“The Public & Its Problems” by John Dewey
The Revolutionary Significance of John Dewey for today
By: John Saudino
The Public & Its Problems is a remarkable book produced by a remarkable mind. Because of its uncommon depth and the high moral integrity of its author, the reader gets the impression that he or she has stumbled across a text of profound and prophetic wisdom left over from a better bygone day. It stems from an age that could be described, as Dickens once described an earlier age, as follows: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.
The early 20th century was a time of great industrial expansion and the associated social ills of poverty and unfair working conditions, but at the same time it was an era of great hope for the fate of ordinary people. Given the progressive potential of mass production the servile class for the first time could theoretically rise as a group through the labor movement and employ the power of the machine not as a means of exploitation but of liberation—a liberation from the enslavement of the many that had been the price of civilization for the few throughout human history. It was a time when modern democracy was being fleshed out as a system and intellectuals wondered about who or what this thing “the people” or “the public” really was that was supposed to be the ultimate sovereign of this new liberal democratic state. Were these “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” that America had so zealously drawn to her shores a new generation of enlightened citizens like those of Ancient Greece but on a massive scale, that is to say capable running the state through direct democracy? Or were they to be considered a mere nuisance like the original proletarians of Rome to be stupefied by poverty and kept at bay with a modern version of “bread and circuses”? The famous journalist and commentator Walter Lippmann, who coined the phrase “the bewildered herd” to describe the public, was the main proponent of the latter view and published his book The Phantom Public in 1925. Dewey’s book The Public & Its Problems is very much along the lines of the former thesis. In it Dewey argues for the need of an enlightened public that is free, informed and capable of self-government, the very essence of the original ideal of The United States as established by its founding documents. The reality of American society had already drifted far away from this ideal in Dewey’s time. An interesting book from an STS perspective The Public & Its Problems was published in 1927 as a response to Lipmann and it elegantly affirms and systematically justifies the undying faith Dewey had in ordinary people and in democracy that make him such a seminal philosopher of the progressive movement.
Dewey starts his discussion by systematically demystifying much of the social contract theory that had formed the foundation of earlier discussions on the nature of the State and hence the public. From Aristotle through Hobbes and Rousseau, etc. Dewey emphasizes the need to avoid the inherent contradictions in such theories, because all of them “despite their divergence from one another, spring from a root of shared error: the taking of causal agency instead of consequences as the heart of the problem”[1]. What he means by “causal agency” are the various theories of the state that involve mythological origins such as empty speculations about “man in a state of nature” and arbitrary notions about “human nature”, etc. In a way typical of pragmatism in general and Dewey in particular, he insists that truth is something that does not exist as a metaphysical absolute independent of context, but rather as a form of action taken by individuals and groups as a response to particular problems, hence his emphasis on the “consequences” of action rather than the “mythological” agencies postulated by previous philosophers. He insists that “Thinking and belief should be experimental, not absolutistic”[2] and urges us to look at the measurable consequences of human behavior, which is largely conditioned by habits acquired within human communities. Like Hegel and Marx he also has a clear understanding of the role played by technological development in transforming society and altering these habits, but takes pains to avoid the errors inherent in their philosophy due to their reliance on German idealism, which held that reality and truth are at their root a product of the mind.
One of the many philosophical muddles Dewey endeavors to eliminate is what he sees as a false dichotomy between “the individual and society”. He argues convincingly that human beings as social entities are both determined by their communities and determiners of their communities, his key concern being the need to transform “the great society” as created by industrialization into “the great community”[3] in which effective democratic action in the interest of ordinary citizens can occur. After tracing the origins of individualism from its enlightenment roots, he argues that the public can only become sufficiently cognizant of itself and hence effective through its understanding of the effects of its collective action, a realization that can only emerge in the setting of the community in which communication can take place:
Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the public will remain in eclipse. Communication alone can create a great community. Our Babel is not one of tongues but of signs and symbols without which shared experience is impossible.[4]
It is in his recognition of the role played by technology in altering society and the importance of democratic participation in governing the effects of these changes that Dewey becomes so interesting a commentator for the field of Science and Technology Studies. He argues that, because of the authoritarian tendencies, i.e. centralized power structures created by modern industry, many undesirable aspects of earlier times have been unknowingly supplanted into modern industrial society:
In a word, the new forms of combined action due to the modern economic regime control present politics, much as dynastic interests controlled those of two centuries ago. They affect thinking and desire more than did the interests which formerly moved the state.[5]
The lack of democracy that this Neo-aristocracy implies acquires more specificity when Dewey explores the pitfalls involved in the managing of this new technological society. He criticizes the notion, quite essential in Lippmann, of placing at the helm of such a society a cadre of specialized “experts”. Dewey reviles Lippmann’s attitude regarding the public as a desire to avoid the input that comes from the “ignorant, fickle mass whose interests are superficial and trivial” and replace it with “an intellectual aristocracy”.[6] He explains the emergent causes of this regime as follows:
This revival of the Platonic notion that philosophers should be kings is the more taking because the idea of experts is substituted for that of philosophers, since philosophy has become something of a joke, while the image of the specialist , the expert in operation, is rendered familiar and congenial by the rise of the physical sciences and by the conduct of industry.[7]
The reason why this regime is so pernicious for democracy becomes clear when Dewey describes it as something that “could be made to work only if the intellectuals became the willing tools of big economic interests” and insists that “No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few”.[8]
Here in his ideas about the nature and importance of “the public”, in his groundbreaking epistemology, and in his monumental contributions to education, John Dewey ranks high among those American thinkers who championed a vision of a society firmly established on the principles of both freedom and social justice that stands, unfortunately, in such tragic contrast to current trends in the United States and in much of the western world.
With the brief exception of the 1960s, societal trends since Dewey’s time regarding the relationship between those who rule and those who are ruled have tended to favor the ideas expressed by Lippmann and others like him. The eager sycophants of the media and of the public relations industry, who have teamed up with their fellow travelers at all the lavishly funded “foundations”, “think tanks” and, now since 2010, “super pacs”[9], have made it abundantly clear where they stand.
The “intellectuals” have for the most part long since become “the willing tools of big economic interests” in the way Dewey had feared yet thought unlikely in his book[10]. The contemporary intellectual of this ilk is a partisan of the powerful, working diligently to propagate the ideological concoctions designed to elevate, enrich, obscure and protect the billionaire class that owns and runs our societies. As John Dewey enthusiast Noam Chomsky has put it, “propaganda is to democracy as violence is to dictatorship”; in other words, in our ostensibly free society these “intellectuals” are engaged in a constant effort to indoctrinate and deceive the general public so as to “manufacture consent”, as Lippmann put it, while enlisting public support for politicians and policies against the public’s own best interests.
Like the machine production of early industrialism the technologies of the post war era, i.e. television and the electronic media, have to a large extent likewise been implemented as methods of control rather than liberation. In Dewey’s time one could speak of “working class intellectuals”, who had fought hard and bravely for the 8-hour day so that they would have time for study and to improve themselves. The working class of today is unfortunately quite different. In the United States quality education largely remains the preserve of the wealthy and the public is to a great extent intentionally distracted from defending its objective class interests by banal stupefying entertainment. The political consciousness of the public is smothered to death and effective collective action is sabotaged. Through the divide and conquer technique of the “wedge issue”—pseudo-problems like abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, racial issues, etc.—the media and the public relations propaganda apparatus keep working people at each others’ throats so they can never organize an effective resistance.
Due to the concerted efforts of the ruling class and its willing
defenders, the emergence of Dewey’s enlightened self-governing public remains
elusive in ways much more profound and intractable than even Dewey could have
imagined. If we are to free humanity from the ravages of this pernicious greed-crazed
oligarchy and its maniacal lemmings’ march towards ecological suicide, it will
be by taking direct revolutionary action inspired by the works of John Dewey
and others like him, who have pointed the way to a more equal, more just, and
more free society for everyone and have proven through their profound and
powerful argumentation that such a world is indeed possible.
[1] The Public & Its Problems, John Dewey, Holt and Company, 1927 pp.19-20
[2] Ibid p. 202
[3] Ibid p. 143
[4] Ibid p. 142
[5] Ibid p. 108
[6] Ibid p. 204
[7] Ibid p, 205
[8] Ibid pp. 206-208
[9] See “Citizens United vs Federal Board of Elections” SCOTUS Decision, 21 Jan 2010
[10] Ibid p. 208
