DBWI: What if Progressivism had been a political movement?

[The Uchronian]

Hi folks.

So, anyway, I'm currently entering the final three weeks of my History 1301 course here at Cal State, San Jose, and, this week, we touched a little bit on the development of the Progressive ideology that began to develop in the 1880s.

IOTL, Progressivism was a philosophical movement active primarily between the 1880s and 1920s that promoted scientific and technological development to advance civilization-in a way, they were an early precursor to the Technocratic movement that was born in Japan and the U.K. in the '70s. But, what if Progressivism had been something different?

As many here may know, I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Sobel's For Want of a Ballot from 1976, and I've been a regular contributor to it's fan TL continuation, For All Time Forward, since 2001, writing under the pseudonym "Jack Jones"; prior to his death in 2010, Sobel himself occasionally stopped by the forum from time to time to offer some tidbits as to how he originally envisioned the TL.

His ATL version of *Progressivism was(and still is!) a favorite topic over there, and, as described by him, it was a wide-ranging political movement that sought to improve society for the benefit of all people, through the means of activism and reform(similar to the OTL Egalitarians in the Britain of the early 20th century, as well as the Liberty Movement after the Global War or the Muckrakers of the Teens and Twenties, right here in America), which did include some focused on scientific approaches, but others with a faith-based viewpoint(such as William Jennings Bryan, etc.) and even some socialist leaning, etc. people.

My question is, how might this "political Progressivism", as described in Sobel's TL, have worked IOTL, and would it have lasted some time, or fallen apart?

OOC: For Want of a Ballot & For All Time Forward, are essentially OTL; the POD for TTL is sometime in the middle of the 1870s and ITTL, the Democratic candidate wins instead of Rutherford Hayes.

Edit: And yes, I've been wanting to do this one for a while-interested to see the ideas that people may contribute in the coming days.....

 

[Caesar Biden]

The problem was Progressivism was very vague and never well understood by the masses. What exactly were its goals, and what does "improving society" entail? It was always more of an intellectual movement, passed around by the well- educated, than something concrete.

Compare this to WJB's Populism and Debs+Sinclair's Socialism. They had goals, and they knew how to appeal to the Working Classes with these goals.

You'd need "Progressives" to be like these movements, at least somewhat united on certain reforms they want to enact. Otherwise they're not going anywhere.

 

[The Uchronian]

The problem was Progressivism was very vague and never well understood by the masses. What exactly were its goals, and what does "improving society" entail? It was always more of an intellectual movement, passed around by the well- educated, than something concrete.

Very true, although I should clarify OTL's Progressivists, apart from a few of the American(and Canadian) Libertines and British Egalitarians who adopted the philosophy, generally stayed out of political matters.

Compare this to WJB's Populism and Debs+Sinclair's Socialism. They had goals, and they knew how to appeal to the Working Classes with these goals.

Funny thing is, Debs actually had a real chance to win the 1912 elections, were it not for the October Wacker Avenue riots in Chicago; that incident pretty much destroyed his campaign.

You'd need "Progressives" to be like these movements, at least somewhat united on certain reforms they want to enact. Otherwise they're not going anywhere.

I very much agree with this, although from what I recall from FWoAB's official canon, the TTL *Progressives, while they generally agreed on the need to better society through reform, not only often quarreled about how to approach said goals, but also even became too spread out ideologically, to the point that just about anybody was able to borrow the moniker and nobody really noticed.

Maybe if the *Progressives ITTL had been a bit more ideologically united, they could have been rather more successful; I myself have argued that they would have greatly benefitted from kicking out the undesirable elements, such as the racial eugenics promoters, the half-assing demagogues, etc.(not to brag, TBH, but my argument does seem to be fairly well supported by texts within the canon itself).

 

[The Uchronian]

I just got back from a trip to the Albert Fuller Memorial Museum in Sacramento: Fascinating fellow he was! Apart from inventing the very first television(although Thomas Edison's company built the first commercial TV), I also learned that he also tried to start a new movement immediately after WWII, taking the core of the classical Progressivist philosophy with early environmentalism and Reaganite libertarianism, although it didn't become a thing at all until the 1970s, and still is kinda obscure-but what if the Fullerites had been far more successful and far earlier?

OOC: Fuller is basically a "brother" of R. Buckminster Fuller of OTL. Also, this Reagan dude you read of is Richard Reagan(1908-97), a prominent California businessman whose older son Rick, Jr., went into acting. He was basically an OTL Libertarian but not as hardline right-wing on economics as many Libertarians are in our world.