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Book Review
| Shelton Stromquist, Re-inventing 'The People': The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2006. pp. x + 289. US $22.00 paper.
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| This is a new study of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century US Progressive movement. Stromquist draws on recent research in the field to reassert 'the movement dimension of progressivism' and to advance his 'growing conviction that the "class problem" was critical to the way Progressive reformers looked at the world'. This is, he states, 'fundamentally a work of synthesis that builds in its particulars on the scholarship of others'. Stromquist also stresses the contemporary relevance of his study by arguing that the world-view of today's US liberals was first enunciated by the Progressives and that, like the Progressives, these liberals have not understood the importance of class within capitalist social dynamics: 'Liberal reform in this century sprang from the agenda and world view of the Progressives. And like their Progressive forebears, liberals have largely continued to deny the relevance of class to reform'. However, while this argument is quite convincing, Stromquist has not actually demonstrated – or historicised – these links between the Progressive movement and modern liberalism. In this sense the title is a little misleading: the book has relevance to, but is not really also a study of, 'the origins of modern [US] liberalism'. |
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Understandably, given the size of the existing literature on his subject, Stromquist eschews a straight linear narrative in favour of overlapping, though still roughly chronological, chapters, on i) the birth of the Progressive movement out of an increasing middle-class concern with industrial and social unrest, poverty and inequality; ii) the formation of the Progressive movement, 'out of a republican tradition broadly conceived and recast in a crucible of class conflict ... emphasising ideals of social harmony, the amelioration of class divisions and a reaffirmation of national purpose', and, on a 'more concrete level ... out of the overlapping ties between segments of an emerging reform community, the connecting webs of which [between conferences, settlement houses and new journals] grew denser as the 1890s unfolded'; iii) the 'quest' of the Progressives 'to purify the political process and limit the corrupting influence of corporate franchise-holders and the political bosses who fed off them'; iv) the formation of the Progressive Party, in 1912, under Theodore Roosevelt; v) the particular role women played in the movement, centred on campaigns for suffrage, temperance and settlement house reform; vi) the movement's manifestly inadequate attempts to accommodate the particular needs and desires of African Americans and new immigrants, 'whom they generally regarded as ill prepared for full citizenship'; and finally vii) on divisions within the Progressive movement between those committed to class reconciliation and those, such as Frank Walsh, who chaired the US Commission on Industrial Relations (USCIR) between 1913 and 1915, advocating a more class-conscious support for labour. In his conclusion Stromquist asks what happened to the Progressive movement and in answer reiterates his central argument that 'the persistence of class conflict in America challenged the defining feature of the Progressive movement – its promise of social harmony through democratic renewal'. He also elaborates a little on the proposition, not heard since the introduction, that the major intellectual and political problems of contemporary liberals ensue from their failure to learn from the experience of their Progressive forebears, whose inability to grasp the endemic nature of class conflict within capitalist society finally rendered their reform programs ineffective. |
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As suggested, Stromquist has not really substantiated this final contention, but it is nonetheless clear that the progressive-minded have much to learn from the history of the Progressive movement and from this book. On one level, this is a sad story, peopled by tireless, intelligent, caring souls, like Jane Addams and John Dewey, who wanted to 'save' the people from the exploitative practices of robber-baron industrialists without inducing or condoning social conflict, but who were, in the end, no more able to achieve social harmony than to free themselves from their paternalistic attitudes toward the working class and their lingering respect for the plutocracy. Committed to an ideal of political neutrality, linked, perhaps, to their own 'middle' position in the social structure, these good-hearted people could not see that knowledge is always linked to power and culture. On another level, however, this is a heroic and inspiring story; firstly because these Progressive reformers were able to advance an enduring (though currently threatened) understanding of the social and systemic bases of individual poverty and disadvantage, and secondly because the most enlightened members of this movement did identify the inherent injustice of capitalist society, and so also the limitations of the Progressive movement itself. Like W.E.B. Du Bois, they found a means of living within, while not accepting, this reality:
Without bitterness (but also without lies), without useless recrimination (but also without cowardly acquiescence), without unnecessary heartache (but with no self-deception), I will walk my way, with uplifted head and level eyes, respecting myself too much to endure without protest studied disrespect from others.
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| Curtin University |
NATHAN HOLLIER | |
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