The idea of progress in history – how far have we come?

The idea of including human wellbeing in measuring societal progress is not new, but it is being re-thought in the 21st century. Prof Mike Salvaris looks at the history of ideas about human progress and explores their relevance today in this adaptation of a paper he wrote for the Australian Bureau of Statistics report, ‘Future Directions in Measuring Australia’s Progress’.

To measure anything properly, you must first be able to describe it. Measuring a concept as broad as the progress of a whole society is especially challenging because the idea of societal progress is complex, contestable and value laden.

Yet this idea has been a very powerful one in human history. First, because it requires us to imagine the kind of future life or world we want to ‘progress to’, or at the least, to have some model or ideal of ‘a good society’ against which to measure our contemporary social life. In this sense the idea of progress, like religion, is something that societies can believe in.

The second reason is more directly political – the model of progress or development that a society adopts will strongly influence the actual political and social outcomes in the society, and how they are perceived. So in modern societies the meaning of ‘progress’ also raises central democratic issues: What does it mean? Progress for whom? Who should decide?

For such reasons – and not least because it is inherently an interesting and challenging question for thinkers and policymakers alike – the idea of progress has been debated for thousands of years. In this journey it has taken on many different meanings and emphases, according to the times, and the prevailing culture, political regimes and circumstances of different societies and nations.

But, looking back over this long history, we can also see that a number of themes are common to most versions of progress. In a short essay, we can only highlight some of the main ideas that have emerged throughout history and note the ways they have differed or converged. All have added something to our present understanding and ideas about progress.

A short history: from Plato to Sen

The modern western concept of progress is often traced back to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries during the European Age of Enlightenment. But other and older cultures – Greek, Chinese and Buddhist, for example – had by then already developed their own distinctive notions of progress. In Asian thought, there is a long line stretching from Confucius and Buddhist teaching (500 BC) to the modern kingdom of Bhutan, which emphasises progress as ethical and spiritual development, happiness and integrity in government.

In Islamic teaching, it has been said that "sincere accomplished work towards progress and development is, therefore, an act of religious worship and is rewarded as such. The end result will be a serious, scrupulous and perfect work, true scientific progress and hence actual achievement of balanced and comprehensive development" (Muhammad El-Ghazali, Islamic theologian and philosopher, 1058-111).

The Greek philosopher Plato (427 –347 BC) developed a notion of progress as "a continuous process, which improves the human condition from its original state of nature to higher and higher levels of culture, economic organisation and political structure towards an ideal state. Progress flows from the growing complexity of society and the need to enlarge knowledge, through the development of sciences and arts". His countryman Aristotle (384 -322 BC) argued that human advancement must include both moral and ethical life (necessary to attain happiness or ‘eudaimonia’), and material life (necessary to meet basic needs, and provide ‘external goods’ such as health, wealth, and beauty). He also believed that successful communities must share common principles on what is important for wellbeing, and that consultation is an essential tool to develop consensus on what is important for the good life.

In mediaeval Europe the notion of broad social progress languished for centuries in the face of the more powerful ideas of ‘individual salvation’ and feudal hierarchy, and the lack of a strong common national or societal identity. But during the Renaissance a new notion of progress sprang up which increasingly came to be associated with scientific and cultural advancement. Francis Bacon (1561 –1626) was one of the earliest European thinkers to advance this view.

In the European Age of Enlightenment (17th-18th centuries) the belief in progress as a rational process and a universal aspiration developed. By force of reason and intellect, mankind could bring about a better world for all – social progress would be produced from the combination of good values and enlightened government with greater prosperity and the development of science and technology.

The impact of political revolutions in Britain, France and America was to associate progress more firmly with political rights, democracy and citizenship. In England, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill spoke of progress and wellbeing in terms of 'utility', with happiness of the greatest number the ultimate goal of humankind. But importantly, Enlightenment thinkers did not assert that progress was a historical destiny, rather they saw it as a possibility, vulnerable to human vagaries and resistance to change.

The Industrial Revolution with its optimism and the seemingly endless growth of science, industry and trade, led to a new direction in thinking about social progress. Progress began to be seen much more as a destiny, a kind of inevitable evolution (a view partly influenced by Darwin’s discoveries in biology) and subject to ‘laws of organic progress’. This position was shared by both social and political thinkers, but with very different consequences.

How did our thinking about progress change in the 20th Century? Certainly, this tumultuous era brought very mixed results for the idea of progress as a universal and unstoppable force. Against great leaps in science, technology, health, economic growth, social development and human rights, could be set the experience of two world wars, genocide, nuclear holocaust, cruel and oppressive political regimes, a global economic depression and, towards the century’s end, a global environmental crisis that scientists believe threatens not merely the progress but the survival of human societies. And it was in this century that the idea of the inevitability of progress, and technology, was applied perversely to justify the oppression of one race, class, or nation by another.

For much of the 20th Century, the dominant idea of progress was the notion of economic development, and especially the expansion of market economies, as the necessary vector for social development. GDP and National Accounts were seen as the main way of measuring social progress, although this was not the purpose for which these measures were originally designed.

This is not to assert that there were no other ways of defining and measuring progress – because in fact for much of the last half-century there has been a rich international debate about alternative ideas of progress and its measurement. In the late 20th century, for example, one influential contribution was Indian economist Amartya Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’, which stresses the primacy of freedom and democracy as the basis for people to make choices about their own lives and to achieve valuable functioning. In Sen’s model, wellbeing requires not just material possessions, but relationships, political freedom and a supportive work environment; and progress is multidimensional, and includes both material and non-material dimensions: good health, personal safety, education and knowledge all increase our capability to achieve wellbeing.

The movement towards sustainable development in the 1980’s and the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP’s) effort to measure human development have also sought to restore balance by portraying economic growth as a supporting pillar of human wellbeing rather than as its sole goal.

From a broader perspective, too, it can be said that the second half of the 20th century gave birth to the most systematic and widely agreed codification in history of the idea of societal progress, and the key principles, goals and strategies for achieving it: through the plethora of international agreements and standards that make up the United Nations system and especially its human rights framework. However, despite its detail and its authority, this framework has been less influential in practice within most governments and communities as the basis for debating or implementing actual social progress.

In the 21st century, however, there are encouraging signs of change.  A new global debate is under way to rethink the meaning of progress, and it encompasses related concepts such as well-being, human development and especially environmental sustainability. This debate may have had its origins in negative developments – such as perceived environmental and financial crises, or the need to move ‘beyond GDP’ in our thinking about progress – and its protagonists may have come from many diverse sources – environmentalists, community developers, feminists, development economists, human rights bodies – but it has now assumed the form of a genuine global movement and is increasingly beginning to converge around key agreed themes. The current global project of the OECD entitled Measuring the Progress of Societies, with its emphasis on the need to promote a debate about the meaning of progress in different communities, has been a powerful global stimulus and coordinator for this movement.

What have we learnt?

So, looking back over millennia of debate and conflict around the idea of progress, what are the lessons?  Can we draw out a definition of social progress, a model, a set of principles and components, which might be accepted as a basis for debating and measuring progress in Australia?

The UN Declaration on Social Progress and Development in 1969 attempted to document the international consensus on the meaning of progress of that time. It sets out in detail the rationale, principles, objectives and means to achieve societal progress and there is little in it which we might disagree with today, except perhaps its limited coverage of the environmental issues of progress.

If we were to try to list some of the most important ideas about progress that have emerged in its long journey to the 21st century, we would find that most still have relevance – and resonance – today.

The list below is by no means exhaustive.

• Progress is a possibility for human society, not an inevitability
• Progress must be related to our goals and values as a society
• In democratic societies the task of determining the priorities and goals of progress is necessarily a responsibility of citizens and governments
• Progress is a universal aspiration, inclusive of all members of society
• Progress multi-faceted and necessarily includes social, economic, environmental, cultural and democratic dimensions of life
• Progress includes improvement in both material wellbeing (health, housing, education, income, leisure, work life, etc)  and in ethical, moral and spiritual wellbeing
• Progress requires the full development of human capacity
• Progress necessarily means giving priority to the reduction of acute social disadvantage such as poverty, malnutrition, disease, and violence
• Improvements in education, culture, civilisation, and the arts are critical components of societal progress
• The progress of societies encompasses the healthy functioning of social institutions and systems and the broad qualities of the society (such as fairness, creativity, etc)  as well as the wellbeing of individuals
• Democracy, human rights, active and informed citizens and good governance are necessary ingredients of social progress
• Social progress is not possible in the absence of peace, security and good international relations
• Progress requires harmony and balance: in the life of people, and between people and nature
• Conservation and stewardship of natural resources and ecological systems is a precondition for human progress
• True progress is progress that can be sustained for future generations and the future of our planet

In a recent article reviewing the history of progress, the OECD concluded with a phrase that many may feel aptly summarises the key elements of the new paradigm of societal progress (and some older ones).

While notions of progress differ, they are united in the philosophy that “progress” comprises both material and non-material components. Many people are working to define and measure concepts such as wellbeing, quality of life, life satisfaction and sustainable development. All these concepts are related to each other, but they have different connotations … We consider that societal progress occurs when there is an improvement in the sustainable and equitable wellbeing of a society. (This) concept is broad enough to encompass most of the alternative views above mentioned and is coherent with the aim of the Global Project on “Measuring the Progress of Societies”, whose objective is not to impose a single definition of progress worldwide, but, as the Istanbul Declaration advocates, to “encourage communities to consider for themselves what ‘progress’ means in the 21st century”. (WikiProgress)

Mike Salvaris is Adjunct Professor, Applied Human Rights and Community Wellbeing Research, in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a member of the interim national committee of the Australian National Development Index; the Expert Reference Group for the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ project ‘Measures of Australia’s Progress’; and the Steering Committee for Community Indicators Victoria. He has been a long term participant and adviser in the OECD Global Project ‘Measuring the Progress of Societies’. Formerly a community lawyer and political adviser, Mike has worked extensively in the measurement of progress and wellbeing; democracy, social justice and human rights; community engagement and development; and strategic public policy. His work has included research, writing, broadcasting, teaching, policy and strategic development and community organisation with bodies including the UN, the government of Vietnam, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, the Australian Parliament, the Australian Prime Minister’s Department, Australian State and local governments, Australian Trade Unions and Councils of Social Service.