The New Progressives are In Front, Deep Green, Against Big Business and Globalization and Beyond Left vs. Right.
http://www.culturalcreatives.org/Library/docs/NewPoliticalCompassV73.pdfThis longish paper shows a new way to picture political constituencies, as a political
compass, with four directions, instead of our usual bankrupt left-right description. The new
imagery says: east vs west, north vs south, and would allow us to describe any departure from
where we now are as being at an angle, say northwest. This image of a compass heading points
the way to helpful redefinitions of who constituencies are, and what they stand for, and offers the
possibility of a new democratic politics. It also has the symbolic value of pointing out that a
compass is orienting us to what we need to see, rather than just labelling someone as right or left.
We are entering into a time of transformation, i.e., changing shape and function, of many
of our institutions. Our political institutions are very much in need of repair or replacement, and
this paper shows how to look at the emerging culture of our time as a support for positive
change. Indeed, it says that political culture, which is the substrate politics rests on, has already
been changing for some decades now, and at this point in history, leads to new kinds of political
demand. Today’s politics is dismal in part because of its rigidity, its corruption, and its inability
to supply what people want. We are looking at the political equivalent of what would be called
market failure in economics and business: the breakdown of supply and demand. Our
democracy is at great risk of turning into a plutocracy: rule by and for the benefit of the rich.
In partisan political terms, we are looking at a slow decline of both left and right, and of
both political parties. The term “center” doesn’t communicate anything, and my research
suggests it is a fiction. Social conservatism is slowly declining as its underlying culture slowly
dies off: In the last fifty years, Traditionals have shrunk from about half the population to under a
quarter. We are also looking at the demise of the left, since only about twelve to fifteen percent
of the people identify with it any more. Big business is distrusted by over 70 percent of
Americans and they can get only 14 to 19 percent of the voters, so they depend on money power
to keep control. Politicians are rated down there with used car salesmen as an occupation.
Voting is still at an all time low.
2
Figure 2 at the end of this Executive Summary is based on survey data, and shows the
casual reader the main idea. A new political constituency is emerging, whom I call the New
Progressives, and the easiest way to describe them is that they are at right angles to Liberal left
and Social Conservative right, and they are directly opposed to Big Business Conservatism. That
means that politics really has two dimensions, but we have not recognized it yet.
There really is no center for timorous politicians to run to: all that is in this center are the
politically alienated and ignorant who don’t vote. The second dimension pits globalization and
big business interests against ecological sustainability, women’s issues, consciousness issues,
national health care, national education, and an emerging concern for the planet and the future of
our children and grandchildren on it.
On the four points of the compass, this new group is definitely not “the center” or mushy
middle of Clinton lore. And they are also the biggest of the four constituencies at 36 percent of
population and 45 percent of likely voters. I describe the new constituency as New Progressives,
because they reflect the concerns of all the new social movements and consciousness movements
that have emerged over the last 40 years. Most of their issues are claimed by the Left, and sworn
at by the Right, but they don’t identify with either left or right. They are no more similar to
liberal left or religious right than business conservatives are. And they also reflect the wave of
values change that has been slowly moving through American life for the same time period,
which gave rise to the subculture whom I call Cultural Creatives. Some 55 percent look like a
relaxed definition of who are Cultural Creatives.
The New Progressives are more likely to be volunteers and give money to good causes,
and are more likely to have been in multiple social movement constituencies, and care more
about changing the culture, than the rest of society. They are at the intersection of all the
movement constituencies, and the marginal cost of mobilizing them should be small. If they are
mobilized under a single banner, as a big political tent that contains the movements, they may
wind up replacing one of the political parties and dominating American politics for the next
generation or more. This paper gives several pages of questionnaire responses by New
Progressives to show what they look like on values, attitudes, opinions and issues. What is
evident is people want politicians to start dealing with the real emerging problems that threaten
our children’s future.
3
The paper describes all four sides of the compass, and then shows how this has emerged
from cultural change, answering the question ‘What happened to the Left?’ in detail. In brief,
the answer is that the leaders of the left have not kept up with the changes in political culture
upon which all of our political institutions and political activity depend. And because those
changes grow out of all the new social movements of the last 40 years, the corporate media are
very careful not to cover them, or interpret them accurately. They’re mostly bad for business as
usual, and it is those movements which also set in motion the Cultural Creatives, who are
creating the emerging culture of the 21st century.
I also show the six underlying dimensions of the wave of cultural change that produced
this change, and how the data resembles a wave of change. Imagine politics-as-usual as a tightly
knit ball of ongoing conflict that is supported by the cupped hands of the political culture.
Without the continual support those webs of agreements, norms, values, social interpretations,
worldviews and daily practices, no institution can survive. What happens next if the culture
moves on, and the politicians and institutions are so preoccupied with power and locked in their
conflicts that they rigidly refuse to change? Probably that they fall out of those cupped hands,
splat on the floor! That is, legitimacy and confidence are withdrawn from politics....cont'd
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