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Glenn Greenwald has an important post up today, on Ideology vs. pragmatism: Is one more important than the other? The Republicans have been giving ideology a bad name for the past 8 years, but that doesn’t mean that ideology is a bad thing. As Glenn observed,
"Ideology" is not a bad word. It refers to nothing more than one’s set of political principles and core doctrinal beliefs that exist independent of considerations of utility. It’s nonsensical to try to assess political leaders or policies based solely on "competence" and without regard to "ideology."
The Clinton presidency gave pragmatism a bad name in the 1990s: it became tainted with excessive concern for polls, and "triangulating," and together with the Lewinsky affair, made Clinton appear to have no principles whatsoever. George Bush took advantage of that, and led the Republican rise to power. I would suggest that Democrats do, indeed, have principles, but we have been unwilling to describe them in ideological terms. Are Democrats Keynesians? Hey, there’s an ideology for you!
I have an ideology– I’ll call it Constitutionalism. My ideology is the Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law, even when it is not convenient.
My main cause for grief with Democrats of this decade has been that Democrats don’t seem to care all that much for the Constitution any more, despite the oath of office they take to serve in Congress. They took impeachment off the table in the House. They refused to use their Constitutional inherent contempt procedures. They let Bush, quite literally, get away with murder without lifting a finger. Why? Apparently, because they were afraid of spoiling their chances for an electoral sweep this year. That’s "pragmatism." Here’s what Greenwald wrote (see the Update at the end of his post):
It’s very hard to dispute the fact that the Democratic Party over the last eight years has been overwhelmingly driven by pragmatism, and has been quite hostile to ideology (as well as to "partisanship," the evil cousin of "ideology"). Indeed, virtually everything the Democratic Party leadership has done this decade has been driven by a fear of drawing clear differences between it and the Republican Party based on the pragmatic concern that they would suffer politically if they appeared too ideological or too partisan, if they didn’t compromise enough. This is the fruit of that thinking.
Thus, whatever else one might want to say about this current fixation on pragmatism, trans-partisanship, non-ideological compromise and the like — the one thing it isn’t is new. It’s what the national Democratic Party has been about, at its core, during most of the Bush era.
So the Republicans have gotten away with tagging the Democrats as being "unprincipled"– and too often, they’re right.
Is "Progressive" an ideology? It used to be–about 100 years ago. But the Wikipedia is silent about it today, except for The Progressive monthly magazine, identified as a "Leftist" organization known for its pacifism. Which happens to be published in my home town (Madison, Wisconsin). As a political movement, it has been revived as Progressive Democrats of America:
Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and our country. We seek to build a party and government controlled by citizens, not corporate elites — with policies that serve the broad public interest, not just private interests. As a grassroots PAC operating inside the Democratic Party, and outside in movements for peace and justice, PDA played a key role in the stunning electoral victory of November 2006. Our inside/outside strategy is guided by the belief that a lasting majority will require a revitalized Democratic Party built on firm progressive principles.
For over two decades, the party declined as its leadership listened more to the voices of Wall Street than those of Main Street. PDA strives to rebuild the Democratic Party from the bottom up – from every Congressional District to statewide party structures to the corridors of power in Washington, where we work arm in arm with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In just a couple of years, PDA and its allies have shaken up the political status quo – on issues from the Iraq war to voter rights to economic justice.
This statement is a bit vague on what their "progressive principles" are, but they have a platform with 5 planks:
1. End the War, Redirect Funding
2. Health Care for All
3. Economic Justice
4. Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections
5. Stop Global Warming
These are listed as "priorities" rather than principles, but they point the way towards ideological principles. (I am a current officer in Progressive Democrats of Hawaii, and we have a similar platform.)
Jane Hamsher addressed progressives wrt Obama’s unfolding administration with these words:
Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to help keep the obstructionists off his back and push him to fulfill his campaign promises to end the war, pass health care legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act, clean up the environment, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, repair our infrastructure, create good jobs and restore the middle class.
In other words, like Roosevelt said to the progressives of his era: You have a good program. Now make me do it. Jane addresses a progressive agenda that can be articulated into a progressive ideology. We should develop and explore the ideological basis of her platform as the basis for action.
Finally, "Liberalism" is supposed to be an ideology, but it has been scorned so successfully by Right-wingers that most liberals have grown shy of the label. I wish everyone would become re-acquainted with the historical meaning of Liberalism. We haven’t fought back to reclaim its good name, but we should.
So let’s not get too enthusiastic about pragmatism. Yes, our progressivism or liberalism needs to be grounded in pragmatism, but we should not be shy about developing, marketing, and defending our ideology.
Bob in HI
13 Comments
Hi Bob, very thoughtful post. I’d like to add
“Restore Rule of Law”
Absolutely! High on my list.
Thanks,
Bob in HI
Yes, thank you for the post, and for dovetailing Greenwald’s post with the progressive platform.
I Know Reality and it has made me ill. Idealizations have Killed this country
14 Years of literal Republican Insanity.
8 Years of literal Bush/Cheney Insanity.
The next 4 years must produce absolute congruity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7745324.stm
Update:
Emptywheel has a great post up over at the Wheel House that takes a deeper look at Pragmatism vs. Ideology. She has many favorable things to say about pragmatism, most of which I agree with.
Let me begin with the Wikipedia’s capsule description of Pragmatism:
These are all to the good.
Now let’s clarify about “ideology.” Firstly, in my post I was using “ideology” in the sense of “theory-driven.” We know that Republican ideology was not only theory-driven, but mostly fact free. In fact, a widely circulated anonymous quote from inside the White House early in the Bush administration claimed that they created reality (i.e., facts), and the rest of us could only comment on it. They were ideology-driven, without being grounded in pragmatism. In fact, they pretty much rejected pragmatism, at least in the first term of the Bush administration.
The Wikipedia defines Ideology as “. . . a set of beliefs, aims and ideas, especially in politics. . . .The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer change in society through a normative thought process. Ideologies are systems of abstract thought (as opposed to mere ideation) applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics. Implicitly every political tendency entails an ideology whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought.”
But EW uses ideology in a very restricted way:
I disagree with this characterization; I think that Obama’s fight is against a particular ideology, not with ideologies in general. In fact, we only serve the Republican talking point that Democrats have no principles if we hide the ideology we are fighting for. To my mind, an ideology is a set of principles underlying a common theme.
I will grant to EW that pragmatists are not without principles; but we would do better to highlight those principles, and how they relate to each other, rather than pushing them into the background.
One of the first principles of pragmatism is a high regard for science. I think we can agree on that, and it makes a good contrast with the Republican mockery of science. One can– and should– discern other principles in EW’s lengthy post.
Another principle I would hope we could agree on, is the value of our Constitutional system of government, including the Bill of Rights and the Balance of Powers. These two principles, a high regard for science, and for our Constitution, sounds remarkably like Jeffersonian Democracy to me.
If one wants to refrain from ideological stances, we could say that Obama’s is a principled pragmatism, but what that does is to hide the ideological themes that unify the principles underlying Obama’s pragmatism. I think it would be better to identify and promote those principles under some recognizable banner, so that Democrats could be recognized for what they stand for.
Bob in HI
I’m reminded of a Seattle philanthropist who once said of her illustrious, also-philanthropic mother: “She didn’t have ’causes’, she had principles.” Mrs. Dorothy Bullitt was remarkably effective, and she focused her efforts on things she believed in, then used her principles to help her act in sane, productive ways.
Ideology, because it is so tightly wound up in self-identity, can be very dangerous.
Both the neocons and the Al Quaeda types suffer from overwhelming ‘ideology’ IMHO. Wall Street and the Free-Market crowd also had an ‘ideology’, and it’s taking us straight to hell.
Induction, which utilizes ideology, is dangerous: did I categorize a thing correctly? Because once categorized, that’s how I’m going to deal with it.
What we need IMHO is more DEDUCTION: this is almost always correct. From a and b, I derive ab.
From ab, I add c.
Now I have abc.
From there… one small step at a time, my thinking is more likely to actually solve problems than create more of them.
Ideology is induction.
Sanity is deduction.
Ideology is fine when it helps people structure their goals; when it becomes a set of blinders it becomes toxic.
The agenda Obama needs to implement makes so much sense right now that I’m with Jane — it’s critical to ‘clear the space’ and acts as ‘interference’ so that Team Obama can move forward to implement these goals.
That’s more pragmatism than ideology, IMHO.
Update II:
Ian Welsh is up over at the Mother ship with a blog on “Thinking Without Ideology Is Like Breathing Without Lungs“. He implicitly rejects Emptywheel’s argument with “a harsh rejoinder: there is no pragmatism, there is only ideology.”
I think Ian goes too far here. One can’t say there is “no” pragmatism, because as I pointed out in Comment #5, pragmatism is a well-known stance. What is valid, I think, is to say that there is no pragmatism that is “free” of any ideological presuppositions– perhaps, no “pure” pragmatism.
I am glad to see the attention this subject is getting on FDL and its sister sites!
Bob in HI
Update III:
Emptywheel and Ian Welsh are carrying on a debate in the comments over at this “Thinking without Ideology…” blog. EW jumps in @20, Ian responds @28, EW back at him @36, then Ian @43, EW@52, etc., with occasional contributions by others such as Oxford08 @37, who stands up for pragmatism with a lengthy comment grounded in classical pragmatism.
Bob in HI
Update IV:
EW states that
A few paragraphs later, she adds,
Of course not. What would a progressive foreign policy ideology look like?
I’d like to suggest a few possibilities:
1. We favor American Democratic principles, exemplified by our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Rule of Law, and the “unalienable Rights” articulated in our Declaration of Independence, that among these are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But in process terms, we prefer to lead by example, recognizing that democracy cannot be imposed on a people (that would be a contradiction in terms), and that democracy thrives where the soil has been prepared well in advance (to mix metaphors.)
2. We recognize an emerging Global Village in which what every part of the world does impacts the rest of the world. This is best exemplified by the threat of global warming, which requires a unified global response. Therefore we seek collaboration rather than confrontation as the preferred means by which to build consensus on how to deal with global problems. We further recognize such collaboration as essential, and not merely as a pro forma ritual obligation as a prelude to unilateral action.
3. While the United States is the paramount world power, there are limits to that power, and our means are finite. Therefore any unilateral action must be prefaced by counting the cost and having a constructive dialogue about the costs and benefits among all appropriate branches of government.
4. We believe in the principles of non-proliferation, and seek meaningful ways to enhance the security of nations so that they will not feel the need to possess nuclear weapons.
I think I’ll stop there. Each of the 4 parts is intended to articulate an important principle, and also indicate the process by which each principle is to be implemented.
What’s missing?
Bob in HI
i’ve always laid claim to being a constitutional arsonist .. if they don’t want to obey the constitution .. i’m willing to burn their barns down .. with the culprits in it ..
I think you are wrong and that Obama is against ideology of any kind. Take a look at Tony Blair and you’ll get the picture. Obama is readily identifiable to Europeans as a “Third Way” “centrist”.
Obama certainly says that he’s not ideological. However, he’s using the word in the way that Emptywheel says its used in Washington these days: as a code word for Right Wing Doctrine (founded on NeoCon foreign policy plus tax cuts as the solution for every domestic problem). But as EW points out, Obama may not call his principles ideological, but they may amount to the same thing– just a different kind of ideology.
Bob in HI