Scorsese makes a fool of himself...again

In the latest Harpers, Martin Scorsese has written a wonderful analysis and memoir of sorts about Fellini and his films.  It shows his deft director talents, and how much films have meant emotionally and artistically for him. However, Scorsese's essay is marred by his continued inability to understand anything outside himself regarding the film "business." In the early part of the essay, Scorsese rails that the streaming industry is too focused on "content," not whether what is shown, i.e. the "content," is good, bad, or mediocre.  He then laments at the end of the essay:

We can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema. In the movie business, which is now the mass visual entertainment business, the emphasis is always on the word "business," and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property—in that sense, everything from Sunrise to La Strada to 2001 is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the “Art Film” swim lane on a streaming platform.

Scorsese bases his observation on his own limited life of coming of age in the early 1970s and being in NYC in the 1970s, which occurred between the fall of the major studios and the rise of the big independents in the 1980s. Scorsese has no understanding of anything that came before him, or occurred outside his rarified existence that started with his initial success in the early to mid 1970s.  I truly doubt Scorsese has read much about the history of Hollywood as an industry, as nothing I've read from him shows any engagement with the overall history.  I highly doubt he has read Lawrence Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, either of the Lew Wasserman bios by Connie Bruck or Dennis McDougal, or other deeply researched and analyzed works regarding the film industry--and I can guarantee he never even heard of Gilbert Seldes' The Great Audience (1950), which nails the rise and dominance of radio and films, and the early history of television (Gilbert was an entertainment industry executive and journal editor who actually understood how directors and writers got and lost their jobs).  It is extraordinary to me how ignorant Scorsese is about anything that can't fit into his continuing autobiography.

Scorsese's essay opens with a clever faux script of a person who is in 1970s Manhattan, and how one could walk to any number of film houses to see all sorts of intriguing and offbeat films there, and one could check the Village Voice for what was playing over the next week. Yeah, Marty. That was true. But, I lived in New Jersey at that time, and, in my deep suburban life, all we had was a bunch of Dirty Harry/Death Wish type films--and if we were "lucky" (sarcasm alert) Willard. And unlike the myriad of film houses in Mahattan, we had film houses that had one screen, and maybe two screens--before superplexes of the late 1980s and forward. For people like me and a hundred million other people, we had to get on a train to get to a major, major city (mine was Manhattan) to see any of the films Scorsese references. I admit I also remember a revival house in Linden, NJ, but that played relatively few foreign films for a few days apiece, and more often gave us offbeat films, which I loved, such as Harold & Maude. That was the best we got. It was not as wide a choice as we get now in our homes through streaming channels. That is much more than a "swim lane," Marty.  

Scorsese reminds me of the people who lamented the rise of Border's and B&N in the late 1980s and 1990s, saying, "Oh, they are going to put Shakespeare & Co. in Berkeley out of business!"  My response to such people then was, "Whoa! Before Border's, us folks in the deep suburbs or worse had only the B. Dalton/Waldenbooks in a mall which only carried what I called 'Self Help Diet Books By Lee Iacocca.'" I had to travel literally to Berkeley to Shakespeare & Co. to get the latest Chomsky or anything that was from a university press. Borders was outstanding in its selection, and when B&N came in not far behind, it was awesome to be able to get those books in the deep suburbs outside NYC or Los Angeles or any other major, major city. And yes, Shakespeare & Company did eventually close down, but more because the owner got too old to run it, the rise in property values--and rent--on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, and of course the Internet.  It wasn't Border's. Not by a long shot.

This is what is wrong with Scorsese's argument against "content." Of course the studios are a business, Marty. File that under "No shit, Sherlock." For me, I personally don't give a damn that a lot of the content being produced for streaming television is "crap," to quote Sy Benson in My Favorite Year (1984) talking about Benji Stone's love for Alan Swann movies. What I care about is I now have access, on streaming channels, to see Brief Encounter (1945) on TCM through HBO Max.  And La Strata is there, too.  

Scorsese is a brilliant director, and I revere so many of his films.  But, I remain stunned at his having so little understanding of the history of Hollywood as a business. We can now add that Scorsese has no understanding what it is like to live where 90% of Americans live when it comes to access to films and television series. Scorsese is becoming a grand old man of cinematic history for corporate media, and it is so wrong for anyone who wants to understand the actual history of the film industry. Scorsese's comments regarding Marvel films were bad enough. But now he is revealing in full view how he has never engaged with the way "highbrow" and "lowbrow" in art developed and continues to exist in modern society over the past 140 years. 

Whenever Scorsese opines about business trends outside his own life story, he may as well be telling us to get off his lawn. Just as Scorsese missed the remarkable combination of "highbrow" and "lowbrow" exhibited in so many of the Marvel films of this still unfolding century (and yes, I think we are now past peak superhero film genre), Scorsese is missing how our national television experience has been significantly enhanced for those of us who don't live in the rarified world he lives in. Because of the explosion of "content" Scorsese is lamenting, those of us who seek quality film making and television series are able to see such artistic works ANYWHERE and ANYTIME. We don't have to travel and hang in Manhattan any longer. We now can watch La Strada when we want with a click of our clicker. I'll take that over the way things used to be.  And the sooner you get your head out of your navel, Martin, the more wise you will be about things you obviously don't understand about the executives who produce and distribute your films.

B'tsalem calls Israel an apartheid state and American Jews are not interested in knowing how that conclusion was reached

Oh, American Jews are doing their best to not know about this report from B'tsalem, a Jewish-Israeli-lawyer dominated organization in Israel. Trust me. There is not a rabbi in nearly temple or synagogue in the United States who will talk about this, and if they do, they will likely vehemently deny its conclusions. The corruption within our temples and synagogues, largely from big donors who have more of the late Sheldon Adelson's politics, is nearly ubiquitous. 

I know, I know. "The Arabs!" See? We don't even have to finish the sentence. We know and genuflect immediately. "The Arabs!" That's all American Jews are taught to know. It allows us to end all discussion. It allows us to ignore the oppression inflicted on Arabs. It allows us to ignore the continued encroachments on lands where Arabs dwell, whether it is a bad faith permitting system that allows Israeli military bulldozers to destroy homes and seize land, or seize water sources. It allows us to ignore the fact the Israeli military is the largest and most trained military apart from the US, China, and Russia. It allows us to ignore how Hamas political leaders, yes, Hamas, since 2007 or so, have offered olive branches, only to be swept aside and ignored by Netanyahu and nearly all of the Israeli Jewish establishment parties. We won't find any solace in the Blue & White, or any other so-called "unity" party. 

We must also face the following fact: B'tsalem consists of people who have been marginalized in Israel, especially during this still unfolding century. The same may be said of the opinion writers and reporters at Haaretz. I feel badly for these people, who live in a land where the majority fo Israeli Jews who vote have voted for apartheid--and yet those voters have the audacity to cynically use victim cards, while denying what it is they actually stand for. They cry "We don't have a partner for peace!" No, they are the partner who doesn't want peace.

Oh, and did anyone hear about this in any discussion on MSNBC or CNN?  Just wondering.  I think I know the answer.

Drive-Bys for a Cold, Wintery February Morning in New Mexico Before Going to Teach Classes

*This book, "Virtue Hoarders," from UC Irvine professor, Catherine Liu, is must reading. It is only about 90 pages and is more of a footnoted, well reasoned manifesto regarding what Barbara (and her husband John) Ehrenreich, in the 1980s, called the professional-managerial class (PMC).  Liu nails so many things here, as people should just start with her introduction, as most of the book is available online here.  I am a class traitor to the PMC most of my adult life.  Liu has never made me more proud of that singular fact.  An interview with her at Jacobin's YouTube site is here if you don't want to read. Liu also makes the case how the professional class is falling behind the managerial class, starting with adjunct professors who won't have the economic stability of tenured full time professors. I would add lawyers who work for law firms, and doctors working for large medical groups, or hospitals, won't make what their predecessors-owners have made, and yet suffer from crippling student debt.  It is why the argument against canceling all student debt, and only some, misses the point. Even that $200K salaried doctor has big student debt from medical school (lawyers tend to have at least $150K from three years of $50K tuition at law school).  That has kept these millennials far behind the boomers in wealth accumulation.  All that the means test people have left is meanness, which is "Hey, you shouldn't have gone to law school or medical school, sucker!"  Never mind it would be good for the economy.  Such people only think lowering rich people's taxes is good for the economy.

*When you leave such people behind economically, and leave them to television and radio presentation and reenforcement of cultural resentments, this, the January 6th Capitol insurrection, is where such people tend to end up. This result is not much different than the effect from US foreign policy, from the 1950s forward, that undermined and destroyed early to mid--20th Century secular and leftist Pan-Arabism, leaving only the Ayatollahs to express human pain in the Middle East region. And we see how that worked out.

*It is part of the metaphorical sickness of the Failed States of America that we not only can't get employees in this nation a few sick leave mandated under law, but a guy like this putz Republican in Pennsylvania can think it wise to introduce a bill that would say to states and cities, "No federal aid if you mandate sick pay leave." Anyone who tells you that if we mandated three days of sick pay leave, meaning at least three days as a minimum, their business will fail either deserve to fail because they don't know how to run a business anyway, or is simply a liar. Yes, anyone who wants to debate this, I did have to run a payroll for nearly nine years as a synagogue president--and I not only gave people employed with us generous sick pay leave, but also raised their salaries fairly significantly over that time. And what happened? Did this little synagogue go broke? No, it is going strong even in the pandemic, and even with the usual turnover, and some unusual turnover of a new rabbi. To think McD's (really franchisees) can't give its employees sick pay leave is beyond ridiculous. And please don't tell me sop stories about the little corner business. They can do it, too. Oh, and here's the funniest argument: "I give sick pay, but I am not going to force my competitors who don't to do so." Really, how kindhearted for your asshole competitors. You must be in a union of business people. What do you call yourselves? Asshole Union Local 666?

* Joe Biden to minimum wage workers: I am not your president. Sorry. I only listen to the rich people. No federal minimum wage steps to $15 an hour, even though many states have already implemented such things. So, you may ask yourself, which states have not?  Well, more than a few are states with high African-American populations, but not sufficient to get the changes themselves.  Glad to see Joe fighting for the African-Americans he used to win South Carolina's Democratic Primary, and vanquish the only true champion for aggrieved minorities, Bernie Sanders. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Do some of you watch MSNBC or CNN?  I forgot. You think Bernie is a racist enabler or maybe a racist himself. Yeah, you're not manipulated. Not in the least. Why don't you vote for Elizabeth Warren again? LOL.

* Nancy Plousy needs the Republican Party to survive so corporate rich people grifter politicians such as Plousy and Schumer can keep down workers in America, and leave the workers to seething cultural resentments against each other, courtesy of our corporate owned media news outlets.  So, is it any surprise that Nancy Plousy is so worried the Republicans may implode as a party? If it does, it will cause progressives and good hearted people to finally consider leaving the husk known as the national Democratic Party.  Good heavens!  

What is fascism and how one may see, from the definitions, why those definitions matter in our time and moment

For those who still wince or are confused as to why I call Trump and his Republican enablers fascist, here are a couple of definitions, one from a scholar who has studied fascism, and a couple of quotes from Benito Mussolini. Then, I provide a compellingly simple insight about fascism, and the way in which "friendly" fascism in the US is being replaced by increasingly authoritarian fascism. Your wealthiest friends will, I promise you, support fascism in its full form to keep their privilege, sooner or later.

1. Jason Stanley, political philosopher, Yale University, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Penguin Random House 2018); How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press 2015), describes how Fascism makes its appeal in societies which have had some experience in a democracy or a republic: “One of the hallmarks of Fascism is the ‘politics of hierarchy’—a belief in a biologically determined superiority—whereby Fascists strive to recreate a ‘mythic’ and ‘glorious’ past…(while) excluding those they believe to be inferior because of their ethnicity, religion, and/or race.” I would also add those who, today, scream "There's only two genders--period!" (start here for a biology lesson) or who still can't support same sex marriages. 

2. Benito Mussolini, founder of the term Fascism, Italy’s dictator from 1922-1943, called Fascism, as a political philosophy, “The Corporate State” (a speech from 1933), where Mussolini stated how, once capitalism reaches a crisis, capitalists must throw themselves “into the very arms of the State” to form the “corporative economy,” which is what led Mussolini to establish, in the Fascist regime he led, the Council of Corporations, which directed the day-to-day functions of the Italian nation’s economy. On April 21, 1930, Mussolini stated, in the course of a speech to corporate leaders in Italy, “It is in the corporation that the Fascist State finds its ultimate expression…According to the Fascist conception, the corporation is the organ which makes collaboration systematic and harmonic…”

3. "No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges"— Spanish anti-fascist, Buenaventura Durruti, quote from an interview with Pierre van Paassen, July 24, 1936.

4. Bertram Gross, in his book, "Friendly Fascism," released in 1980, explained how even Cold War liberals were trending toward fascist economic beliefs, and how their political elitism was poisonous to the best democratic/republican values.

Bartels' latest public opinion analysis and the limits of public opinion analysis as practiced

I have respected Larry Bartels' analyses over the past twenty years more than most of his perch in political science land. In 2008, Bartels saw how democratic or republican (ideas, not political parties) values were eroding, as the non-coastal parts of the US had been hollowed out by trade deals and automation (although I wonder how he feels about his critique of Thomas Frank these days, especially as one begins to study the Knight Foundation as to who are the primary non-voters). Bartels' latest study (hat tip to a friend who is a retired Political Science professor from the University of California) is about how there is a growing lack of confidence in our public commitment to open government--but how the Republicans who have lost that confidence are more dangerous because theirs is rooted in ethnic and racial prejudices, and apocalyptic civil-war rhetoric. If I read Bartels' analysis correctly, he finds 20-30% of partisans in each political party who openly express a belief that violence is justified, and strongmen/women are required for leadership. He even found anti-democratic values more openly stated as an idea among Democratic Party partisans at least in regards to one question Bartels' study had asked.

Where Bartels does not go, and this is not a criticism of Bartels, is to find out, for example, which group of Dems want to have the president from their party shut down the other parties' controlled Congress. I think Bartels, if cornered, would assume it is more likely the AOC-Berniecrat activist. I would demur to that assumption or hypothesis. My gut is it is more the MSNBC truster who would want Biden to dissolve the entire Congress if the Congress goes fully Republican in 2022 (and it likely will if Biden governs as Biden intends). As an economically left New Dealer, I didn't trust Obama and I don't trust Biden. If they did declare martial law, they would do so to enforce a neo-liberal or corporate economics in a dictatorship, not complete the New Deal. After all, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has little to no problem with the way in which Google, Disney, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and other corporations bow to Chinese government censorship, and have no substantive problem with Chinese labor policies that replicate capitalist accumulation period-England, but under a Maoist-Communist banner.  It is why corporate Dems refuse to work to enact card check or other labor reforms, or seek to give more power to the International Labor Organization, unlike their trade tribunals in the various trade agreement regimes created over the past nearly thirty years. The corporate Democrats are the ones who sided with corporate Republicans in establishing the global corporate order through international trade agreements they called "free trade," but which highly regulated intellectual property and agriculture favoring American agribusiness, and pushed manufacturing to lower wage/more exploitable work force nations.

I make this point because, unlike the much more complicated Democratic Party partisan divides, the Republicans who wanted Trump to shut down the Congress are pretty easy to find. And the sources those folks rely on for their world views are talk radio, FoxNews, and increasingly QAnon, NewsMax, and OANN--where there is a grooming for civil war to lead to a white nationalist/Fascist dictatorship to "save" America. Hence, Bartels' concern. It is in these media sources one finds the screaming white cultural grievances, and grooming for Fascism. When the economic populist component is mentioned, it is more where it is couched in language of government assistance for "in-crowd" people, but with harsh criminal laws that tend to more keep down those who are not in the racial or ethnic "in-crowd." 

I remain convinced, not dissimilar to Thomas Frank and Christopher Lasch formulations, an economic populism of a Bernie type can most effectively recreate class solidarity across racial and ethnic lines, and stabilize belief in open government values--IF one is interested in protecting the stability of a society instead of taking care of your own short-term economic needs. The Republican Party's approach is clearly trending toward authoritarian Fascistic class divisions along cultural lines, and ethnic/racial lines. The corporate Democratic Party line believes more in meritocracy and political pluralism, where diversity reigns in superficialities of skin color and gender, but where the elite interests are most protected and promoted--even to the detriment of the many who are increasingly left behind in global-oriented markets. It remains my contention the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has a symbiotic relationship with the Republican fascists, where one side breeds more of the other side.  The fact that many working class people who voted for Trump can conflate Democratic Party politicians with rich people should be enough to ask how and most importantly why that is.

The fact that questioning has been so long ignored (and, worse, denied, as in Bartels' critique of Thomas Frank's major book on American politics) is the purpose of this post. My prime criticism of public opinion political scientist researchers is they so rarely question whether people are able to correctly self-identify "what" they are--meaning left, liberal, moderate, conservative, right. I say this despite the fact political scientists and pollsters have long recognized and documented how the majority of Americans, when asked about specific policy issues, are "liberal"-"left", not "center" or "moderate," at least as how those political philosophy conclusions are defined in corporate media. The disconnect, where people self-identify as "moderate" or "conservative" compared to "liberal," while somehow wanting steep wealth and progressive income and capital gains taxes, higher minimum wages, single payer health care, cancelled student debt, and free college tuition, to take a few examples, has to do more with propaganda techniques which deeply embedded themselves in our corporate-sponsored media-directed discourse that makes opinion surveys akin to asking fish about whether they notice the water.  This blind spot also applies to "journalists," pundits, and political scientists themselves, who, when pushed on structural bias, are wont to yell, "Bias? You must be a conspiracy theorist!"

I have long said a proper public opinion survey (and this goes for overrated hacks such as Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who studies people's political views and values) should and must apply Daniel Bell's formulation that uses the modifiers "economic," "political," and "cultural" to qualify the spectrum words "left," "liberal," "moderate," "conservative," and "right." Bell called this his "three realms" methodology in his brilliant book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976). Applying this methodology to himself, Bell would say to interviewers, "I am an economic radical, a political liberal, and a cultural conservative. So what am I? Liberal or Conservative?"  And he would almost always smile with the recognition of confusing the interviewer.

Too often, most Americans, not able to articulate the structure of their own beliefs, begin, without consciousness, with "cultural" issues to determine if someone is a "liberal" or "conservative," or "far left" or "far right"--without recognizing they are doing so. They rarely cite economical and political theories and policies to define someone as "liberal" or "conservative," nor ask how their own economic or political philosophies or policy views interact with how they evaluate the overall world views. This is most frustrating because, in Daniel Bell's other works, Bell taught us how global corporate capitalism, emboldened with trade treaties, was making economics primary for understanding the world.  He did not, of course, mean we should be listening to economists over sociologists, political scientists, and historians--as he recognized how corporate power capture of college or university economics departments had long occurred. 

This leads to the second problem I have with political scientists' public opinion surveys and analyses: Too often, political scientists refuse to engage with the structural biases in modern official/corporate media. They think, if they do so, they are making value judgments about the media people consume, and worse, becoming "political"--and therefore biased. I agree this is a very real problem in conducting experimental and empirical analyses, and that attempting to quantify the degree to which media sources influence the way voters evaluate their own world views is probably impossible--at least without putting yourself directly into the analysis. However, if a political scientist's public opinion analysis ignores the way in which corporate-owned media outlets, upon which the majority of Americans rely, frame what is or is not discussed, and how various topics are discussed or not discussed, then the political scientist's analyses tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies at best, or, worse, reenforce, under the guise of scholarship, the very propaganda they have ignored. 

Yes, it is harder to do a "press" or "media" criticism within a public opinion survey analysis, but if one begins with the questions using the Bell Three Realms Methodology, one can begin to help improve the way in which readers of political science analyses, and citizens answering the political scientists' surveys, can more effectively and accurately self-identify. This means political scientists should learn how to more effectively recognize how language is used in corporate media presentations, how questions are asked in different ways of different political actors, and where assumptions of legitimacy are made that fall more in line with corporate hierarchies of the media companies themselves--and corporations in general. 

If I was to have an opportunity to speak to a group of political scientists, I would say they should take history of journalism courses that critically review and analyze the works of Will Irwin, Upton Sinclair (The Brass Check), George Seldes (Freedom of the Press), Ben Bagdakian (The Media Monopoly), and Robert Parry (Fooling America), as well as the examples provided in Noam Chomsky/Ed Herman's Manufacturing Consent.  It would greatly help political scientists better formulate how to construct questions in surveys that better control for survey responders' own misunderstanding of the structures of their own world views, and to begin to understand how people are as manipulated in politically-oriented conclusions or opinions they express as they are to prefer Coke or Pepsi. Political scientists may also learn more about how large institutions control for dissent in interview and intern processes, where one has gone to college, etc.  Chuck Todd and Tucker Carlson did not materialize out of nowhere, ya know?

In short, to err on the side of letting people self-identify creates garbage-in/garbage-out analyses that reenforce the very trends that cause even learned people to be surprised at how we got to where we are in American politics. And, too often, political scientists fall prey to recapitulating, under public opinion surveys that ask who is "liberal" or "conservative," the very corporate biases that continue to bedevil and confuse us as a society.

What right wingers understand and The Squad and too many progressive movement leaders do not understand

Notice the difference: 

ON THE ONE HAND: We hear progressives, including The Squad, who won't leverage their power to withhold their vote for Pelosi unless Pelosi lets Medicare for All go to the floor for a vote. They say it is "performative" since they don't believe it will suddenly pass--notwithstanding it would expose the disconnect between people outside Congress and who gets elected in Congress. 

ON THE OTHER HAND: We hear right wingers doing the ultimate performative vote this week to try and overturn the election of Biden over Trump, knowing it will fail--and even knowing the base is delusional about the election results. So why are these right wingers doing this? To please their base, and build their movement power for later elections. They know how performative acts work. They know how performative acts, whether it is black college students defying Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights leadership, and deciding to walk into a diner in Greensboro, NC in 1960 and sitting down, or marching to protest Soviet treatment of Jews in Russia/Soviet Union, translates into political power. Unlike progressive leaders, and The Squad, the right wingers in Congress know their performative act builds their own national reputations among influencers and activists.  And they will win elections off of this in places where the Dem brand is already toxic, and make inroads in states Biden won in 2020. This is so even though the right wingers are delusional about what they want to do, which is overturn a legitimate election that rejected their cult leader, Trump.

And yet, progressives won't do what the majority of Americans want, M4A, in a pandemic.

Jimmy Dore is correct, again and again. Yes, I disagree with the way Jimmy calls out Bernie and AOC, and highly disagree with his belief Trump's ties to Russia are a hoax. But, when someone is correct on something like this, as Jimmy is, then we don't throw out the idea because of how we feel about one guy, i.e. Jimmy Dore. If you can't see what Jimmy is saying because Jimmy is saying it, then read this article from Briahna Joy Gray in Current Affairs.

And #Forcethevote.  Sign here.  And call your Congresscritters tomorrow.  Oh, and sign up at the Movement for a People's Party here.

1971-2021: The best albums released in 1971 are turning 50 this year

Oh my. 2021. Fifty years from 1971. This is the year progressive rock flowered, and would remain in the flower mode for another three or four more years, before the wilting began. The albums were mostly complete albums, meaning every song was great. For progressive rock bands of this time through 1975, at least, one saw bands attempt to ensure an album was an experience. 

Jethro Tull: "Aqualung"
Emerson Lake & Palmer: "Tarkus"
Genesis: "Nursery Cryme"
Gentle Giant: "Acquiring the Taste"
Van der Graaf Generator: "Pawn Hearts"
Pink Floyd: "Meddle"
Yes: "The Yes Album" and "Fragile" (UK release was in November 1971; US release Feb 1972)
King Crimson: "Lizard" and "Islands" (latter released in late Dec 1971 in UK, in Jan 1972 in US)
Moody Blues, "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor"
The Who: "Who's Next" (yeah, The Who were in definite prog mode then)
Le Orme: "Collage"
Focus, "Focus II" (with the one big hit that made it to AM radio)
McDonald & Giles: (Self-titled)
Frank Zappa and the Mothers: "Live at the Fillmore East"
Electric Light Orchestra: "No Answer" (first album, most progressive)
Alice Cooper Band, "Love it to Death" (you don't know this one? Just. Get. It. And try to tell me there are not progressive elements throughout this album. Yeah, back then...) and "Killer"
Traffic: "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"

And that's just the progressive albums. There were so many classic albums released in this year as well:

The Doors, "LA Woman" (last Jim Morrison with the Doors album)

Beach Boys, "Surf's Up" (this has some outstanding tracks on it, starting with the brilliant title track; plus, "Student Demonstration Time")
Led Zeppelin, "L Z IV" (yes, with "Stairway to Heaven")
Humble Pie, "Rockin' the Fillmore" (with the classic rendition of "I don't need no doctor!" Haven't heard it? Look it up)
David Bowie, "Hunky Dory"
Paul Winter Consort, "Icarus"
Detroit, Self-titled (the best rendition of the Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll" I ever heard; this was Mitch Ryder going sorta prog, but more AOR rock style)
Black Sabbath: "Master of Reality," which may be the truly first pure heavy metal album
Allman Brothers, "Live at Fillmore East" (with the great rendition of "Whippin' Post") and "200 Motels" (soundtrack)
Carole King, "Tapestry" (yeah, THAT album!)
Carly Simon, Self-titled (yup, the first album!)
Paul & Linda McCartney, "Ram"
John Lennon, "Imagine"
Rod Stewart, "Every Picture Tells a Story" ("Maggie May," "Stay with Me," and title track alone worth the album)
Joni Mitchell, "Blue"
Cat Stevens, "Teaser and the Firecat"
The Move, "Message from the Country" (a splendid album. Another: Just. Get. It.)
Don McLean, "American Pie" (album is great, too!)
Harry Nilsson, "Nilsson Schmilsson")
Paul Kanter/Grace Slick, "Sunfighter")
Freddie Hubbard, "Sing Me a Song of Songmy" (God taught me to play the guitar...Just look it up on 

Youtube. Wild!)

And there are more I missed.