The Idea of Progress: History and Society

by Sidney Pollard

I cannot believe that this book is not listed! Pollard looks to 'the idea of progress' in the post war period. Although belief in progress was wavering at the time, he reexamines this already well covered topic from a new perspective. looking to not only past thinkers, but the lives they lived and the times of the writing, it becomes a contextual analysis of the developing ideas surrounding, and implementing a narrative of progress. He ends in stating that our choices are determined by two positions, Progress or despair. I loved this book and please, please read it. Two words: Mind opening.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Nonfiction

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Siegfried (Sidney) Pollard was a British economic and labour historian, and Professor at the University of Sheffield. He pioneered the study of the role of economic management in the processes of industrialization - an industrialization which he thought was best examined at regional levels rather than national levels.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Liam Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

An primer on the concept of "progress" in modern intellectual history (from the Enlightenment through to the date of publication, 1962). It explains and compares various implicit and explicit theories on progress over a gap which Pollard sees as an "unnatural seperation" between theories of history and of economics:

Finally, since the days of the polymaths of the Englightenment of the eighteenth century, the two main groups of thinkers concerned with this body of ideas, the historian-philosophers on the one side and the politican-economists on the other, have gone their own way, and apart from a few conscious bridge-builders, like John Stuart Mill or Marx, have scarcely glanced at each other's work. The resultant isolation has impoverished the work of both, and this volume seeks to overcome a most unnatural seperation by attempting to keep the developing ideas of both in step with each other. pg. 13

Though critically surveying great writers of the past, Pollard tries to invest the reader with a sense of what progress meant for them at their own stage of history. The difficulty with the subject is that although the sense of progress is founded upon the belief in the future, it stemms from a great confidence in, and study of, the present. Pollard on Voltaire:

Much of the point of [Voltaire's] essay on "Manners" was the contrast between the misere du passe and the bonheur du present, which was due to the spread of reason and of moderation. Yet what did this present happiness consist of? It consisted of the comfort and grace, the elegance and culture of the best of French bourgeois existence: a fine house and a good table, paintings and porcelain in the home, the opportunities to converse with other culutred persons or read of the latest discoveries of theories of the philosophers, and some protection from the violence of one's fellow men by the police, and from the violence of disease by doctors. If to this were added political rights and social recognition, and protection from the power of the nobility to have innocent citizens thrown into prison or condemned to exile, the cup of happiness would be full. Voltaire, who had little time for the fashionable admiration of hte noble savage, was sure that no civilization with so much to offer had ever existed before; and he found it difficult to imagine that the future could improve on it. pg. 55

On Hume:

In view of this brilliant anticipation of much of the best writing on sociology in the nineteenth century, it is all the more surprising that Hume should have followed the contemporary Englishtenment in dismissing the thousand years of the Middle Ages as a dark period without lessons and without interest for us. Surely social laws can only be confirmed after obsercing men in "all varieties of circumstances and situation"? It has to be admitted that Hume was too much a child of his age to take his own views on the primacy of social laws too seriously. Like Voltaire, he held the implicit belief that all of past history of was value only as a prelude to the greatness of his own times. In the evil past, human behaviour had been irrational, but since the Renaissance opened a window on the true human world, man's social needs developed the arts, the sciences, and even the morals of society. pg.61

On Smith:

[Between his lectures c. 1759 and] Wealth of Nations in 1776, there was no major change in [Adam Smith's] views. Mercantilist restrictionism and aristocratic abuses were still the main enemies. The world of 1776 is still essentially that of an agrarian country, in which manufactures are carried out by independent craftsmen or putting-out merchants and not yet in factories. Capital is still desperately scarce, and since it is indispensable in extending the division of labour, which in turn is the main engine of economic progress, it has to be husbanded with greatest care. Thus capitalists, who save, are benefactors of society, and landowners, who tend to consume, are not; and the expansion of agriculture, in which little capital will create much employment, is much preferable to investment in industry, where it will employ less labour, and still more so, to investment in trade and shipping where it will employ least. ...In attempting to discern the shape of things to come, he promises himself certain benefits from the abolition of all restrictions and privileges, from the return of capital away from trade, and back to its "natural employment" in agriculture ... It was precisely because of this fixed framework that Adam Smith could begin to manipulate the economic variables - land, labour, capital - in the new, scientific and generalized way. p.74

--
But at the same moment, the problems which these great writers struggled with at not so trivial to be completely explained by circumstances. We feel this sense of progress more acutely than ever today, and when the skeptics in the tradition of Oswald Spengler are put to one side, this is reflected in the implicit basis of modern economic thought: "among economists, the bookshelves are groaning under the publications on the topic - one select list for publications in English only, dealing with development, between 1945 and 1958, has 1,027 entries." Pollard deftly pre-empts the likely argument against this evidence:

It may be argued that the two have little in common, and that the wish of poverty-stricken, diseased and exploited populations, the enjoy the relative comfort and security of the citizens of the USA, has little to do with the laws of history or the future destiny of the world. The wish to catch up with the West is, indeed, not identical with the belief that humanity faces an unending prospect of further "progress." But the assumptions on which both are based are so similar, and the dividing line between them is so blurred, that it is difficult to hold to one, yet deny the other. Among the common assumption are the beliefs that (no matter how divergent their history in the earlier ages), the modern stages are basically identical, and therefore predictable and plannable, for all humanity; that progress along this path is both "natural" and desirable; that once certain early steps are correctly taken, the developing societies will continue in inevitable "self-sustaining" growth and that this growth will inevitably bring greater democracy, more education and higher status in the interational community. p.191

In his conclusions, Pollard characterizes the idea of progress as something completely necessary in a world without ultimate religious authority:

With the decline in the belief of supernatural sanctions, which began with the Enlightenment, it has, indeed, become much harder to find a firm resting place, a fixed point on which a moral system or a social objective greater than the individual can be built up. What is a crime from one point of view, is heroic self-sacrifice from another, and all the civic virtues of one system become persecuted vices over the border, where political power is built on a different class structure. In this ocean of restless waves there has emerged only from one firm island outside the temporal and biased perspective of each seperate interest: the continous improvement, that is to say, the progress of humanity itself. It is a yardstick against which the seperate contributions of men, of classes, and of theories, can be measured, and it can give moral reassurance to those who are well aware of the relativity of their convictions, but who yet require, psychologically, the assurance of a firmer morality. Conversely, without the conviction of progress, there is no alternative to an inevitable despair in reason and in a rational, scientific approach to society, and to the decline into the mythology of nihilism. p.184

[David Jinkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first shock I had reading Sidney Pollard’s The Idea of Progress was his passage pointing out that the ‘fundamental axioms’ of the Enlightenment mesh conveniently with the self-interest of the 18th-century bourgeoisie. The American founding fathers – land-owning commoners and businessmen to a man – thought it was self-evident that all men are created equal. People have equal natural rights, and there should be equality before the law. Such commercially minded men did not believe, however, that property should be equally distributed. Freedom to trade, meritocracy, equality of opportunity, and security of property against arbitrary decisions of the aristocracy are all to the advantage of the owners of the factors of production. These ideas are still the foundations for political argument today. Could it be that my deeply held liberal democratic values are simply what happened to be best for wealthy 18th-century proto-industrialists?

Pollard’s book is a history of thinking about progress in Europe from the 16th century to the first half of the 20th century. Pollard classifies types of progress on a pyramid, where types lower on the pyramid are more widely accepted than those higher up. Scientific and technical progress are the base of the pyramid, and material progress is just above it. In modern parlance, we might call these economic growth, or economic development. Three centuries ago, the age of the earth was measured in thousands of years, disease was caused by humors and miasma, and human beings sprung whole from creation. School children today know more about the natural world than the most learned did then. If any deficiencies in the children’s knowledge remain, the greatest encyclopedia to ever exist is carried through the air to a device in their pockets. There are far more people today, and yet they are generally healthier and live longer than people of the past. In particular, babies are much less likely to die, an unimaginable blessing for parents. In a simple material sense, the modern world has left the past in the dust.

There is not quite so much reason to believe in progress in terms of political or social organization–the next step on Pollard’s pyramid. This is the belief that human society will become ‘better governed, more just, freer, more equal, more stable, or in other ways better equipped to permit a higher development of the human personality.’ Finally, the peak of the pyramid is progress in human character. Progress here means that people will become more moral, kinder, less selfish, or more cheerful. In the 18th century there was more widespread belief in these types. Buoyed by advances in science and technology, enlightenment thinkers believed that the aristocracy only had to be removed, and the stage would be set for a new kind of social arrangement and improvement in human character. Condorcet, for example, described a modern, rational society with gender and racial equality, democracy, and education for all. He wrote his great work ‘Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind’ while in hiding from the authorities of the French Revolution. He was eventually discovered and was either killed or committed suicide in prison. The French Revolution demonstrated that removing the aristocracy does not necessarily lead to a wealthy and desirable society. The optimism of the 18th century enlightenment philosophers about the potential for rationality to defeat barbarism gave way to a more dismal philosophy.

Usually I have to be a bit sneaky to insert some economics into book reviews, but Pollard let’s me off the hook. Economists take the center stage in his description of 19th century thought on progress. Starting with Adam Smith, economists have taken a more limited view of progress. The conceit of economists is to describe unchanging natural laws. Economists often assume human decision making to be ahistorical and driven by rationality and self-interest. ‘For Adam Smith,’ writes Pollard,‘and even more so for the economists who followed, every man was by nature a Scotsman on the make.’ Given the same environment, an ancient Indian peasant would approach a problem in the same fashion as a modern CEO. Since human nature is assumed to be constant across space and time, there can be no progress at the tip of the pyramid. While some societies may suffer from ‘distortions’ created by inefficient bureaucracies or poor infrastructure, classical liberals believe that the destiny of each country is to develop into a liberal democracy. Economic socialists like Owen, Marx, and Engels, had a different take with a similar view of progress: economic relations will drive all societies onto the same linear progression towards socialism and communism.

The last third of Pollard’s book considers the first half of the 20th century. The book is necessarily less thorough here both because the volume of economic and scientific writing exploded during this period, and also because it was maybe a bit too recent for Pollard to take a bird’s eye view. The major theme is Pollard's surprise at the revival of optimism about progress. The First World War and the Great Depression led to deep pessimism about whether history was progressing, or whether it was merely cyclical. Then, the triumph of the UK and the United States in World War II led to a wave of optimism about the future. ‘Somewhat to its surprise, the West found itself on a steeply rising curve of material prosperity, technical innovation and social peace such as it had not even conceived possible in the 1930’s. Men, perhaps fortunately, easily forget the ill, and take the good for granted, and with striking speed, the former belief in progress was disinterred, refurbished, and began to shine forth as if it had never been in any danger.’

Reading this book made me think of Keynes famous quote from The General Theory:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Before reading Pollard’s book, I didn’t realize how many views that I take for granted were controversial views during the 18 and 19th centuries. For example, the idea that human nature is fixed. When I learn about ancient societies, I imagine myself living among them. What might it have felt like to be a Roman slave, an Egyptian priest, or a Chinese eunuch? On consideration, this way of thinking is a bit silly. I have a totally different understanding of nature, concept of what is good, and view of proper social relations. It is really impossible for me to imagine myself as a member of a society so epistemologically different than my own.

It is possible that the differentness of past societies from the present is obscured by the conformity of nearly all modern societies. Countries as geographically diverse as China, South Africa, and Chile all dress in a similar Western fashion. The Chinese government has recently accused Western countries of anti-Chinese racism. From Istanbul to South Africa, political debates are couched in the language of liberty and equality which grow out of the European enlightenment. The past is a more exotic foreign country, than any existing foreign country of today.

Here is Pollard:

More interesting, however, is the assumption of the inevitability of ‘economic development’ in the Western sense, among the large majority of the world’s population living in ‘underdeveloped’ economies. For one thing, it is basically new. Even a generation ago, Spengler and Toynbee could argue, with at least some plausibility, that India, China, the Arab world, or the Russian world, were so different in their total basic outlook as to make communication across the frontiers meaningless, if not impossible...It is important to stress how much the assumption, now accepted as self-evident, that every country will ‘progress’, mainly in the economic sphere but also in all other socio-historical respects, towards the Western model, contradicts fundamentally the doubters and pessimists, and how much and how startlingly it vindicates the prophets of progress.

More controversially and tentatively, there may even be a genetic difference between past and present peoples. There is no question that evolution operates on scales of hundreds of thousands of years, not the mere hundreds of years since the beginning of the enlightenment. But in some circumstances it can function at smaller time scales. For example, there is strong selection for those who dwell in the Himalayas against altitude sickness. In a world populated by guns and where social standing is based on brains and conscientiousness, might there not be different selection than in a world where physical might ends arguments? Could it be that a genetic snapshot of Beijing in 1400 might look quite different than the same in 2020, even among ethnically similar people?

If human nature changes either through culture or genetics, are we making progress? This is a difficult question to wrestle with. I am a modern person, so I share modern moral intuitions with most people alive today. Stephan Pinker in Enlightenment Now juxtaposes material progress with moral beliefs. All over the world, people believe more and more in emancipative values which emphasize freedom of choice and equal opportunities. Peter Singer has argued that our ‘moral circle’ is expanding, so that we feel moral responsibility towards people more and more remote from us.

It is tempting to believe that these are moral improvements in humanity, and that they follow naturally from progress in science and technology. But it isn’t clear that this correlation is causal. The French revolution, and the atrocities of the first half of the 20th century show that there is not a single possible enlightenment morality. Enlightenment ideas of social progress fed the holocaust and the forced sterilizations associated with Social Darwinism. Living memory of that horror has died out, but there is no obvious social force which indicates it can not happen again–this time with the far more effective tools which have been developed in the interim.

Pollard’s book shows that the modern stagnation of human nature is a sort of religion. We believe, with some reason, that science and technology will continue to advance, but that we have reached the end of history. The destiny of every society and every country is to become a liberal democracy. Our increasing morality makes us more free and more autonomous. Pollard’s book is more descriptive than rhetorical, but he implicitly argues that we could very well be wrong. Human character was different in the past, and may be different in the future. People in ages hence might find our current enlightenment values parochial or worse. The common-sense view of historical progress may be far off the mark. The moral ground we stand on may be more unstable than we realize.

The Idea of Progress is the the opposite of Twitter. The writing is academic, the print is small, the chapters are long, and the topic is subtle. It does not grab the reader’s attention, she must pay it herself in return for its ideas. Just as Twitter rewards the pithy put-down, the long-form style of The Idea of Progress is made for sustained and careful argument. By the end of Pollard’s Western intellectual history of the concept of historical progress, I was questioning some of the fundamental assumptions I have about history, society, and my field of research.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finished it because I started it