1) Pointing to our triumphs encourages more people to join us. I doubt I'd be doing what I now do if I hadn't studied the history of social movements and become convinced that they'd accomplished something.
2) Thoughtful problematization of words like "progress" and "civilization" are good. But I think we all know that what Noam meant by civilization is that things are more civil, in that people treat each other better. The opposite of Hobbesian brutality. Clearly that's a good thing. (NC wasn't embracing any racist Huntington-ish thesis, obv.)
3) Hardly anyone would ever become a leftist if we were really opposed to progress and civilization.
Liza
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sun, 9 May 2004 12:02:03 -0400
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Improvement, not Progress
>
> Grant Lee wrote:
>
>> 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
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