![]() Constitution-“We the people” working together to build a more perfect union, promote the general welfare, and expand prosperity to all citizens. Progressives sought above all to give real meaning to the promise of the Preamble of the U.S. Progressives challenged excessive individualism in social thought and politics, promoted an alternative to laissez-faire economics, and replaced constitutional formalism with a more responsive legal order that expanded American democracy and superseded the economic status quo with a stronger national framework of regulations and social reforms. Progressives argued that rigid adherence to past versions of limited government had to be discarded in order to promote genuine liberty and opportunity for people at a time of concentrated economic power. Today it signifies liberation from material insecurity and from the coercions and repressions that prevent multitudes from the participation in the vast cultural resources that are at hand. A century later it meant release of industrialists from inherited legal customs that hampered the rise of new forces of production. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries it meant liberation from despotic dynastic rule. At one time, liberty signified liberation from chattel slavery at another time, release of a class from serfdom. Liberty in the concrete signifies release from the impact of particular oppressive forces emancipation from something once taken as a normal part of human life but now experienced as bondage. Writing at the height of the New Deal reform era, John Dewey explained the progressive view of liberty as a continuation of historic movements for human liberation: Changed conditions demanded a changed defense of human liberty. Progressives believed that formal legal freedom alone-the negative protections against government intrusions on personal liberty-were not enough to provide the effective freedom necessary for citizens to fulfill their human potential in an age of rising inequality, paltry wages, and labor abuses. The original progressives argued that changes in the economy’s organization required a more complete understanding of human freedom, equality, and opportunity that Jefferson championed so persuasively. Two, economic reforms structured to counterbalance the excessive power of business and to fight inequality measures such as the graduated income and inheritance taxes, the right to organize and other labor protections, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age and disability provisions, food and drug safety laws, and conservation measuresĪs a philosophical tradition, progressivism in its most complete form developed as a “new liberalism” for a new century-updating the American liberal tradition from its Jeffersonian, small-government, republican roots best suited for the agrarian economy of the nation’s founding era to a more democratic and modern liberalism capable of checking rising corporate power.One, political reforms crafted to break up the power of privileged interests, such as expanded suffrage, direct primaries, direct election of senators, and the initiative and referendum process.The original Progressive Era is known primarily for two major developments in American politics: economy-frequent economic depressions, political corruption, rising poverty, low wages, poor working conditions, tenement living, child labor, lack of collective bargaining power, unsafe consumer products, and the misuse of natural resources. Progressivism as an intellectual movement emerged between 18 as a response to the multitude of problems associated with the industrialization of the U.S. Progressivism at its core is grounded in the idea of progress-moving beyond the status quo to more equal and just social conditions consistent with original American democratic principles such as freedom, equality, and the common good. ![]() ![]() ![]() Download to mobile devices and e-readers from ScribdĪbout the Progressive Tradition Series What is progressivism?
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