Progressives see themselves as, well, progressive. But they aren't. Even at their best, in opposing the national security state, they support massive government power in other realms of life. At heart they are social engineers. They seek a "moral equivalent of war," that is, regimentation without bloodshed. They are even anti-democratic when it suits them.
We can see all of this through the eyes of Ludwig von Mises. This is from his book Planned Chaos (1947; free audiobook here). Mises, of course, championed the unhampered market economy, or laissez-faire capitalism. He wrote:
In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Their buying and their abstention from buying ultimately determine what the entrepreneurs produce and in what quantity and quality. It determines directly the prices of the consumers' goods and indirectly the prices of all producers' goods, viz., labour and material factors of production. It determines the emergence of profits and losses and the formation of the rate of interest. It determines every individual's income. The focal point of the market economy is the market, i.e., the process of the formation of commodity prices, wage rates and interest rates and their derivatives, profits and losses. It makes all men in their capacity as producers responsible to the consumers. This dependence is direct with entrepreneurs, capitalists, farmers and professional men, and indirect with people working for salaries and wages. The market adjusts the efforts of all those engaged in supplying the needs of the consumers to the wishes of those for whom they produce, the consumers. It subjects production to consumption.
