Just to the Left
Knoll, Erwin
Just to the Left Seventy-five years, but who's counting? BY ERWIN KNOLL When an institution—almost any institution—endures for a span of seventy- five years, it is appropriate to take notice....
...You will note as you browse through this issue that some contributors took their assignment quite literally, attempting to match the scope of their ruminations to The Progressive's stages of development...
...BY ERWIN KNOLL When an institution—almost any institution—endures for a span of seventy- five years, it is appropriate to take notice...
...1, dated January 9, 1909: "Ye shall know the truth," he wrote, "and the truth (we devoutly hopa) shall make you free...
...Such a collection, we concluded, would be fetchingly nostalgic but not especially useful to today's readers...
...This magazine has always been uncompromisingly opposed to militarism and war...
...It's comforting to know that the doubts that occasionally assail us are—like The Progressive's financial travails—by no means confined to the present time, but have been experienced and overcome before...
...Still, some things have changed...
...We considered and rejected the suggestion that we reprint articles by the illustrious authors who have graced these pages at one time or another, or pieces that seem, in retrospect, to have been particularly perceptive or prophetic...
...has alwaysbeen totally committed to civil liberties and civil rights...
...My grandmother was fond of greeting favored relatives with an endearing Old World blessing: "May God grant you 120 years...
...More than most political publications, The Progressive can boast of remarkable consistency over the years...
...At least...
...As this issue was in preparation, an irate subscriber—offended by something we had written or failed to write—demanded that we "articulate a cohesive political, philosophical, or journalistic value system...
...Just to the Left—period...
...To the dismay of some readers, we hold firm to the conviction that The Progressive needs no tidy platform and no party line...
...Once an impish nephew asked, "Why only 120...
...The slogan LaFollette chose for his magazine from the beginning was the Biblical injunction, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," but he hedged his bet in the very first issue—Volume I, No...
...A friend recently asked whether The Progressive is going through a mid-life crisis...
...Hope springs eternal...
...So we make no apology for this celebration of The Progressive's seventy- fifth anniversary, but we do offer a few words in extenuation...
...My instant reply was No, but as I thought about it I began to like the question: It assumed that we have another seventy- five years to go...
...Just to the Left of Carnegie Hall...
...They never lost sight of the possibility that they might be mistaken...
...It's called The Progressive...
...has always been wary of abuses of power, whether by government or by corporate elites...
...Fighting Bob LaFollette, the founding editor, certainly had more faith than we have in the power and willingness of government to ride herd on what he called "the malefactors of great wealth...
...Don't just look at your field of interest in terms of what has been happening this month or this year, we suggested...
...There is no fixed format, and we don't mind...
...Despite some small and pardonable lapses here and there, we generally resisted the temptation to turn this special issue into a festival of selfcongratulation...
...We decided that we wanted to mark this milestone by taking an unhurried look at the critical issues that preoccupy The Progressive today and that have preoccupied it over the years, so we asked some of our favorite writers to take a somewhat longer view than usual...
...One of the pleasurable aspects of compiling this special issue was the excuse it provided to thumb through old, yellowing volumes going back to 1909...
...We have no yardstick to measure the "correctness" of doctrine, no color chart to determine whether a particular point of view is in its proper place on the political spectrum...
...And where does The Progressive stand...
...has always resisted assaults on the environment...
...Another noteworthy change over the course of seventy-five years is the attitude toward technology: The early Progressives shared a confidence in it as an instrument of social betterment that strikes us as touchingly naive in the nuclear age...
...He believed that regulatory apparatus could be devised to protect the citizenry from the depredations of special interests, and many liberals still cling to that faith today...
...Human enterprises are, after all, notoriously fragile and transitory, and none more so than political publications in these United States...
...Others construed our instructions loosely or ignored them altogether...
...We confined our reminiscences, therefore, to a few light sketches and the brief excerpts that appear in the margins of this issue—and we selected those to reflect not only the magazine's remarkable prescience through the decades, but also its occasional sheer foolishness...
...But what impresses most in those old volumes is not the particular stance, right or wrong by today's standards on one issue or another, but the persistent willingness to entertain—and publish— views that must have been at odds with the editors' own...
...look at where we've been and where we seem to be headed...
...We have been shown time and again, however, how quickly the regulatory agencies come to be dominated by the interests they are supposed to regulate...
...To the best of our ability, we do that every month...
...For many years, a New York restaurant has advertised, "Where does the Russian Tea Room Stand...
...When you get to 120," she replied, "we can pray for more...
...By the same token, there is no synchronized (or synthesized) point of view...
Vol. 48 • July 1984 • No. 7
