You might also like

More about The Progress Trap

• Book details
• Synopsis
• Trending among others

You get 52 loyalty points

Book synopsis

The idea of progress, one of the animating ideas of Western civilization, has now gone global. From Marxism and neoliberalism to today’s mutant identity politics, it offers a framework of knowledge and confidence: an assurance that things will get better and that history is on our side. However, in doing this it creates a form of authority that is simultaneously imaginary and dishonest, resting on confidence in a future that is really contingent and unknowable. In The Progress Trap, Ben Cobley looks at this progressive mindset as a form of power, conferring a right to act and control others. ‘Change’, ‘transformation’ and the ‘new’ are the superior values, meaning destruction of the old: people, cultures and nature. It is a trap into which nearly all of us fall at times, so attractive are its stories and familiar its techniques. Hard-hitting but thoughtful, the book is a meditation on the sinister consequences of the progressive way of being: for ourselves, for our democracy, for our art and for the pursuit of real knowledge.

Book details

Book category Books in German Sozialwissenschaften, Recht, Wirtschaft Medien, Kommunikation Buchhandel, Bibliothekswesen

• Full title: The Progress Trap
• Author: Cobley, Ben
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardback
• Number of pages: 224
• EAN: 9781509567621
• ISBN: 1509567623
• ID: 47122374
• Publisher: Polity Press
• Weight: 490 g
• Date of publishing: 04. August 2025

Trending among others

---

---

---