Work in Progress
The book manuscript
My book manuscript, A Working Democracy: Progressivism and the Politics of Work, is under review. It’s a study of Progressive Era intellectuals in the United States, how they thought about work, and what they thought it meant for democracy. One contribution the book makes is a new interpretation of Progressivism as an ideology that centers work, an ideology that tried to make space for cross-class solidarity. Along the way, it makes an argument for including W.E.B. Du Bois among the Progressives, alongside Jane Addams, John Dewey, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. And it shows how figures like Herbert Croly of The New Republic magazine helped to synthesize and popularize their ideas in the period. I conclude by suggesting that there are aspects of the Progressives’ ideology of work that are worth keeping alive today, most of which are rooted in the Progressive intellectuals’ understanding of themselves as workers.