If the countervailing ideology to Progressivism is Conservatism, what is the countervailing ideology to Reactionary movements?

Question

Background

In the United States, Progressivism has been associated with sets of (normally left leaning relative to the political spectrum of the time) political reforms whose number and societal effect were noticeable in the time period. These reforms have been traditionally tempered, or opposed by - normally right wing or right leaning- groups called Conservatives.

The opposite of Progressivism, from this standpoint, seems to be Reactionary reforms. That is, a (typically) right-wing movement that gains historical notoriety by the number of reforms overturned, or reforms antithetical to Progressive ideas enacted, with comparable societal effect and number as a Progressive movement would be. However, unlike in the general Progressive-Conservative dynamic I mentioned in the first paragraph, I have not heard of the countervailing political movement during a Reactionary period That is, I do not know the second political term that would accompany a Reactionary-??? Dynamic.

Question

Given the political dynamics explained above, what is the term for the countervailing political movement to Reactionism that would be analogous to the "Conservative" counter-weight of a "Progressive-Conservative" dynamic?

Answer 1

Technically speaking, I suppose the counterpoint to 'reactionary' would be 'revolutionary'. The term 'reactionary' refers to elements of conservative movements who are not merely concerned with preserving social, political, and economic traditions and institutions, but who actively try to (re)assert defunct, discarded, or sometimes even imaginary traditions and institutions. If a conservative is someone who says 'let's not break what we have for the sake of progress', a reactionary is someone who actively wants to break what progress we have in order to return to some idealized previous moment.

We see that same distinction between progressives and revolutionaries. A progressive wants the current social, political, and economic system to evolve into something 'better' through more-or-less standard political means; a revolutionary wants to toss the current status quo in the garbage bin and throw in a match, rebuilding institutions from the ground up.

However, it's worth noting that reactionaries and revolutionaries are largely indistinguishable: both groups are people who have decided to become progressively more violent in the pursuit of an ideal. Reactionary and revolutionary movements are not really the ends of the Left/Right spectrum. R/R reflects a separate dimension: a Civil/Militant dimension. On one end there are conservatives and progressives who want to engage with and work within civil democratic institutions, on the other there are conservatives and progressives who reject civil democratic institutions and wish to force their ideology on others. The more 'ends justifies the means' a group becomes, the more they lean towards militancy.

Answer 2

Reactionaries are the opposites of Progressives.

Simply put, Progressivism tries to push things "forward", Reactionaries want to push things "backward", and Conservatism wants to keep things the same. Progressivism isn't Conservatism's opposite; Conservatism is the middle value on a scale between Progressivism and Reactionaries. It's simply that our current political climate and political systems don't allow for a proper Reactionary movement to form, and as a result, most of the political conflict is between Conservatives and Progressives. This can be clearly seen by examining the stances held by Progressives and Conservatives over time; often, you'll see that Conservatives simply hold similar positions to those held by Progressives 20 to 30 years ago.