progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

The Telmarc Group
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
7. Allowance of twenty thousand pounds for the funeral expenses of persons travelling for
work, and dying at a distance from their friends.
8. Employment at all times for the casual poor in the cities of London and Westminster.
9. Abolition of the tax on houses and windows.
10. Allowance of three shillings per week for life to fifteen thousand disbanded soldiers,
and a proportionate allowance to the officers of the disbanded corps.
11. Increase of pay to the remaining soldiers of £19,500 annually.
12. The same allowance to the disbanded navy, and the same increase of pay, as to the
army.
13. Abolition of the commutation tax.
14. Plan of a progressive tax, operating to extirpate the unjust and unnatural law of
primogeniture, and the vicious influence of the aristocratical system. There yet remains,
as already stated, one million of surplus taxes. Some part of this will be required for
circumstances that do not immediately present themselves, and such part as shall not be
wanted, will admit of a further reduction of taxes equal to that amount.
If one were to read Paine in some detail and recognize that this was written over 220
years ago, he would be viewed as an extreme left wing radical. However unlike many
such current radicals Paine did the numbers as well.
In view of the many who have attached onto the early Paine, perhaps they should also
look at the later Paine and see where his thinking had gone. Of course this was written
when he was in France during its revolution which was one of the greatest redistribution
events of mankind.
4.3 JOHN DEWEY
John Dewey had a long and seminal influence on the US and its political views. It can be
argued that he was the initial US public intellectual and a founder of the group centered at
Columbia University.
We argue here that Dewey would become the lynchpin between the old and the new
Progressives. He managed to create an intellectual environment which catalyzed and
spawned the Progressives and established the basis for the neo-Progressives. Although an
avowed socialist, he was less than the classic socialist as one would see in that time and
place. He lacked any true understanding of the working man, albeit in close proximity to
the then leaders of the union movement. He was an activist and lent his name to many
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