Illiberal Reformers

Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas C Leonard, 191 pages

Thomas Leonard defines Progressivism as "first and foremost, an attitude about the proper relationship of science (personified in the scientific expert) to the state, and of the state to the economy and polity."  Its chief principles he enumerates as "anti-individualism, social control, efficiency, and the authority of scientific experts".  This, in turn, explains its paradoxical tendency to treat the poor and marginalized simultaneously as "helpless victims in need of state uplift and as dangerous threats requiring state restraint."  In Illiberal Reformers, he demonstrates how these tensions played out in the early progressive enthusiasm for eugenics, prohibition, and even the minimum wage, which was initially supported as much as a prophylactic against cheap, "inferior" immigrant labor as a boon to "superior" native-born workers.

The narrative of Illiberal Reformers spans the Progressive Era (1890-1930) and the focus is on economics - Leonard rarely strays outside of these frames.  Unfortunately, his work sometimes gives the impression of being rather more comprehensive than it is.  Within the limits it sets for itself, Illiberal Reformers profoundly illuminates a vitally important moment and movement that are often fundamentally misunderstood, and lays bare the troubled history of certain basic assumptions that continue to shape our political debate, but it should be clear that the motives of the reformers of a century ago cannot be reflexively ascribed to their contemporary counterparts, nor can man be reduced to a mere homo economicus.