Hirschmans Selective Memory

Now that I think about it (and I haven't actually read the book, just a Hirschman essay and multiple reviews of it, so I preface this with caveat), Hirschman's arguments against reaction seems to suffer from a bias. He selects only those progressive programs which succeeded: civil rights (the negative rights embodied in the Bill of Rights), political rights (universal suffrage), and economic rights (positive rights). That's convenient since you could say that since they exist, they must represent the people's will.

But what about those rights that were repudiated? The first that comes to mind is the right to live in a temperate society, another set of rights asserted in the Progressive Era. One can only imagine that the perversity, futility, and jeopardy arguments were deployed against it and ignored. Fast forward to today when the same arguments are brought out against the War on (some people who use some kinds of) Drugs. In the earlier case, the reactionaries would have been correct, while in the ongoing case, the reactionaries progressives *civil* libertarians are correct and probably in the majority. Yet, it goes on.

Hirschman therefore succumbs to survivorship bias in selecting the movements he did. What other great attempts can we think of that demonstrated the correctness of the reactionaries?

Aaron Haspel has a great take on Hirschman's theses at the God of the Machine blog.