November 12, 1962
| Naomi Wolf | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Wolf at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival. | |
| Born | Naomi Wolf November 12, 1962 |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1990s–present |
| Notable work(s) | The Beauty Myth; The End of America |
Naomi Wolf (born November 12, 1962) is an American author and political consultant. With the publication of The Beauty Myth, she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third-wave of the feminist movement. She remains an advocate of feminist causes and progressive politics, with a more recent emphasis on arguing that there has been a deterioration of democratic institutions in the United States.
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Wolf was born in San Francisco, California in 1962 of Jewish descent.[1] Her mother is Deborah Goleman, an anthropologist and the author of The Lesbian Community.[2] Her father is the Romanian-born horror scholar Leonard Wolf. She attended Lowell High School and debated in regional speech tournaments as a member of the Lowell Forensic Society. She attended Yale University, where she received in 1984 her Bachelor of Arts in English literature; she was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford from 1985 to 1987.[3]
Wolf was married to the former Clinton speechwriter David Shipley. They had two children, Rosa (b. 1995) and Joseph (b. 2000). Wolf and Shipley divorced in 2005.[4]
In 2006, Scotland's Sunday Herald carried an interview in which Wolf claimed that, while meditating, she had a visual experience in which she was a 13-year-old boy sitting next to Jesus.[5] She told the paper, "I don't claim to get where this being fits into the scheme of things but I absolutely believe in divine providence now, absolutely believe God totally cares about every single one of us intimately." Wolf has subsequently declined to discuss the matter in interviews.[6]
In the early 1990s, Wolf garnered international public notoriety as a spokesperson of third-wave feminism[7][8] as a result of the tremendous success of her first book The Beauty Myth, which became an international bestseller.[9] In the book, she argues that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with the goal of reproducing its own hegemony.
Wolf posits the idea of an "iron-maiden," an intrinsically unattainable standard that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it. Wolf criticized the fashion and beauty industries as exploitative of women, but claimed the beauty myth extended into all areas of human functioning. Wolf writes that women should have "the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically". Wolf argues that women were under assault by the "beauty myth" in five areas: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger. Ultimately, Wolf argues for a relaxation of normative standards of beauty.[10] In her introduction, Wolf positioned her argument against the concerns of second-wave feminists and offered the following analysis:
| “ | The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us... [D]uring the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty... [P]ornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.[11] | ” |
Wolf's book became an overnight bestseller, garnering intensely polarized responses not only from the public and mainstream media but among feminists themselves. Second-wave feminist Germaine Greer wrote that The Beauty Myth was "the most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch, and Gloria Steinem wrote, "The Beauty Myth is a smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it."[12] British novelist Fay Weldon called the book "essential reading for the New Woman".[13] Betty Friedan wrote in Allure magazine that "'The Beauty Myth' and the controversy it is eliciting could be a hopeful sign of a new surge of feminist consciousness."
In contrast, Camille Paglia, whose Sexual Personae was published the same year as The Beauty Myth, derided Wolf as unable to perform "historical analysis", and called her education "completely removed from reality".[14] Her comments touched off a series of contentious debates between Wolf and Paglia in the pages of The New Republic.[15][16][17]
Likewise, Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Wolf for publishing the claim that 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia. Sommers wrote that the actual number is closer to 100, a figure which others, such as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, claimed to be much too low. In the same interview, Sommers stated that Wolf had retracted the figure.[18]
In the mainstream press, The New York Times published a harshly critical assessment of Wolf's work: Caryn James lambasted the book as a "sloppily researched polemic as dismissible as a hackneyed adventure film...Even by the standards of pop-cultural feminist studies, "The Beauty Myth" is a mess." After rejecting her thesis, the review leveled even harsher appraisal of her methodology and statistics, writing, "Ms. Wolf doesn't begin to prove her claims because her logic is so lame, her evidence so easily knocked down...Her statistics are shamefully secondhand and outdated."[19] In a comparatively positive review, The Washington Post called the book "persuasive" and praised its "accumulated evidence."[20]
Promiscuities reports on and analyzes the shifting patterns of contemporary adolescent sexuality. Wolf claims that literature is rife with examples of male coming-of-age stories, covered autobiographically by D. H. Lawrence, Tobias Wolff, J. D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway, and covered misogynistically by Henry Miller, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. Wolf insists, however, that female accounts of adolescent sexuality have been systematically suppressed. She adduces cross-cultural material to demonstrate that women have, across history, been celebrated as more carnal than men. Wolf also argues that women must reclaim the legitimacy of their own sexuality by shattering the polarization of women between virgin and whore.[21]
Promiscuities received, in general, negative reviews. The New York Times published a stinging review that characterized Wolf as a "frustratingly inept messenger: a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer. She tries in vain to pass off tired observations as radical aperçus, subjective musings as generational truths, sappy suggestions as useful ideas".[22] Two days earlier, however, a different Times reviewer praised the book, writing, "Anyone--particularly anyone who, like Ms. Wolf, was born in the 1960s--will have a very hard time putting down 'Promiscuities'. Told through a series of confessions, her book is a searing and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the complex wildlife of female sexuality and desire."[23] In contrast, The Library Journal excoriated the work, writing, "Overgeneralization abounds as she attempts to apply the microcosmic events of this mostly white, middle-class, liberal milieu to a whole generation....There is a desperate defensiveness in the tone of this book which diminishes the force of her argument."[24]
Misconceptions examines the modern problems surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. Most of the book is told through the prism of Wolf's personal experience of her first pregnancy. She describes the "vacuous impassivity" of the ultrasound technician who gives her the first glimpse of her new baby. Wolf both laments and rages against the doctor who performed her C-section, and advocates a return to more personally attached practices akin to midwifery.[25] Wolf's book was panned by the New York Times, responding to the book "with a feeling of exhaustion and dissatisfaction at the pie-in-the-sky laundry list of complaints."[26]
In The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Wolf takes a historical look at the rise of Fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a Fascistic group (or government) to destroy the democratic character of a nation-state and subvert the social/political liberty previously exercised by its citizens:
The book details how this pattern was implemented in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and elsewhere, and analyzes its emergence and application in American political affairs since the September 11 attacks.[28][29]
The End of America was adapted for the screen as a documentary by filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, best known for The Devil Came on Horseback and The Trials of Darryl Hunt. It had its worldwide premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival on October 17, 2008. It has since been screened at Sheffield DocFest in the UK, as well as in limited release at New York City's IFC Center. The film became available online on October 21, 2008 at SnagFilms.com. End of America was favorably reviewed in the New York Times by Stephen Holden[30] as well as in Variety Magazine.[31]
"Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries" was written as a sequel to The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, for those who understand the threats now posed to America and want to know "What do we do?".
In the book, Ms. Wolf looks at times and places in history where citizens were faced with the closing of an open society and successfully fought back, and looks back at the ordinary people of the Founding Fathers of the United States' generation, the ones not named by history, all of whom had this "vision of liberty" and moved it forward by putting their lives on the line to make the vision real. She is an outspoken advocate for citizenship and wonders whether younger Americans have the skills and commitment to act as true citizens.[32] She wrote in 2007:
| “ | This lack of understanding about how democracy works is disturbing enough. But at a time when our system of government is under assault from an administration that ignores traditional checks and balances, engages in illegal wiretapping and writes secret laws on torture, it means that we're facing an unprecedented crisis. As the Founders knew, if citizens are ignorant of or complacent about the proper workings of a republic "of laws not of men," then any leader of any party -- or any tyrannical Congress or even a tyrannical majority -- can abuse the power they hold. But at this moment of threat to the system the Framers set in place, a third of young Americans don't really understand what they were up to.[33] | ” |
She also examines the core principles of what America is supposed to give us, because of the manipulation that is moving Americans away from those principles, through the use of fake patriotism, fake democracy and hyped crisis. Ms. Wolf then goes about outlining a "battle plan" for ordinary people to follow in order to fight back, by overcoming the confusion and becoming organized activists to bring back the rule of law as set by the United States Constitution.
Wolf's other books include Fire with Fire on politics, female empowerment and women's sexual liberation.[34] The New York Times assailed the work for its "dubious oversimplifications and highly debatable assertions," its "sloppy thinking and even sloppier prose," and its "disconcerting penchant for inflationary prose."[35] Time magazine dismissed the book as "flawed."[36]
In 2005, Wolf published The Tree House: Eccentric Wisdom from my Father on How to Live, Love, and See, which chronicled her midlife crisis attempt to reclaim her creative and poetic vision and revalue her father's love, and her father's force as an artist and a teacher. "I had turned my face away from the grace of the imagination," she wrote. Germaine Greer, who had vociferously praised The Beauty Myth, criticized the work as Oedipal, and as an acceptance of the patriarchy that Wolf had once opposed. Wolf said that she wanted to evolve from feminism and polemics, to get past the "us versus them approach."[37][38] On August 9, 2009, she published an editorial where she compared Obama's Guantánamo Promise with the hard facts created by Bush-era policies.[39]
Wolf considers herself a liberal feminist, a stance that has attracted criticism from radical feminists who argue that a patriarchal prejudice is inherent to democratic liberalism.[40]
In publishing an article in The New Republic that fiercely criticized contemporary pro-choice rhetoric, Wolf staked out a qualified pro-choice position. She argued that the movement had "developed a lexicon of dehumanization" and urged feminists to accept abortion as murder and defend the procedure within the ambiguity of this moral conundrum. She continues, "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."[41]
Wolf finishes her article by speculating that in a world of "real gender equality," passionate feminists "might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics, standing shoulder to shoulder with the doctors who work there, commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead."[41]
Pro-life commentators seized on Wolf's claims to accuse her of "failing to carry through fully in her analysis...this simply is not, or should not be, the unqualified response of our society to the destruction of innocent life."[42] Wolf has denounced Ms. Magazine for its "fanaticism" toward abortion rights.[43]
Departing from the anti-pornography emphasis of such second-wave feminist writers as Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and Catharine MacKinnon, Wolf suggested in 2003 that the ubiquity of Internet pornography tends to enervate the sexual attraction of men toward typical real women. She writes, "The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as 'porn-worthy.' Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention." Wolf advocates abstaining from porn not on moral grounds, but because "greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity."[44]
She later followed up on this theme with the assertion that Saturday-night parties with significant alcohol consumption tended toward an increase in one-night stands, which she refers to as "hooking up".[45]
In 2004, Wolf wrote an article for New York Magazine[46] accusing acclaimed literary scholar Harold Bloom of sexual harassment more than two decades earlier. Explaining why she had finally gone public with the charges, Wolf wrote, "I began, nearly a year ago, to try—privately—to start a conversation with my alma mater that would reassure me that steps had been taken in the ensuing years to ensure that unwanted sexual advances of this sort weren’t still occurring. I expected Yale to be responsive. After nine months and many calls and e-mails, I was shocked to conclude that the atmosphere of collusion that had helped to keep me quiet twenty years ago was still intact—as secretive as a Masonic lodge."
Reflecting on Yale University's sexual harassment guidelines, Wolf writes, "Sexual encroachment in an educational context or a workplace is, most seriously, a corruption of meritocracy; it is in this sense parallel to bribery. I was not traumatized personally, but my educational experience was corrupted. If we rephrase sexual transgression in school and work as a civil-rights and civil-society issue, everything becomes less emotional, less personal. If we see this as a systemic-corruption issue, then when people bring allegations, the focus will be on whether the institution has been damaged in its larger mission."[46]
Wolf's article drew intense criticism. Slate Magazine wrote, "Both her evidence and her reasoning are deeply flawed...Her gaps and imprecision give fodder to skeptics who think sexual harassment charges are often just a form of hysteria."[47] Scholar and journalist Laura Kipnis wrote, "The power actually doesn't flow in only one direction in these encounters, nor does the vulnerability...What she's resenting, ironically enough, is the fact that she has power over him."[48] The New York Observer wrote that she had "expertly microwaved an instant drama, attempting to be a simultaneously avenging and sympathetic angel," and drew attention to the welter of inconsistencies in her account.[49] New York Press wrote, "Victim feminism has fallen out of fashion—and nobody warned Naomi Wolf about the tanking stocks."[50]
In the mainstream press, Wolf attracted similar derision. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "One is left with the unpleasant suspicion that Ms. Wolf wanted to get back into the spotlight and went rummaging in her basket of anecdotes until she found a juicy one to squeeze for publicity."[51] The Washington Post called for an end to "exaggerated victimhood as embodied by Wolf."[52] Author Camille Paglia said she was "shocked" at the allegations and told The Guardian, "It really smacks of the Salem witch-hunts and all the accompanying hysteria. It really grates on me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of men and made a profession out of courting male attention."[53] Newspaper reports described Paglia as enraged over the accusations, blasting Wolf's decision to "wait for 20 years to bring all of this down on an elderly man who has health problems, to drag him into a 'he said/she said' scenario so late in the game...This is regressive. It's childish. Move on! Get on to menopause next!"[54]
Wolf has spoken favorably about the dress required of women living in Muslim countries. She observed
The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling - toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.[55]
She has written the same of women conforming to the requirements of Orthodox Judaism: "I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. [...] Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair. She must feel, I thought, so hot."[44]
Wolf was involved in Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election bid, brainstorming with the president's team about ways to reach "soccer moms" and other female voters.[56] During Al Gore's unsuccessful bid for the presidency in the 2000 election, Wolf was hired as a consultant to target female voters, reprising her role in the Clinton campaign. Wolf's ideas and participation in the Gore campaign generated considerable media coverage and criticism.[57] According to a report by Michael Duffy in Time, Wolf was paid a monthly salary of $15,000 "in exchange for advice on everything from how to win the women’s vote to shirt-and-tie combinations." This article was the original source of the widely reported claim that Wolf was responsible for Gore's "three-buttoned, earth-toned look."[56][58]
In an interview with Melinda Henneberger in the New York Times, Wolf denied ever advising Gore on his wardrobe. Wolf herself claimed she mentioned the term "alpha male" only once in passing and that "[it] was just a truism, something the pundits had been saying for months, that the vice president is in a supportive role and the President is in an initiatory role... I used those terms as shorthand in talking about the difference in their job descriptions"[59].
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This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (March 2010) |
Progressivism is a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform. Progressivism is often viewed in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies. The Progressive Movement began in cities with settlement workers and reformers who were interested in helping those facing harsh conditions at home and at work. The reformers spoke out about the need for laws regulating tenement housing and child labor. They also called for better working conditions for women.
In the United States, the term progressivism emerged in the late 19th century into the 20th century in reference to a more general response to the vast changes brought by industrialization: an alternative to both the traditional conservative response to social and economic issues and to the various more radical streams of socialism and anarchism which opposed them. Political parties, such as the Progressive Party, organized at the start of the 20th century, and progressivism made great strides under American presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson [1].
Despite being associated with left-wing politics in the United States, the term "progressive" has occasionally been used by groups not particularly left-wing. The Progressive Democrats in the Republic of Ireland took the name "progressivism" despite being considered centre-right or classical liberal. The European Progressive Democrats was a mainly heterogeneous political group in the European Union. For most of the period from 1942–2003, the largest conservative party in Canada was the Progressive Conservative Party.
Contents[hide] |
In the past few years in Australia, the term "progressive" has been used to refer to what used to be called "The Third Way." The term is popular in Australia, and is often used in place of "social liberal." The term "liberalism" has become associated with free markets and small government; in other words "classical liberalism." Progressivism, however, means in part advocating a larger role for government, but one that does not involve central planning.
The Australian Greens, the third largest political party in the country, polling around 10% with 5 senators, carries progressive ideologies, together with grassroots democracy and participatory democracy.
Western Canada at the turn of the 20th century began to receive an influx of political ideas. The Progressive Party of Canada was founded in 1920 by Thomas Crerar, a former Minister of Agriculture in the Unionist government of Robert Borden. Crerar quit the Borden cabinet in 1919 because Minister of Finance Thomas White introduced a budget that did not pay sufficient attention to farmers' issues. Crerar became the first leader of the Progressive Party, and led it to win 65 seats in the 1921 general election, placing second, ahead of the well-established Conservative Party. The Progressives also had a close alignment with the provincial United Farmers parties in several provinces. However, the Progressives were not able to hold their caucus together well, and progressive-leaning MPs and voters soon deserted the Progressives for the Liberals and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later the New Democratic Party).
Dating back to 1854, Canada's oldest political party was the Conservative Party. However following that party's disastrous showing in the 1935 election, held during the depths of the Great Depression, the party was leaderless and lacked new ideas. The party drafted Manitoba Premier John Bracken, a long-time leader of that province's progressive "United Farmers" party, who agreed to become leader of the Conservatives on condition that the party add Progressive to its name. The party adopted the name "Progressive Conservative," which it kept until its dissolution in 2003. Despite the name change most former Progressives continued to support other parties.
In India, there are a large number of political parties which exist on either a state-wide or national basis. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) are the two political alliance in India, previously composed of leftist political parties that lean towards socialism and/or communism, but since economic reforms took place in 1991 both the national parties has established themselves as right wing reformist which lean towards more capitalism. Thus, the definition of "progressivism" may be interpreted differently in India, as communism was not a branch of thought that played any major role in the original western progressive movement. Furthermore, on a social level, the leftist parties in India do not espouse policies that would be considered progressive in the West, though policies in regards to caste system, worker's rights, and women's rights are far more progressive than the non-progressive Indian parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress are currently the chief members of the NDA and UPA coalitions respectively.
The New Zealand Progressive Party led by Jim Anderton, states a particular focus on: the creation of jobs, full employment, the environment, free education and free healthcare and raising the legal age of alcohol consumption to 20.[2] The party was a junior member of the governing coalition in New Zealand from 2005 to 2008 during the second and third term of the fifth Labour Government of New Zealand. The coalition continues in opposition after the 2008 election[3].
The Progressive Green Party was formed in 1995 as an economically right-wing "blue-green" environmentalist party. After a poor showing in the 1996 election, the Party did not contest any further elections, and is now disbanded.
The Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (Prohresivna Sotsjalistychna Partiya Ukrayiny/Progressivnaya Sotsialističeskaja Partiya Ukrajiny, Прогресивна соціалістична партія України) is a political party in Ukraine, created by Nataliya Vitrenko a flamboyant former member of Socialist Party of Ukraine in 1995. Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine is a radical left-wing populist party that supports integration with Russia and Belarus as an alternative to the EU. PSPU traditionally campaigns on an anti-NATO, anti-IMF and pro-Russian platform. During the 1998 parliamentary elections the party won 4 % of the vote, and its candidate for the 1999 presidential elections, Nataliya Vitrenko, came 4th, with 10.97% of the vote in the first round.
At the legislative elections, 30 March 2002, the party established the Nataliya Vitrenko Bloc alliance, including the Partija Osvitjan Ukrajiny. It won 3.22% of the votes, little short of passing the 4% threshold needed to enter the Verkhovna Rada. PSPU was a vocal opponent of President Leonid Kuchma but supported Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainian prime minister since 2002, during the 2004 elections. After the Orange Revolution of 2004, the party joined the opposition to new president Viktor Yushchenko in a coalition with the "Derzhava" (State) party led by former Ukrainian prosecutor Gennady Vasilyev.
In the March 2006 parliamentary elections, the party again failed to gain any seats in Parliament, participating as People's Opposition Bloc of Natalia Vitrenko. At the 2007 parliamentary elections the party failed once more to enter the parliament.
In the United States there have been several periods where progressive political parties have developed. The first of these was around the turn of the 20th century. This period notably included the emergence of the Progressive Party, founded in 1912 by President Theodore Roosevelt. This progressive party was the most successful third party in modern American history. The Progressive Party founded in 1924 and the Progressive Party founded in 1948 were less successful than the 1912 version. There are also two notable state progressive parties: the Wisconsin Progressive Party and the Vermont Progressive Party. The latter is still in operation and currently has several high ranking positions in state government.
Some think-tanks such as the CEE Council have argued that early 20th century progressive US academics such as Reverend James Augustin Brown Scherer and Rabbi Judah Magnes were contrarian thinkers who foresaw the eventual decline of European colonialism in the Middle-East and Asia and the correlated rise of America- notably through the development of US institutions of higher learning abroad. [4]
Today, most progressive politicians in the United States associate with the Democratic Party or the Green Party US. In the US Congress there exists the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is often in opposition to the more conservative Democrats, who form the Blue Dogs caucus. Some of the more notable progressive members of Congress have included Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Maxine Waters, John Lewis, and Paul Wellstone.
The Labour Party refers to itself as a progressive political party, and claims to be the sole progressive party in the UK. The current coalition between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems also claims to be progressive.
The Progressive Party was the name of a defunct municipal political organisation that operated in Scottish local government in the 20th century based around the Unionist Party, Scottish Liberals and Independents.
National political parties were rarely active in local politics but the rise of Labour Party led to a process of party politicisation of local government. At first Labour were opposed by the Progressives before other national political parties entered local government elections on a significant scale.
The Progressives formed as a loose alliance of unofficial Liberals, Unionists and independents. Apart from a distinct focus on their urban localities the other essence of the Progressive groupings was opposition to Labour policies and control, plus a desire to avoid splitting the anti-Labour vote.
Progressive groupings formed in Edinburgh in 1928 and Glasgow in 1936 before spreading to other cities and towns. Their members were mainly drawn from small businessmen opposed to the introduction of what they saw as municipal socialism and Labour control. They dominated Scottish local politics for almost 50 years and as late as 1972 Edinburgh council was made up of 21 Progressives, 9 Conservatives, 33 Labour and 5 Liberals.
The term "progressive" is today often used in place of "liberal." Although the two are related in some ways, they are separate and distinct political ideologies. According to John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress, "Progressivism is an orientation towards politics. It's not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept... that accepts the world as dynamic." Progressives see progressivism as an attitude towards the world of politics that is broader than conservatism vs. liberalism, and as an attempt to break free from what they consider to be a false and divisive dichotomy.[5][6]
Cultural Liberalism is ultimately founded on the belief that the major purpose of the government is to protect rights. Liberals are often called "left-wing", as opposed to "right-wing" conservatives. The progressive school, as a unique branch of contemporary political thought, tends to advocate certain center-left or left-wing views that may conflict with mainstream liberal views, despite the fact that modern liberalism and progressivism may still both support many of the same policies (such as the concept of war as a general last resort).
American progressives tend to support international economics: they advocate progressive taxation and oppose the growing influence of corporations. Progressives are in agreement on an international scale with left-liberalism in that they support organized labor and trade unions, they usually wish to introduce a living wage, and they often support the creation of a universal health care system. Yet progressives tend to be more concerned with environmentalism than mainstream liberals[citation needed] In the United States, liberals and progressives are often conflated, and in general are the primary voters of the Democratic Party which has a "large tent" policy, combining similar if not congruent ideologies into large voting blocs. Many progressives also support the Green Party or local parties such as the Vermont Progressive Party. In Canada, liberals usually support the national Liberal Party while progressives usually support the New Democratic Party, which traditionally has had provincial electorial success in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.
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This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (March 2010) |
Progressivism is a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform. Progressivism is often viewed in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies. The Progressive Movement began in cities with settlement workers and reformers who were interested in helping those facing harsh conditions at home and at work. The reformers spoke out about the need for laws regulating tenement housing and child labor. They also called for better working conditions for women.
In the United States, the term progressivism emerged in the late 19th century into the 20th century in reference to a more general response to the vast changes brought by industrialization: an alternative to both the traditional conservative response to social and economic issues and to the various more radical streams of socialism and anarchism which opposed them. Political parties, such as the Progressive Party, organized at the start of the 20th century, and progressivism made great strides under American presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson [1].
Despite being associated with left-wing politics in the United States, the term "progressive" has occasionally been used by groups not particularly left-wing. The Progressive Democrats in the Republic of Ireland took the name "progressivism" despite being considered centre-right or classical liberal. The European Progressive Democrats was a mainly heterogeneous political group in the European Union. For most of the period from 1942–2003, the largest conservative party in Canada was the Progressive Conservative Party.
Contents[hide] |
In the past few years in Australia, the term "progressive" has been used to refer to what used to be called "The Third Way." The term is popular in Australia, and is often used in place of "social liberal." The term "liberalism" has become associated with free markets and small government; in other words "classical liberalism." Progressivism, however, means in part advocating a larger role for government, but one that does not involve central planning.
The Australian Greens, the third largest political party in the country, polling around 10% with 5 senators, carries progressive ideologies, together with grassroots democracy and participatory democracy.
Western Canada at the turn of the 20th century began to receive an influx of political ideas. The Progressive Party of Canada was founded in 1920 by Thomas Crerar, a former Minister of Agriculture in the Unionist government of Robert Borden. Crerar quit the Borden cabinet in 1919 because Minister of Finance Thomas White introduced a budget that did not pay sufficient attention to farmers' issues. Crerar became the first leader of the Progressive Party, and led it to win 65 seats in the 1921 general election, placing second, ahead of the well-established Conservative Party. The Progressives also had a close alignment with the provincial United Farmers parties in several provinces. However, the Progressives were not able to hold their caucus together well, and progressive-leaning MPs and voters soon deserted the Progressives for the Liberals and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later the New Democratic Party).
Dating back to 1854, Canada's oldest political party was the Conservative Party. However following that party's disastrous showing in the 1935 election, held during the depths of the Great Depression, the party was leaderless and lacked new ideas. The party drafted Manitoba Premier John Bracken, a long-time leader of that province's progressive "United Farmers" party, who agreed to become leader of the Conservatives on condition that the party add Progressive to its name. The party adopted the name "Progressive Conservative," which it kept until its dissolution in 2003. Despite the name change most former Progressives continued to support other parties.
In India, there are a large number of political parties which exist on either a state-wide or national basis. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) are the two political alliance in India, previously composed of leftist political parties that lean towards socialism and/or communism, but since economic reforms took place in 1991 both the national parties has established themselves as right wing reformist which lean towards more capitalism. Thus, the definition of "progressivism" may be interpreted differently in India, as communism was not a branch of thought that played any major role in the original western progressive movement. Furthermore, on a social level, the leftist parties in India do not espouse policies that would be considered progressive in the West, though policies in regards to caste system, worker's rights, and women's rights are far more progressive than the non-progressive Indian parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress are currently the chief members of the NDA and UPA coalitions respectively.
The New Zealand Progressive Party led by Jim Anderton, states a particular focus on: the creation of jobs, full employment, the environment, free education and free healthcare and raising the legal age of alcohol consumption to 20.[2] The party was a junior member of the governing coalition in New Zealand from 2005 to 2008 during the second and third term of the fifth Labour Government of New Zealand. The coalition continues in opposition after the 2008 election[3].
The Progressive Green Party was formed in 1995 as an economically right-wing "blue-green" environmentalist party. After a poor showing in the 1996 election, the Party did not contest any further elections, and is now disbanded.
The Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (Prohresivna Sotsjalistychna Partiya Ukrayiny/Progressivnaya Sotsialističeskaja Partiya Ukrajiny, Прогресивна соціалістична партія України) is a political party in Ukraine, created by Nataliya Vitrenko a flamboyant former member of Socialist Party of Ukraine in 1995. Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine is a radical left-wing populist party that supports integration with Russia and Belarus as an alternative to the EU. PSPU traditionally campaigns on an anti-NATO, anti-IMF and pro-Russian platform. During the 1998 parliamentary elections the party won 4 % of the vote, and its candidate for the 1999 presidential elections, Nataliya Vitrenko, came 4th, with 10.97% of the vote in the first round.
At the legislative elections, 30 March 2002, the party established the Nataliya Vitrenko Bloc alliance, including the Partija Osvitjan Ukrajiny. It won 3.22% of the votes, little short of passing the 4% threshold needed to enter the Verkhovna Rada. PSPU was a vocal opponent of President Leonid Kuchma but supported Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainian prime minister since 2002, during the 2004 elections. After the Orange Revolution of 2004, the party joined the opposition to new president Viktor Yushchenko in a coalition with the "Derzhava" (State) party led by former Ukrainian prosecutor Gennady Vasilyev.
In the March 2006 parliamentary elections, the party again failed to gain any seats in Parliament, participating as People's Opposition Bloc of Natalia Vitrenko. At the 2007 parliamentary elections the party failed once more to enter the parliament.
In the United States there have been several periods where progressive political parties have developed. The first of these was around the turn of the 20th century. This period notably included the emergence of the Progressive Party, founded in 1912 by President Theodore Roosevelt. This progressive party was the most successful third party in modern American history. The Progressive Party founded in 1924 and the Progressive Party founded in 1948 were less successful than the 1912 version. There are also two notable state progressive parties: the Wisconsin Progressive Party and the Vermont Progressive Party. The latter is still in operation and currently has several high ranking positions in state government.
Some think-tanks such as the CEE Council have argued that early 20th century progressive US academics such as Reverend James Augustin Brown Scherer and Rabbi Judah Magnes were contrarian thinkers who foresaw the eventual decline of European colonialism in the Middle-East and Asia and the correlated rise of America- notably through the development of US institutions of higher learning abroad. [4]
Today, most progressive politicians in the United States associate with the Democratic Party or the Green Party US. In the US Congress there exists the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is often in opposition to the more conservative Democrats, who form the Blue Dogs caucus. Some of the more notable progressive members of Congress have included Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Maxine Waters, John Lewis, and Paul Wellstone.
The Labour Party refers to itself as a progressive political party, and claims to be the sole progressive party in the UK. The current coalition between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems also claims to be progressive.
The Progressive Party was the name of a defunct municipal political organisation that operated in Scottish local government in the 20th century based around the Unionist Party, Scottish Liberals and Independents.
National political parties were rarely active in local politics but the rise of Labour Party led to a process of party politicisation of local government. At first Labour were opposed by the Progressives before other national political parties entered local government elections on a significant scale.
The Progressives formed as a loose alliance of unofficial Liberals, Unionists and independents. Apart from a distinct focus on their urban localities the other essence of the Progressive groupings was opposition to Labour policies and control, plus a desire to avoid splitting the anti-Labour vote.
Progressive groupings formed in Edinburgh in 1928 and Glasgow in 1936 before spreading to other cities and towns. Their members were mainly drawn from small businessmen opposed to the introduction of what they saw as municipal socialism and Labour control. They dominated Scottish local politics for almost 50 years and as late as 1972 Edinburgh council was made up of 21 Progressives, 9 Conservatives, 33 Labour and 5 Liberals.
The term "progressive" is today often used in place of "liberal." Although the two are related in some ways, they are separate and distinct political ideologies. According to John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress, "Progressivism is an orientation towards politics. It's not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept... that accepts the world as dynamic." Progressives see progressivism as an attitude towards the world of politics that is broader than conservatism vs. liberalism, and as an attempt to break free from what they consider to be a false and divisive dichotomy.[5][6]
Cultural Liberalism is ultimately founded on the belief that the major purpose of the government is to protect rights. Liberals are often called "left-wing", as opposed to "right-wing" conservatives. The progressive school, as a unique branch of contemporary political thought, tends to advocate certain center-left or left-wing views that may conflict with mainstream liberal views, despite the fact that modern liberalism and progressivism may still both support many of the same policies (such as the concept of war as a general last resort).
American progressives tend to support international economics: they advocate progressive taxation and oppose the growing influence of corporations. Progressives are in agreement on an international scale with left-liberalism in that they support organized labor and trade unions, they usually wish to introduce a living wage, and they often support the creation of a universal health care system. Yet progressives tend to be more concerned with environmentalism than mainstream liberals[citation needed] In the United States, liberals and progressives are often conflated, and in general are the primary voters of the Democratic Party which has a "large tent" policy, combining similar if not congruent ideologies into large voting blocs. Many progressives also support the Green Party or local parties such as the Vermont Progressive Party. In Canada, liberals usually support the national Liberal Party while progressives usually support the New Democratic Party, which traditionally has had provincial electorial success in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.