Categories: Progressivism, Historiography

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Time Period: N/A 

Historians in 1970s assaulted Progressivism as a coherent ideology. They took three major approaches:

1. Pluralists emphasized the splintered nature of the Progressives, seeing them as fractured coalitions rather than a coherent movement. Many pointed towards disengagement with the established political parties and lower voter turnout as creating a vaccuum for Progressives to enter with modern issue-focused politics. 

2. Organizationalists, such as Wiebe, Galambos, and Hays emphasized the rise of large, bureaucratically ordered organizations, pointing towards these structural changes as influencing Progressive thought and strategies.

3. Marxists emphasized the influence of business in imposing a corporate organizational model on the world

Rodgers argues that Progressives drew on a grab-bag of ideas that weren't necessarily consistent with each other. He outlines three major strands of ideas:

1. Antimonopolism - this becomes more respectable and middle-class form its earlier iteration of Populism

2. Emphasis on social bonds - Progressives assaulted the excessives of individualism and instead advocated for larger social coherence: either a) in the form of the nation (like TR), or b) in the form of the community or family (like Jane Addams)

3. Language of social efficiency - Rodgers places its origin point in the middle of the period (around 1910) and describes its focus on social engineering and scientific rationalization