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Notes -
Is that story about the trajectory of progress actually true, though?
I don't mean to pick on you; I don't really think that you're doing this in particular: I admit that the main reason this thought came to mind was because I misread a word in your post: instead of "abolitionism," I read "prohibitionism." Seemed a little out-of-place to call a failed movement inevitable – and you hadn't! But that got me wondering about the false starts that progress has taken over the years.
It's always possible to look back at the course of history, do some curve-fitting, and say that the main driver of social progress is – something. Say, “expanding circles of concern.” That will let you predict what's coming next – but will that prediction come true?
Suppose it doesn't. Then somebody else will look back, do some new curve-fitting, and come up with a different grand narrative about the direction of the march of progress. That in turn could get falsified and supplanted again.
All the failed explanations get either forgotten or dismissed as erroneous conclusions of less-enlightened ages-
-And nobody ever learns a thing.
Or, then again, maybe they do, and the newer narratives actually do hold ever-more predictive power. I guess we'll have to see.
I don't believe in the Whig view of history, no. There is chaos and contingency that spins history in the short duree. But I do have a theory of history rooted in historical idealism, and the ideologies that people hold do have — and yes, I'll use the dirty word — an inevitable influence on the sort of conflicts a society faces. Throughout the history of Catholic Europe there was a repeated rash of heresies that had to do with clerical poverty like Albigensianism or Hussitism; the reason we see social movements like this in 12th century Europe but not 2nd century Europe or 21st century Europe is that the ideology of the day was Christianity, and Christian dogma very obviously contradicted the political and economic reality. So people fought.
In the same way, it is inevitable that in a civilization where classical liberalism is the dominant ideology, the status of slaves, women, subject peoples, and the poor will be fought over in the form of Abolitionism, Feminism, Anti-Imperialism, and Socialism. How these movements articulate, and whether they succeed, is a historical crapshoot.
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