter.
Mentioned it to my Dad and he asked some questions and mused on it for a while. I was 6 or 7 and he didn't go over in discussing it but a few days later he told me that I wouldn't have anyone "sharing" my candy on the bus w/o my permission anymore.
One important influence who's long been forgotten or ignored was Lester Ward. The "reform Darwinist" Ward was an early supporter of the welfare state who influenced Croly and others.
Edward A. Ross was another forgotten progressive thinker. If he's remembered at all, it's for some of his views on race and eugenics which would now be regarded as politically incorrect.
There are several people identified that are entirely correct namely, Herbert Croly, John Dewey and Karl Marx. Including President Woodrow Wilson in the list is also a good idea. However there is one other individual that should be included.
His name is Frederick Engels. While being no expert, I remembered something of how he impacted the early thinking of progressive social change. I’ve taken the liberty to include some snippets about him and his imput from: “Engels, Modernity, and Classical Social Theory” By Douglas Kellner. The entire article can be found at: Homepage: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html
Curriculum Vitae: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/DK97CV.htm if anyone is interested. What follows are some flavor quotes from the article.
“Frederick Engels and Karl Marx were among the first to develop systematic perspectives on modern societies and to produce a critical discourse on modernity, thus inaugurating the problematic of modern social theory. In most of the narratives of classical social theory, Marx alone is usually cited as one of the major founders of the problematic, while Engels is neglected. It is Marx who is usually credited as one of the first to develop a theory of modernity and a critical social theory that links the rise of modern societies with the emergence of capitalism. Yet Engels preceded Marx in focusing attention on the differences between modern and premodern society, and then on the constitutive role of capitalism in producing a new modern world. As I show in this study, from the late 1830s into the 1840s, Engels played a leading role in theorizing the distinctive features of the modern world, and he inspired Marx to see the importance of capitalism in constructing a distinctively new modern society.”
“Thus, as early as 1839, Engels deplores the horrific working and living conditions of the working class and depicts it as a reprehensible effect of modern industrial development. In the latter part of his “Letters,” and in many other newspaper articles written over the next few years, Engels describes in great detail “modern” literature, culture, and thought of the present, equating “modern” cultural tendencies with Enlightenment criticism and the contemporary literature of the “Young Germany” movement, which he champions against reactionary Pietistic thought and backwards German literature. In the voluminous newspapers articles and sketches of the early Engels, he reveals himself to be, like Marx, a great partisan of modernity, an avatar of modern ideas, as well as a sharp critic of the impact of modern conditions on the working class (see Engels in CW2).”
“’But as long as you continue to produce in the present unconscious, thoughtless manner, at the mercy of chance—for just so long trade crises will remain; and each successive crisis is bound to become more universal and therefore worse than the preceding one; is bound to impoverish a larger body of small capitalists, and to augment in increasing proportion the numbers of the class who live by labour alone, thus considerably enlarging the mass of labour to be employed (the major problem of our economists) and finally causing a social revolution such as has never been dreamt of in the philosophy of the
economists’(CW3, 434).”