The idea of progress is one of the animating concepts of Western civilisation. It permeates our understanding of history and shapes the way we imagine the future. From Marxism and neoliberalism to today’s identity politics, progress offers a framework of knowledge and confidence: an assurance that things can get better and a justification for our desires.
What determines whether the ideas of progress give rise to, well, progress, or merely the substitution of the old?
In June 2025, we convened a conversation between author of The Progress Trap Ben Cobley, Spiked magazine’s deputy editor Fraser Myers, and environmental philosopher and former Extinction Rebellion spokesman Rupert Read.
Ben Cobley is a writer and journalist specialising in progressivism and identity politics.
His first book, The Tribe: the liberal-left and the system of diversity (2018) examined contemporary diversity as a system of conformity, including some groups while excluding others, notably the white working class.
His latest, The Progress Trap: The Modern Left and the False Authority of History, explores the idea of progress as a tool of domination and colonisation, grabbing authority based on apparent knowledge of history and the future.
Fraser Myers is deputy editor for the online magazine spiked and host of the spiked podcast. He campaigns for democracy and free speech. He also appears regularly in the media, including on the BBC, Sky News, ITV, and GB News.
Eco-philosopher Rupert Read is Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia.
He is the author of several books, including This Civilisation is Finished, Parents for a Future, and his latest, Transformative Adaptation – Another world is still just possible.
Find out more about Progressive Agendas.
If you enjoyed what you heard, do get a copy of Ben’s The Progress Trap, or The True and Only Heaven : Progress and Its Critics by Christopher Lasch.
The next event at Verdurin will be Disenchantment, a conversation with the author and philosopher Peter Rollins on the liturgy of lack and a religionless form of Christianity. Join us on 28 October 2026.
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