>And yet the empirical data on the fundamental indicators of human
>well-being: infant mortality, nutrition, life expectancy, etc also show
>significant improvement during the same time. Better to have an idea of
>"progress" which is dialectical and class-conscious --- i.e.
>multidimensional and encompassing paradox --- rather than discarding the
>idea of progress altogether, methinks.
Agreed, though I'm a bit mystified about why Chomsky's claim about the welcome changes in U.S. society over the last four decades inspired an outburst of sectarian pedantry. Or maybe I shouldn't be, since a certain brand of left political temperament requires than everything, especially within these borders, be seen as getting unambiguously worse. It's not as if Noam or I were using the terms "civilized" and "progress" in the boneheaded, depoliticized sense of a Time magazine writer, which is what Williams was commenting on (and the rest of the entry in Keywords acknowledges the origin of and long identification the term "progressive" with left and socialist politics).
Doug