Has my book confounded its readers?

My new book seems to have confounded many readers. The other day I did an interview with Alex Webster of Outpost and he told me that he was struggling to sum it up, albeit he hadn’t read all of it. Intellectual types meanwhile encounter the word ‘progress’ and think ‘Ahhh, we’re going to discuss whether progress is real, whether the theory is right.’ And then they find something else and don’t quite know how to react.

As I explained it to Alex, I wrote the book as something to be read through rather than as a resource that you can flick through, get the main points, sum up and move on from. Maybe this is a weakness in the world we live in, where we are told hardly anyone reads books anymore – and where politicos are perpetually busy and unable to sit still for a few hours.

I think this may be an issue in the one review I have seen, from The Critic. It’s always been normal for reviewers to skim what they’re reviewing before stating their own opinion: you normally don’t have the time to do anything more. From that review, I was thinking that the writer, Daniel Johnson, had read the Introduction and Conclusion chapters (both pretty meaty) but nothing in between. And normally, for a book of polemical presentation that he identifies (not scholarly, he says), this would be enough.

However the book doesn’t follow a conventional structure for a book of its type, of going from a brief capitulation of the argument to a more detailed exposition in the body before wrapping up with a re-capitulation. I sometimes think maybe I should have done it that way, but I wrote the whole thing on the same level, with the same importance. Chapters 2-6 are particularly significant for outlining the techniques that help progressives to dominate, namely:

1. the appropriation of a religious style;

2. using the idioms of social science to express knowledge and command over the world;

3. a reduction to the pure politics of promotion; and

4. the exclusion of opponents;

5. the attachment of expertise to these things.

As for the conventional intellectual approach of considering progressivism primarily as theory, this is fine and there is plenty of interest to talk about here. But it takes you away from the meaning and purpose of the book. I’ve started framing this thing as an attempt to address what the idea of progress does rather than just what it says. And I think that’s naturally difficult for people to get their heads around. Since I conceived the idea I’ve often thought of it as being one or two logical connections from instant understanding.

You get it from a sustained encounter with the thinking, but then you go back to normal life and it disappears into the ether (this happens with me too, as the writer).

So what is it? What is this thing, The Progress Trap?

‘The word ‘progress’ has two broad meanings in our world. The first of these is quite straightforward: progress simply describes something, anything, getting better over time. In this sense it’s nice and uncontroversial, a good thing by definition. From this basic meaning you might infer that a progressive is someone who believes in good things and in improvement, which again would make it the opposite of controversial (and, in the nature of language, leaves it open to exploitation).

However, self-styled progressives in the real world often appear to us differently to this. For example, you might discern a particular arrogance, self-certainty and the assumed right to interfere with and dictate to others. This connects to the second meaning of progress, which doesn’t so much describe things getting better or propose ways of making things better as assert that things are getting better as a whole (so in a sense it is beyond mere description); or at least things will get better once they grab the reins of power, as they will in time.

Here we find a form of overarching knowledge expressed through a belief in historical improvement. Progress in this sense is a theory of time, treating it as a vehicle of improvement, not just a series of moments: with improvement either taking place incrementally or through the ruptures of revolutionary change.

As J.B. Bury said in his defining tome The Idea of Progress a century ago, progress is “the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation.” Ideas of progress provide a basic assumption behind much of our politics and culture to the extent that I say they are effectively embedded in our existential bloodstream.

They can be found in the most mundane places, for example in the common idea of the happy ending: in talk of how it is ‘inevitable’ that the bad people, our opponents, will eventually fail and get their just deserts, leaving good to triumph. They can be found in the lauding of youth such as the campaign to give the vote to 16- and 17-year olds. They can be found in language, in gushing use of terms like ‘modernity’, ‘forward-looking’ and in weird talk of ‘the future’ as something better and already known.

Such talk assumes general improvement over time, as if there is a guiding mechanism in our world, bending towards ever-increasing right and justice. The future will be better than the past – and the future people (the young as blank slate) will be better than those of the past (the old, who have done their thing and found guilty for it).

According to my argument, the reasons why self-described ‘progressives’ are as they are, often verging into authoritarianism and intolerance, are rooted in this second account.

Something happens to us once we fully embrace progress as a form of historical knowledge, of absolute knowledge about the world. The book looks at this primarily through contemporary public life, in the utterances of major figures such as James O’Brien and Meghan Markle, in the activities of various Independent Commissions on such things as Britain’s place in Europe and racism in the game of cricket, and in the progressive gatekeeping of Arts Council England.

However the first chapter starts by tracing the history of this idea of History: how Western colonialism found justification in it; how the sense of mission it confers fortified the conquest of America; then revolution in France and later in Russia and elsewhere (with Soviet and indeed Chinese leaders lauding themselves as great intellectuals); and how it continues to undergird Western activity both at home and abroad. It finishes by looking how contemporary academic ‘decolonization’ has turned the spirit of progress back onto Western societies and institutions: attempting to eliminate oppressive native traditions and sources of authority in a reprise of the techniques of Western colonization at times.

As I referred to above, Part I looks at How progressives win, starting with the echoes of Christian religious styles in how progressives address the world. The judgement of God is replaced with that of history. Victimhood is venerated, with George Floyd appearing to us as a Jesus-like figure, meant to transform a racist world through his passing. Other chapters explore the role of social science in providing a base of incontrovertible authority; how this clears the way for a pure politics of promotional activity and attempts to eliminate opponents from having influence; and how this is all supported by a veneer of expertise.

Part II goes through different areas of the progressive society, looking at how the arts have merged with political activism; how capitalism and the technocratic state fit in; how different forms of nationalism appear as variously good and bad according to their place in stories of progress; and how the noisy self-regarding activist is a creature of a narcissistic society.

The book ends with an extended chapter considering how we should respond to all of this, primarily in a British context.

In the intellectual sense, it’s really phenomenology: seeking to present this phenomenon of progress through how it appears to us; via the connections that leap off it, how it has become a piece of (existential) equipment. It’s about how progress works as a way of seeing the world and seeing yourself within it, as above all a knower: as someone who understands the world and history. Whether you do or not doesn’t really matter. It’s a style, a progressive style.

Since finishing, it has really hit me once more how big this is, how I could have addressed it in so many other ways. Getting to talk with Louise Perry for her podcast (see below), I reflected on her themes, of personal life, relationships and the sexual revolution as a phenomenon of progress, now exhausted and exposed in its full emptiness. There is also the spectre of ‘Islamo-progressivism’: of Islamists, exultant in the belief that what we see as backward religious practices are actually the future of the West and the world. They are convinced they are going to win: and the progressive style supports them in that.

This thing called progress is literally everywhere. I could easily write a second book exploring it further.