Harmonious Insurrections

Exceptionalism has long defined our understanding of the rise of progressive politics in the early twentieth-century United States. While industrialized European nations blazed the path of social democracy, in the United States, it is argued, “progressivism” merely legitimized middle-class cultural hegemony, social engineering, and the subversion of working-class power. In this era, however, social reform was a distinctly state-led phenomenon, only rarely taken up by the federal Congress. As such, by analyzing labor protest at the level of the state—in this case, Washington—a different interpretation emerges. American “progressivism” was neither exceptionally repressive nor of little interest to labor. In fact, espousing a language of progress, the common good, and the duty of the state to promote “social harmony,” Washington workers actively drew on “progressive” ideas in their struggles to tame the excesses of industrial capitalism. This ideology of “labor progressivism” became the foundation for unprecedented working-class power.

The Battle over Burke

Like Karl Marx, Edmund Burke has remained a partisan figure, even though the specific partisan context in which he wrote is long gone. To a greater degree than Marx, however, Burke's partisan identity is itself frequently contested. Burke was a hero to the conservative writer Russell Kirk, who devoted his life to undoing the triumphs of twentieth-century American progressivism. But Burke was also a hero to Woodrow Wilson—whose presidency enacted and inspired so many of the progressive reforms that Kirk wanted to overturn—and to a number of the Victorian liberals who did so much to form Wilson's political mind-set.

A critique of Marilyn Lake’s Progressive New World

This review article provides a critique of Marilyn Lake’s Progressive New World, a monograph that postulates that Australian/Australasian transpacific exchange shaped the development of American progressivism. The review outlines the major contours of her claim, notes her ambivalence concerning her overall position, and critiques her decision to not explain/examine differences in the political culture of the United States of America and Australia. The review seeks to overcome this problem by examining key differences in the cultural history of both societies and draws on the insights of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy and America. The review (a) develops a model which provides a means to understand how one society can impact another; (b) contrasts the origins of progressivism in the United States of America and Australia; (c) examines the work of the Australian scholar Michael Roe, who postulated that American progressivism was the independent factor impacting Australian developments; (d) distinguishes between two types of progressivism – racist conceit, pure and simple, and broader social reforms, which may or may not entrench racist conceit; and (e) examines various dimensions of progressivism which Marilyn Lake has used in developing her claim. JEL codes: B10, B22