Appeals to the idea of historical progress have been made in all sorts of ideological debates about who is on the right or wrong side of history. Currently, we commonly hear references to historical progress toward a destined capitalist globalization. But what is historical progress? Does it exist? This paper will investigate the concept of progress and its application as a predicate of history, showing that a meaningful conception of historical progress involves some strongly teleological metaphysical commitments. In its broadest terms, 'progress' means a movement toward something. However, the term has three more specific meanings that we will consider here. Let 'efficient progress' be defined as movement toward the simple culmination of the movement itself - an outcome of purely efficient causes (e.g. the progress of a rock rolling toward the bottom of a hill). Let 'personal progress' be defined as movement toward the realization of a goal that exists in virtue of the aspirations of an individual or group (e.g. progress toward the completion of a building project). Let 'final progress' be defined as movement toward the realization of a goal that somehow transcends human ambitions (i.e., in the spirit of Aristotelian-style teleology). The very act of posing our question presupposes that history can be genuinely informative. Asking whether history is progressive while denying that it is informative involves one in the contradiction that Karl Popper produced by claiming, simultaneously, that "there can be no history of 'the past as it actually did happen'," and that "history has no meaning."1 If we are committed to the impossibility of ascertaining any objective knowledge about the past, on what basis can we make a definitive claim about it? This holds as well for claims about historical progress as for those about historical meaning. Popper claims that there are only historical interpretations.2 He writes that the interpretation of history that is taught as the 'history of mankind' is really only the 'history of power politics'. This history of power politics, in turn, "is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder."3 One wonders if that is to be taken as an assessment of the events as they happened, or only Popper's interpretation, as disconnected from the possibility of objectivity as he claims history to be. The use of an interpretation of history as a series of senseless atrocities to illustrate its meaninglessness could only amount to an interpretation of history as meaningless. This would be strange from one who claims that, "although history is meaningless, we can give it a meaning."4 It would seem, rather, to give history meaninglessness. But if Popper means that history is meaningless because it actually is just a series of senseless atrocities, then he will have conceded that an account of what actually happened is possible. To coherently ask or respond to questions about meaning or progress in history, one must admit the possibility of assessing, accurately and objectively, past events. To Popper's credit, he sees an important connection between the question of progress in history and that of meaning. If we claim that history is progressive, he writes, "We commit the same mistake as those who believe that history has a meaning that can be discovered in it and need not be given to it."5 Two claims that make the same mistake are likely to be closely related. Identifying the mistake will provide a clue to that relationship. For to progress is to move towards some kind of end, towards an end which exists for us as human beings. 'History' cannot do that; only we, the human individuals, can do it; ...by defending and strengthening those democratic institutions upon which freedom, and with it progress, depends.6 History cannot be predicated with 'personal' progress, because history is not what accomplishes goals set by persons; only the persons themselves can do that. Popper's observation is correct. The claim that history is progressive in the personal sense - that history moves toward goals set by people for themselves - cannot be meaningfully true. Multitudes have failed to accomplish their goals, and history is filled with struggle between people with conflicting objectives. One person's progress is another's regress - one's victory, another's defeat. Thus, it is as true that personal progress has occurred in history is as it is that personal regress has occurred. Neither can be predicated of history as a whole. This is not only because personal failure has occurred in history, but because personal progress is relative, in each instance, to the goals set by whoever is making, or failing to make, progress. Strengthening democratic institutions only counts as progress for those who have set goals toward which strengthening democratic institutions tends. It would be just as true to say that regress follows upon democratic institutions. Either claim would be objectively meaningless. And objective meaning is precisely what is sought when we ask if history is progressive. That is the relationship between the questions of the meaning and progress of history. We want to know if humanity has an end over and above the tragically contradictory goals set by its various members. Isaiah Berlin wrote, "To explain is to understand, and to understand, is to justify."7 If history can be explained as a movement toward an end that exists for humanity as a whole, then the discord of history could be justified. Berlin claimed that we are unable to conform, practically, to the relativist thesis. Popper's contradictions attest to the truth of this. We cannot function without believing that our efforts are objectively meaningful, and this depends on our being able to view our efforts as a movement, or part of a movement, toward an end that transcends our own preferences. It is not that history must be progressive in order to have meaning, but that the possibility for history to be progressive must exist. This possibility depends on the existence of an objectively meaningful end to which history as a whole can bear the relationship, either of movement toward or against. It may actually be that history is regressive, but even this would entail a goal toward which we ought to be moving. To ask if history is progressive is to presuppose that an objective end of history exists. To answer the question is to identify precisely what that end is, and this identification must occur whether the answer given is yes or no. In either case, progress as a movement toward an end that transcends personal ends must be postulated as a possibility, and can only be postulated as a possibility, on the supposition of such an end. Answering that history is progressive involves more than the claim that, as a matter of contingency, history has, at times, approached an objective end. As yet, history is incomplete, pending the arrival of the last tomorrow. Thus, anything predicated now of history as a whole is predictive in nature. In saying that history is progressive, the most important reference we make is to the future. It means, 'History is a movement toward an objective end at which it will necessarily arrive.' We have referred to such an end as a 'goal', hinting at the concept of 'final progress'. Have we, then, ruled out the possibility that history is progressive in the efficient sense - that history is a movement toward an end at which it will necessarily arrive in virtue of the action of purely efficient causes? This is how Marx interprets history. Passages of The German Ideology clearly rule out the idea that progress toward communism is taken as progress in the final sense. Communism is not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.8 Communism is inevitable, not because it is the "goal" of history, but in virtue of the material conditions of life. "Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the form of intercourse."9 This purely efficient mechanism is allegedly discoverable through a study of the historical events themselves. Many would take this to be an advantage of any assessment of history as progressive in the efficient sense: the metaphysical commitments one is obligated to undertake are likely to be fewer. All one needs to postulate is that the events occurred, and the materialist dialectic is subject to empirical verification. Certainly, it is logically possible that the course of history lead inevitably to a predictable end solely in virtue of a mechanism that resolves into a complex of efficient causes; but this renders both history and progress meaningless. That in virtue of which progress is called progress would be nothing over and above the fact that it is the end toward which history is inevitably being moved by the material conditions directing it. To illustrate the impact of this fact, imagine Marx, today, realizing that he hadn't taken into account some new material conditions of which he had no knowledge in his time, including nuclear weapons. Taking these into account, he now realizes that instead of communism, the next contradiction between the forces of production and the forms of intercourse will result, inevitably, in the annihilation of humanity - 'progress' is the inevitable movement of history toward annihilation. This 'progress', it must be noted, is no less meaningful than when Marx thought it would be communism. The objection that movement toward communism is more meaningful than movement toward annihilation invites the question: what elements, inherent in the former, are lacking in the latter, in virtue of which the former can be more meaningfully called progress? Both have been considered progress in virtue of the same fact - that of their being necessitated by material conditions. If communism as an end is more meaningful than annihilation, it could not be simply in virtue of its inevitability. We have seen that movement toward communism could not meaningfully claim to be the personal progress of history; it could only be the personal progress of communists. It could be argued that movement toward a particular goal (communism, capitalism, or otherwise) is historical progress, in spite of those who have set contrary goals, on grounds everyone ought to have that goal. But this would be an appeal to final progress. It would suppose a goal the value of which transcends the value assigned it by people who are adopting or rejecting it. To claim that history is progressive in any meaningful sense is to commit one's self to the reality of such a goal - with all the metaphysical commitments that may entail. Historical meaningfulness may then depend on our making those very commitments. Berlin, Isaiah. "Historical Inevitability," reprinted in Philosophy of History in Our Time. Hans Meyerhoff, ed. Doubleday-Anchor. NY, 1959. Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. The German Ideology. C.J. Arthur, ed. International Publishers. NY. 1999. Popper, Karl. "Has History Any Meaning?" from The Open Society and Its Enemies, reprinted in Philosophy of History in Our Time. Hans Meyerhoff, ed. Doubleday- Anchor. NY, 1959. 1 Popper 303, 304 2 Ibid 303 3 Ibid 305 4 Ibid 310 5 Ibid 311 6 Ibid 7 Berlin 260 8 Marx 56-57 9 Marx 89 The Implications of Historical Progress 1