There can be no argument for moral progress
as every thinker after WWII understood. Hegel and all derivative
models for moral progress were discarded after the high culture
Germans, Austrians and French were found to delight in the cruel
slaughter of Jews by the millions.
I doubt that any view of moral progress in history will return among educated people.
On the other-hand I see significant evidence of progress in non-moral systems. I have identified six non-moral systems: Commerce, technology, legal/judicial, democratic legislative activity, compassionate professionals and science. Science is last because it is so closely tied to morals that progress is not easy to detect.
Commerce continues to expand and the progress is evident in the rapid spread of wealth, the growth of the middle-class, the genuine emergence of a meritocracy and the widespread expansion of openness in the marketplace. Many citizens of industrial nations have more wealth and freedom than the top ten percent of their societies a quarter of a century ago.
Technology
is undergoing the same expansion of its domain in direct conjunction
with commerce, particularly as some elements of technology, such as
communication, seem to enhance the expansion of other parts of
technology. A technician on the phone in the countryside of Thailand
can inspect and repair a customer's laptop in Austin Texas.
The legal/judicial system seems to be showing elements of progress as better mechanisms for selecting juries emerge, as more specialized courts (patent and family law) are developed, as arbitration and mediation are introduced to judical processes and as commercial issues become more widely understood in the courts (cigarette and IUD decisions being overturned).
The democratic
legislative system is showing progress as the mechanisms for
communication between legislatures improves, as policy analysis gains
an academic foothold, as blatant corruption comes under open document scrutiny and
experiments in alternative election processes gain importance.
The realm
of paramedics has been added to the domain of compassionate
professionals and paramedic skills have expanded due to battlefront
military progress. The growth of life ending compassion in the form
of the hospice is progress. The same has been true in the expansion of
many medical departments such as emergency medicine. Fire departments
are more focused on merit and in public schools special education is expanding and
improving along with the care, opportunities and
facilities for the disabled.
Science shows modest progress, largely in the technical fields of molecular biology, space science and plate tectonics.
I believe the main feature of modernity and enlightenment, the belief in progress, is not unwarranted; it merely needs to exclude moral systems and include non-moral systems.