ABSTRACT
All theories of progress have failed the test of time. Apart from the remaining Marxists, social evolutionists, and the plainly old-fashioned, no one nowadays holds a theory of progress of any consequence. The theory is dead as much from neglect as from actual opposition. The reasons for this are not difficult to find, for in the passing comment that progress usually elicits in the standard works of sociology, philosophy, politics or the history of thought in general, it receives neither experiential nor logical support. This is not because the concept of progress is intrinsically useless, but because it has been insufficiently specified, empirically utilized in a crude fashion, and disastrously oversimplified in its theoretical applications.
