71- 27,456

DAMICO, A lfonso Jo h n , 19k2- INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS OF JOHN DEWEY.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1971 Political Science, general

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Q.) Copyright by

A lfonso John Dam ico

1971

tu tc nTCCEDTATTOM HAS RFFN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY:

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS OF JOHN DEWEY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Alfonso John Damico, B .A ., M. A.

The Ohio State University 1971

Approved by ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One of the pleasures of completing this study is the opportunity that it gives me +o acknowledge my continuing debt to former teachers.

Professor David Kettler has taught me--both by the example of his own work and by his advice and criticism s—that the student of politics only has a claim to the attention of his fellow citizens so long as he talks sensibly about real possibilities for improving their situation. Because he has always generously given of his time and energy, I have often better understood some political problem. I also owe him a specific debt for his many suggestions for improving this study.

My obligations to Professor David Spitz far exceed the limits of any brief acknowledgment. I, along with many others, owe him a special thanks for transforming the classroom or the seminar into an exciting learning experience. Wherever he held class, there existed a genuine community committed to the free play of ideas.

He has guided this study through its many stages, and he has often rescued me from errors of reasoning or careless expression. Much of the credit for whatever merit this study may have is truly his. I also want to thank The Ohio State University for a dissertation fellowship that enabled me to spend a year working on this study free from other responsibilities.

Finally, I alone am responsible for the arguments and views of this study. VITA

March 6, 1942 . . . Born, Amsterdam, Ohio

1964 ...... B. A. , The George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

1965-1968...... Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1967...... M. A. , The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1969-...... Assistant Professor, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Political Theory

Analytical: Democratic Theory, Liberty, Elites, Philosophy of H istory

Historical: Ancient, Modern, Contemporary, American

Empirical: Systems Theory, Economic and Behavioral Theories of Demou . acy

iv Actively to participate in the making of knowledge is the highest prerogative of man and the only warrant of his freedom.

John Dewey TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

VITA iv

INTRODUCTION 1

Chapter

I. ragmatist Foundations: Instrumentalism and N aturalism 9

A. The Meaning of Instrumentalism 1. Reconstruction in Philosophy 2. Ideas and Experience a. Knowing and acting b. Theory as problem solving c. Experience and a problematic situation B. The Meaning of Naturalism 1. The Desired and the Desirable 2. The Problem of Obligation 3. The Doctrine of Moral "Growth"

II. Education and C o m m u n ity...... 44

A. Democratic Education B. Community 1. Society a. Organicism b. Association 2. Community a. Definitions and ideals b. The paths to community

III. Politics and Social Control 67

1. Political Activism 2. A Pragmatic Style of Politics

vi Chapter Page

3. Experimentalism and Democratic Methods 4. Some Normative Implications of Politics as Problem Solving 5. Criticisms: "Reason" Versus Politics

VI The New Liberalism ...... 101

A. Modernizing Liberalism 1. Classical Liberalism and Welfare State L iberalism 2. Individuality and Society a. Social man b. The good of social institutions c. Socialism 3. Problems in Dewey's Political Technology B. The Idea of Freedom 1. Variations of a Theme 2. Negative and Positive Conceptions of Freedom 3. The Many Elements of Freedom a. Freedom as rational conduct b. Freedom as power 4. Science, Authority, and Freedom: A Critique 5. Summary

V Democracy and the Politics of Participation ...... 157

A. The Democratic Public 1. Dewey and Lippmann 2. "the public is a political state" 3. Search for the Public B. Democracy as a Way of Life

VI Conclusions ...... 191

Bibliography 197 INTRODUCTION

John Dewey was one of those rare thinkers who are equally at ease with a variety of topics. Around the idea of pragmatism with its insistence upon the unity between ideas and experience, knowing and acting, he weaved his explorations into many areas of man's intellectual and practical life. Although a stern advocate of science and the concrete inquiry, he was also the foe of that specialism which blinds the philosopher or the social scientist to the ways in which social arrangements affect the quality of men's lives. He felt that it was the special task of philosophy to integrate the "special­ ized results of science" as they bear upon the conduct of men's lives and their pursuit of values. He did not underestimate the persistence of rigid opinions and unexamined habits in society; but he firmly believed that philosophy could help to "search out and disclose the obstructions; to criticize the habits of mind which stand in the way" so as "to focus reflection upon needs congruous to present life. The sweep of his own thought, from a concern with epistemology and ethics to problems of educational and political theory, reflects the demands that he made of philosophy. Urging philosophers to 2

abandon the towers of abstract reasoning for the study of the problems

of men, he saw in education and politics, both broadly interpreted, a

way that philosophy could become a part of the currents that channel men's

liv es.

Although Dewey's reputation as a philosopher seems to be securely

established, many philosophers have been uncomfortable with his company.

His insistence that philosophy is nothing more than common sense sharpened

and that the philosopher's ideas must be submitted to the same test of

practical experience that men use to guide their everyday activities denies

philosophy any special claim to knowing truths about the world other than

as man encounters it everyday. Theories about a higher reality, immutable

principles, and absolute values all fall victim to the pragmatist's concern

with the consequences of knowledge. Yet, the pragmatist's criticism of

formal thought is motivated by the desire to see the influence of philosophy extended. This desire was first formulated by William James:

It is true that a certain shrinkage often seems to occur in our general formulas when we measure their meaning in this prosaic way. They diminish. But the vastness that is merely based on vagueness is a false appear­ ance of importance, and not a vastness worth retaining. . . the whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instances of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula o be the one which is true. 3

II

Since the purpose of this study is to examine the social and political thought of John Dewey, a comprehensive analysis of his philosophy would take us too far afield and might, at times, even be inappropriate. The first chapter, however, does present a survey of the major features of Dewey's philosophy, since his political doctrines are likely to be misunderstood unless some attention has been paid to their philosophical underpinnings. Dewey himself considered his philosophy O as a preparation for his theory of politics and especially of democracy.

A study of Dewey's political writings in the light of his broader system of thought suggests that two things are wrong with some of the interpre­ tations of his political thought. The first is that many are oversimplifica­ tions. The second is that since Dewey says so much about scientific method or "inquiry, " critics often ignore what he does say about the purposes or ends of men's activities. Louis Hartz, for instance, in

The Liberal Tradition in America argues that the New Deal represented

4 the political triumph of Dewey's pragmatism in America. Yet Dewey was a strong critic of the style of politics represented by the New Deal. My disagreement is not with Hartz's argument that much of American political thought and practice has rested upon a series of unexamined Lockian values but with his contention that Dewey's thought neatly fits into this scheme and, indeed, is a perfect instance of his general thesis. Some of

Dewey's thought does support Hartz's interpretation but a great deal of it does not; and, insofar as this is true, Hartz's account of liberalism in

America can stand some partial revision.

A more recent work by A. H. Somjee, The Political Theory of John

Dewey, offers a fairly novel and interesting interpretation of Dewey's r political writings. Focusing upon Dewey's theory of knowledge, Somjee presents Dewey's political writings as largely an effort to develop empirical concepts for political investigation, I am convinced by Somjee's thesis that much of Dewey's thought is preoccupied with issues of empirical inquiry and that Dewey's confidence in the power of knowledge and reason to systematically and "scientifically" manipulate social forces is rootfed in his transfer of a model of physical inquiry directly to xhe problem of the control of social forces. However, Somjee, in my opinion, goes too far when he argues that the core of Dewey's political thought is an effort to develop a "conceptual framework for the investigation of political g phenomena. " What is missing from Somjee's discussion is some analysis of Dewey's substantive ideas about certain traditional problems of politics.

For instance, there is much evidence to show that Dewey was more concerned with clarifying and advocating the participation of the public in a democracy than he was with developing empirical concepts for investigating the nature of the public. Dewey's theory of liberalism, to add one more example, is not a scientific model for studying politics; it is a new analysis of political life. 5

The most frequent criticism of Dewey's system of thought--his ethics, educational theory, and political theory--is that he develops a method for solving problems at the expense of any theory or vision of the

7 ends or purposes of men's activities. This criticism is an exagger­ ation, and this study attempts, hopefully without exaggerating in the other direction, to show that his writings do provide a basis for distinguishing g between experiences that are valuable and those that are not. While the idea of pragmatism as a philosophy of experience and method is the

Adrian thread that runs through Dewey's work, individuality and community are the twin themes and values that he uses to anchor his thought. This is, perhaps, clearest in his ethical theory where he argues that only social ends are reasonable but that, at the same time, they enhance the individual's life through the increase and development of his relations with others. What I will argue is that Dewey's political theory makes essentially the same case. Dewey's objections to the explanation of political issues in terms of the opposition between the individual and the social, authority and freedom, is rooted partly in his belief that they distort the true nature of experience, but it is also tied to his argument that the good community is one where men are aware of their common interests in the progressive growth of each individual. The individual and the collective, individuality and sociality, are not, Dewey argues, antinomies; rather, they are different parts of an experience that finds its fulfillment in community life. Dewey's emphasis upon community is related to his writings on education, and both of these are important parts of his theory of democracy as a way of life. Dewey wanted the student to be an active participant in the discovery of knowledge instead of the passive recipient of authori­ tative teachings. An important part of a student's education is learning how to actively cooperate with others who share his desire to better understand some problem or subject. Individuals must also learn how to be citizens. Through a process of open inquiry and communication, citizens in a democracy learn that the state is more than just a piece of machinery for personal safety and common convenience. Rather, politics becomes an activity for solving men's collective problems through collective participation and action.

For Dewey, politics and community are inseparable. Democracy, if it is to be successful, depends upon the existence of a community, the people organized as a "public. " But democracy is also a way of en­ couraging the awareness of shared values and the development of common loyalties that are the marks of a community. At a time when many persons are again puzzling over the meaning of democracy both in terms of its

9 demands upon the citizen and its effects upon the quality of his life, there is sufficient reason for again becoming acquainted with the social and political ideas of Dewey. FOOTNOTES

1. The Quest for C ertainty, p. 313.

2. "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results" in James's Collected Essays and Reviews, (New York, 1920), pp. 413-14. This essay, first published in 1898, is commonly identified with the beginning of pragmatism as a philosophical movement in America.

3. In "Philosophy and Democracy" Dewey writes:

There has been, roughly speaking, a coincidence in the development of modern experimental science and of democracy. Philosophy has no more important question than a consideration of how far this may be mere coincidence, and how far it marks a genuine correspondence. Is democracy a comparatively superficial human expedient, a device of petty manipulation, or does nature itself, as that is uncovered and understood by our best contemporaneous know­ ledge, sustain and support our democratic hopes and aspirations? Or, if we choose to begin arbitrarily at the other end, if to construct democratic institutions is our aim, how then shall we construe and interpret the natural environment and natural history of humanity in order to get an intellectual warrant for our endeavors, a reasonable persuasion that our undertaking is not contradicted by what science authorizes us to say about the structure of the world?

Characters and Events, Vol. II, p. 849.

4. The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955), pp. 204-205, 264, 271.

5. The Political Theory of John Dewey (New York, 1968).

7 8

6. Ibid. , pp. xi-xii, 178.

7. This common objection to these different aspects of Dewey's thought can be found, respectively, in Morris Cohen, "Some Difficulties in Dewey's Anthropocentric Naturalism, " in his Studies in Philosophy and Science (New York, 1949); Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, 1963), esp. pp. 372-377; Randolph S. Bourne, War and The Intellectuals (New York, 1964), chap. 6.

8. Although I feel that Dewey is least successful in accomplishing this in his educational writings, such a defense of his theory of education has been made by H. G. Hullfish, Toward a Democratic Education (Columbus, 1960), chap. 6.

9. A considerable body of literature that deals with these themes has recently appeared. The following books are especially valuable. Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston, 1967); Robert J. Pranger, The Eclipse of Citizenship (New York, 1968); Edward Keynes and David M. Ricci, editors, Political Power, Com­ munity and Democracy (Chicago, 1970). The readings collected by David W. Minar and Scott Greer in The Concept of Community (Chicago, 1969) are helpful for understanding how the problems of community enter into a theory of politics. I

Pragmatist Foundations: Instrumentalism and Naturalism

Dewey's social and political theory is part of a comprehensive philosophy or system of thought. And although it is possible to examine the political theory of some writers apart from any con­ sideration of their more philosophical works, such an approach to

Dewey's work is unsatisfactory. There is a logical, as well as chronological, progression in his work from a consideration of the topics of philosophy and ethics to the topics of education and politics.

There is little sense in arguing this connection now; the point is that many of the statements and concepts in Dewey's later writings often carry a meaning that is only completely clear in light of the earlier works. However, the following discussion of certain aspects of Dewey's philosophy is limited to and shaped by a concern with how his philosophy helps us better to understand his political writings.

A. The Meaning of Instrumentalism

1. Reconstruction in Philosophy

Philosophy, according to Dewey, can provide men with an

9 10 increased ability to control their lives by refining the methods of intelligent inquiry and by subjecting beliefs and practices to critical review. Employing these criteria, he is highly critical of any form of philosophic rationalism, especially idealism. Idealist philoso­ phers, he holds, have falsely separated theory and practice, knowing and acting, by dividing the world into two realms, the world of ultimate reality constituted by and known only to Reason and the phenomenal world of everyday experience. These dualisms obscure rather than clarify the meaning of men's experiences.

Whenever we become self-conscious about the activity of philosophy, Dewey argues, it is evident that the "problems and subject matter of philosophy grow out of stresses and strains in the community life in which a given form of philosophy arises. Yet, most philosophical systems give the impression of being above the clash of daily affairs. They frequently are abstract and metaphysical.

But Dewey's thesis in such works as Reconstruction in Philosophy and The Quest for Certainty is that even this style of thought is tied to very practical concerns. Dewey's treatment of idealist philosophy and the history of ideas in general quite deliberately aims at exposing the ways in which ideas are rooted in concrete historical situations. Partly, his purpose is to make us more sceptical about previous philosophies by dating them; the notion that they represent final truths becomes inappropriate when we see 11 them as responses to particular circumstances. Also, Dewey aims at demonstrating that all ideas, even abstract philosophies, are efforts at guiding practice so as to reorganize concrete situations.

Dewey undermines formal and abstract philosophies by relating such a style of thought to men's desire for the sense of security provided by certainty of belief and the feeling that one's society's values are absolute or unchanging and above all right. Uncertainty,

Dewey argues, is a universal quality of human experience. Nature is a mixture of the certain and the uncertain, stability and change, indeterminancy and probability. Action, consequently, always involves risks; things may not turn out as expected. Dewey's argument is that men have always found it difficult to live with such uncertainty. "The quest for certainly is a quest for a peace which is assured, an object which is unqualified by risk and the shadow of fear which actions casts. For it is not uncertainty per se which men dislike, but the fact that uncertainty involves us in peril of p evils. Men have sought to escape these perils through a variety of means. Before philosophy they resorted to religious rites in an attempt to propitiate those powers believed responsible for the intrusion of the unexpected or the accidental into men's lives. This marked the first great division in thought, the distinction between O the ordinary and the extraordinary. Dewey traces the origin of Idealist philosophy to the thought of the Greeks. Idealist philosophies, he says, take as their object of knowledge an antecedent reality of constitutive thought or a priori forms which reflective reason attempts to grasp. The rational and the real are then identified. "What is known, what is

4 true for cognition, is what is real in being. " The essence of idealism is the belief that this reality is also endowed with those values that express the best in men. And since the reality which is the object of pure Reason is unchanging, philosophical principles are viewed as eternal and universal. Dewey charges Greek thought with introducing the second major division in men's beliefs about the world: the invidious distinction between Experience and a higher

Reality known only to cognition.

Dewey's explanation of why and how this division in thought occurred is typical of his treatment of past philosophies. He holds that for a long time traditional Greek beliefs and values were securely rooted in unexamined social habits and loyalties. But with the growth of the matter of fact knowledge produced by the trial and error procedures of the artisans, Greek philosophers began to question men's uncritical acceptance of religious and moral codes. In other words, men's increasingly critical and inquiring attitude towards nature or experience found its parallel in the philosophical teaching that the unexamined life was not worth living. But this critical

attitude also created a dilemma* since the Greeks recognized that

experience can never provide certainty. Given the persistence

of the view that experience never rises above the "level of the

particular, the contingent, and the probable, 11 Greek philosophers

felt that the justification of beliefs about the virtuous life could not

be rooted in experience alone. Metaphysics, Dewey argues, solved

the dilemma by arguing that Reason can discover principles that

transcend experience. Consequently, "the verdict of our most

enduring philosophic tradition" has been that "Quest for complete „5 certainty can be fulfilled in pure knowing alone. Now philosophy, like religion, became separated from men's ordinary experiences.

Sidney Hook has summed up Dewey's treatment of historical

philosophies by writing that:

Just as there is a "method behind madness" so there is a "meaning behind nonsense. " Dewey's hypothesis is that even in a crazy patchwork quilt of metaphysics, particularly if it wins acceptance, we can find some response to the same difficulties and predica­ ments of life which are at the basis of political, cultural, and social struggles. 6

In effect, then, Dewey's treatment of other philosophies undermines them. There is, however, a positive side to his approach to the history of ideas. What we learn from this history, he holds, is the importance of ideas as a guide to practice: 14

When it is acknowledged that under disguise of dealing with ultimate reality, philosophy has been occupied with the precious values embedded in social traditions, that it has sprung from a clash of social ends and from a conflict of inherited institutions with incompatible con­ temporary tendencies, it will be seen that the task of future philosophy is to clarify men's ideas as to the social and moral strifes of their own day. ^

The consequences of philosophy's separation from experience have, Dewey argues, become especially acute in the modern age.

Accompanying the rise of the natural sciences has been an increase in the number and diversity of secular interests and values.

Philosophical systems, consequently, have come to seem even more remote from the affairs of most men. And, most importantly, philosophical conceptions about a higher reality and fixed moral ends provide no real guidance whereby men can make goods and values secure in experience, provide no solid foundation for men's beliefs about ends to be sought, goods to be desired, and evils to be averted. Insofar as traditional conceptions of values hold sway, they simply accentuate the crisis. What has happened is that men follow one mental pattern in their practical activities and another in thinking about values. "We are pulled in opposite directions.

We have not as yet a philosophy that is modern in other than a chronological sense. " The question of how the beliefs which

"scientific inquiry vouchsafes, beliefs about the actual structure 15 and processes of things" and beliefs about the values which should guide conduct interact with each other is, for Dewey, the most 8 important problem of the modern age. Means and ends need to be connected; theory needs to be united with practice.

In the natural sciences, Dewey believes that ideas and experience have been brought together. Physical inquiry, therefore, becomes very much his model for all inquiry. What attracts Dewey to physical inquiry is science's emphasis upon doing. Knowing in the sciences is a "certain kind of intelligently conducted doing; it ceases to be contemplative and becomes in a true sense practical. "

The best promise for philosophy, therefore, is also to become operative and "experimental. " Philosophic reconstruction that brings ideas and experience together would "relieve men of having to choose between an impoverished and truncated experience on one „9 hand and an artificial and impotent reason on the other.

2. Ideas and Experience

Instrumentalism, Dewey's theory of inquiry, is significant for three major reasons: the emphasis upon the practical effects of thought, the focus upon specific situations, and the account of the problematic in experience as an existential situation, that is, as an "objective" situation. In his later political writings, these themes are evident in Dewey's theory of politics as an art for 16

solving specific social problems and in his confidence in "intelligence"

or "scientific method" as a technique for resolving most important

social conflicts.

a. Knowing and acting. Instead of seeing ideas as something

that reason brings to experience, Dewey asserts that they develop

out of experience. While much of the time men simply act on the

basis of habit or else with that automatic certainty that is based on

previous knowledge, as is evidenced by the skilled worker who

operates his machine without pausing to examine his activity,

at other times some disturbance occurs in the interactions between

a man and his environment which breaks this pattern. ^ Such

conflicts, disturbances, difficulties serve as the stimuli to thought.

An idea emerges as a proposal for acting so as deliberately to

reorganize the experience and transform a problematic situation

into a settled one. Succinctly stated, the core doctrine of instru- 11 mentalism is that "All deliberation is a search for a way to act...."

Dewey’s best elaboration of this idea is as follows:

Let us then by way of experiment follow this suggestion. Let us assume that among real objects in their values and significances, real oppositions and incompatibilities exist; that these conflicts are both troublesome in themselves, and the source of all manner of further diffi­ culties--so much so that they may be suspected of being the source of all man's woe, of all encroachment upon and destruction of value, of good. Suppose that thinking is, not accidentally, 17

but essentially, a way, and the only way that proves adequate of dealing with these predica­ ments--that being "in a hole," in difficulty, is the fundamental "predicament" of intelligence. Suppose when effort is made in a brute way to remove these oppositions and to secure an arrange­ ment of things which means satisfaction, ful­ fillment, happiness, that the method of brute attack, of trying directly to force warrings into peace fails; suppose then an effort to effect the transformation by an indirect method--by inquiry into the disordered state of affairs and by framing views, conceptions, of what the situation would be like were it reduced to har­ monious order. Finally, suppose that upon this basis a plan of action is worked out, and that this plan, when carried into overt effect, succeeds infinitely better than the brute method of attack in bringing about the desired consummation. Suppose again this indirection of activity is precisely what we mean by thinking. Would it not hold that harmony is the end and the test of thinking? that observations are pertinent and ideas correct just so far as, overtly acted upon, they succeed in removing the undesirable, the inconsistent. ^

This passage introduces all of the key elements in Dewey's theory of inquiry. Aside from the emphasis upon action, the statement also suggests the experimental quality of our ideas and acts. Since ideas must be tested by being tried out, perception and conception progress side by side. As new "observational data" emerges, our ideas will have to be modified. Theory and practice work together so as to transform an indeterminate situation into a determinate one. This argument is Dewey's answer to the traditional epistemological distinction between subject and object, 18

the knower and the known. In their book Knowing and the Known,

Dewey and Bentley argue that knowing and the known are "twin

aspects of a common fact:” some interaction between organism and 1 O environment. Stripped of its technical language, Dewey's argu­ ment is that experience is not subjective--problems are problems-- 14 and that knowledge depends upon some action taking place.

Although Dewey is an empiricist in the sense that he insists that ideas must be capable of being referred to observable behavior or facts, he criticizes what he considers extreme empiricism.

British empiricists, following the lead of John Locke, make the mistake of reducing all experience to isolated and unique sensory perceptions. This 'sensational' empiricism shares the idealist belief that all reflective knowledge must be referred back to some­ thing already known. For the idealists this antecedent reality is a system of a priori; for the empiricists it is a set of previous sensations. "The quarrel between them is strictly domestic, all in the family.

Neither the idealists nor the empiricists, Dewey holds, under­ stand the place of reason in experience. Ideas are plans of action for controlling experiences; in this sense, what is known are the conclusions of reflective inquiry as these reorganize experience.

Intelligence does not make experience more real, but it makes it more controllable. Dewey writes: 19

Experience of that phase of objects which is constituted by their relations, their interactions, with one another, makes possible a new way of dealing with them, and thus eventually creates a new kind of experienced objects, not more real than those which preceded but more significant, and less overwhelming and oppressive.

Since knowing is literally something we do, the test of the truth of ideas are their consequences when acted upon. Dewey's words are:

If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are instrumental -to an active reorganiza­ tion of the given environment, to a removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in accomplish­ ing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true. If they fail to clear up confusion, uncertainty and evil when they are acted upon, then are they false. Confirmations, corroboration lies in works, consequences.^

Dewey holds, in direct response to his critics, that this does not mean that any consequences, such as personal satisfactions, determine the validity of an idea. Rather, it is the "needs and conditions of the problem out of which the idea, the purpose and method of action, arises" that alone are relevant to determining the truth of an idea.

By describing truth as satisfaction is meant satisfaction of the 18 "conditions prescribed by the problem. "

b. Theory as problem solving. Dewey's theory of inquiry whereby universal principles are rejected in favor of a notion of ideas as tools for resolving specific problems has both its negative 20 and positive aspects. Negatively, it leads him to enter the following criticism of other social and political theories:

We plunge into the heart of the matter by asserting that these various theories suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought.. . . The discussion goes on in terms of the state, the individual; the nature of institutions as such, society in general.

Aside from being abstract and formal, Dewey also criticizes such theories for blocking the inquiry and experimentation that is necessary for successful practice:

They are general answers supposed to have a universal meaning that covers and dominates all particulars. Hence they do not assist inquiry. They close it. They are not instrumentalities to be employed and tested in clarifying concrete social difficulties. They are ready-made principles to be imposed upon particulars in order to deter­ mine their nature. 19

Progress in the natural sciences, according to Dewey, "has consisted precisely in the invention of an equipment" for distinguishing the true from the false "by specific modes of treatment in specific situations. " In modeling his instrumentalism after the pattern of inquiry characteristic of the natural or the physical sciences,

Dewey seems to reject any form of general theory:

In the question of methods concerned with reconstruction of specific situations rather than in any refinements in the general concepts of institution, individuality, state, freedom, law, order, progress, etc., lies the true impact of philosophical reconstruction. ^0 The chief difficulty with Dewey's argument here is that it is hard to see where a study of society might begin or end. One of the weaknesses of this side of pragmatism is that it unnecessarily limits our knowledge by making any theory of society, as opposed to specific case studies, impossible. 21 But a general theory of the relations between the various parts of society can be as important for guiding action as any specific hypothesis geared to solving a particular problem. Dewey imagines men always confronting distinct problems. But problems overlap and reality does not easily lend itself to being broken up into completely atomistic units, especially in the world of political practice. Theorizing and thinking about society and politics are simply impossible without using concepts that are abstract enough to make possible the relating of propositions about different phenomena to each other in some coherent order.

Dewey's strictures against general theories are exaggerated even in terms of his own work. Although at times, he takes a position of crude empiricism where he imagines the "facts" speaking for themselves, he more commonly recognizes the need for concepts to order and interpret the facts. It is not surprising, therefore, to find him substituting his own universal concepts for those he rejects. Increasingly, he emphasizes the characteristic features 22 of men's activities rather than the specific activities themselves.

Such terms as "association" and "communication" become the center of much of his analysis.

The positive role for philosophy can be seen in Dewey's state­ ments about the necessity for ideas in directing experience. In a considerably more liberal view of the function of theory, Dewey w rites:

The need for large and generous ideas in the direction of life was never more urgent than in the confusion of tongues, beliefs and purposes that characterizes present life. ... The meaning of science in terms of science, in terms of know­ ledge of the actual, may well be left to science itself. Its meaning in terms of the great human uses to which it may be put, its meaning in the service of possibilities of secure value, offers a field for exploration which cries out from very em ptiness... Such a philosophy would have a wide field of criticism before it. But its critical mind would be directed against the domination exercised by prejudice, narrow interest, routine custom and the authority which issues from institutions apart from the human ends they serve.99

Dewey, however, always combines his enthusiasm for philosophy's role in criticizing and evaluating the overall consequences of men's actions and beliefs with his concern for solving specific problems.

The philosopher, he insists, must also be "helping men solve problems in the concrete by supplying them hypotheses to be used 23 and tested in projects of reform. "

There is clearly a marked ambivalence in Dewey's thought 23 about the need for general theory. He both argues the need for broad interpretative ideas in social life and warns of the dangers attending any thought, that does not constantly refer back to the concrete and specific situation. One writer has suggested that what

Dewey rejects is analysis of "problems in general" but not the study 2 4 of "general problems. " In one sense this is a useful distinction.

Most social and political theories, in Dewey's opinion, are non- empirical; they treat problems in abstract terms. Dewey is a behaviorist in the sense that he insists that all ideas must be grounded empirically; they must refer to and be derived from the behavior of men. And certain problems are seen by Dewey as perennial: education and socialization, order and change, and other issues that cluster around the activities of the community as it attempts to control social forces. Such problems can be considered as empirical but general; and they set the agenda for Dewey's social and political theory.

Nevertheless, Dewey's instrumentalism often leaves one wondering just how much theorizing is too much or too little. Dewey's admiration for scientific method and the concrete inquiry often runs head on into his desire to provide a comprehensive, because integrated, account of the consequences of men's actions. Managing this tension becomes a major problem in his social and political thought. 24

c. Experience and a problematic situation. Since Dewey's theory of politics is a theory of problem solving, it is useful to see what Dewey understands by a problematic situation. Somjee points out that Dewey "does not use the term 'experience' in a possessive sense, as in 'my experience' or 'your experience. '"

Instead, Dewey talks about experience as "experience of the environ­ ment. Experience, Dewey writes, "is primarily a process of undergoing; a process of standing something; of suffering and passion, of affection, in the literal sense of these words. " Such experiences are not simply a matter of inner consciousness, they take place

p O within an "environing medium, not in a vacuum. " Dewey's conception of experience is strongly socio-psychological. It is in the inter­ actions between man and his total physical and social environment that we find the conditions and qualities of experience. The individual's life, his acquisition of habits, the satisfaction of his desires, his defeats are all played out in a social setting.

What Dewey contends is that the relegation of the problematic to the subjective is wrong. Although he describes a problematic situation in such terms as doubt, perplexity, and dissatisfaction, he argues that:

It is the situation that has these traits. We are doubtful because the situation is inherently doubt­ ful. The problematic in experience is part of a unified existential situation. Qualities such as pain and uncertainty are parts of experience; they 25

are felt but they are not mere feelings. Inquiry must, therefore, aim to actually modify existing conditions; the problem cannot be resolved by merely mental processes. ^

Much of Dewey's discussion here seems initially to be largely about epistemological issues that are only of peripheral interest to the student of politics. Dewey, as epistemologist, is arguing that tertiary or secondary qualities such as satisfaction and dis­ satisfaction are as objective as quantitative qualities in the physical sciences such as "color, sound, pressure, perceived size and distance. "^8 In Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey writes;

Honesty, chastity, malice, peevishness, courage, triviality, industry, irresponsibility are not private possessions of a person. They are working adaptations of personal capacities with environing forces. All virtues and vices are habits which incorporate objective forces. They are interactions of elements contributed by the make-up of an individual with elements supplied by the out-door world. They can be studied as objectively as physiological functions, and they can be modified by change of either personal of social elements.

Dewey's epistemology has two rather clear and important implica­ tions for social and political thought. First, the similarity of social problems to problems in nature--their objective character--means that we are confronted in social life with problems that can be managed, manipulated, and changed into desirable situations through the use of "intelligence" or "scientific method. " Intelligence becomes a refined tool, an instrument for working our way out of difficulties. 26

The second implication of Dewey's theory of reality has been described in some detail by Hans Reichenbach:,

.. . Dewey does not only want to establish knowledge in a better and more solid form. What he intends, and perhaps to a greater extent, is establishing the sphere of values, of human desires and aims, on the same basis and;in hn analogous form as the system of knowledge. If concrete things as immediately experienced are the truly 'real' world, if the scientific thing is nothing but an auxiliary logical construction for better handling of the 'real' things, then ethical and esthetical valuations are 'real' properties of things as well as are the purely cognitive properties, and it is erroneous to separate valuations as subjective from cognitive properties as objective. In persuasive language and in ever-renewed form Dewey insists upon this outcome of his theory, the establishment of which seems to be the motive force in the work of this eminently practical mind, 'practical' to be taken in both its implica­ tions as 'moral' and 'directed towards action'. . . . If the pragmatist considers secondary and tertiary qualities as real he does so because he wants to establish esthetics and ethics as aspects of reality comparable to physics; because he wants to show that esthetic and moral judgments are statements of facts in a sense analogous to state­ ments of physical facts. It is the desire to establish objective esthetics and ethics, as opposed to subjective conceptions of esthetics and ethics, which stand behind the pragmatist's theory of reality. ^0

Dewey attempts, then, to develop a "method of effective inquiry which would apply without breach of continuity” to both science and morals. In this he follows a succession of writers who, since Hume, have felt it possible to extend an experimental pattern of inquiry to social and moral subjects. Instrumentalism applied to ethics 27 becomes the doctrine of naturalism. This application of instrumentalism

is Dewey's answer to how men can work themselves out of the con­

fusion created by the disjunction between the way they formulate beliefs about the structure of society and the way they formulate their judgments about the desirable or valuable.

B. The Meaning of Naturalism

1. The Desired and the Desirable

The major points in Dewey's theory of ethics are not difficult to state. On the one hand, as an opponent of absolute rationalism,

Dewey insists that philosophy has no "private access to the good. "

Philosophy must begin with men's actual beliefs about what is good and bad, desirable and undesirable as its "data, its subject-matter. "

On the other hand, Dewey is not an ethical relativist, if that means that whatever men desire is to be given the status of moral goods.

Dewey makes a distinction between the "enjoyed and the enjoyable, the desired and the desirable, the satisfying and the satisfactory."

While the ethical doctrine of hedonism holds that anything desired is a good, Dewey argues that "The fact that something is desired ,,31 only raises the question of its desirability, it does not settle it.

The difference between a genuine and a specious good, according to Dewey's ethics, turns upon reflection or criticism. Dewey's naturalism is an attempt to reduce judgments of values to judgments of facts so that intelligence can solve moral problems in a fashion similar to the way it solves other problems.

Dewey begins by describing the process of valuation as similar to any situation characterized by reflective thought: 1) a present condition is judged unsatisfactory and is assigned a negative value;

2) a comparatively positive value is assigned some future set of conditions; and 3) these two acts are linked by some intermediary set of propositions meant to guide the transition from the present situation to the desired one. Dewey allows that although this process describes the behavior of someone engaging in value choices, it does not say anything about the worth of any particular value judgment.

The question then is, what is the philosopher to do about value choices? Philosophers usually have responded in one of two ways.

At one extreme, they have claimed that "Reason" can discover a hierarchy of absolute goods. At the other extreme, they have resorted to complete egoism or subjectivism claiming that anything that a man desires is a good. Idealism or absolute rationalism, Dewey argues, claims too much for philosophy; and subjectivism claims too little. What philosophy has is a method; it can aid men in clarifying their value judgments by bringing to the valuational process the tools of critical intelligence. Dewey's words are:

The suggestion almost imperatively follows that escape from the defects of transcendental absolutism is not to be had by setting up as values enjoyments that happen anyhow, but in defining 29

value by enjoyments which are the consequences of intelligent action. Without the intervention of thought, enjoyments are not values but proble­ matic goods, becoming values when they-re-issue in a changed form from intelligent behavior. 33

What Dewey argues is that a moral choice is something that occurs within a problematic situation. His emphasis is upon the conditions that create the problem, not upon the distinctly moral issues involved in the situation. Dewey holds that the only way for reason to make a difference in value choices is for men to treat moral problems foremost as problems. This emphasis upon the practical effects of moral choices is evident in the following state­ ment:

To say that something satisfies is to report something as an isolated finality. To assert that it is satisfactory is to define it in its connections and interactions. The fact that it pleases or is immediately congenial poses a problem to judg­ ment. How shall the satisfaction be rated? Is it a value or is it not? Is it something to be prized and cherished, to be enjoyed?.... To declare something satisfactory is to assert that it meets specifiable conditions. It is, in effect, a judg­ ment that the thing 'will do. ' It involves a pre­ diction; it contemplates a future in which the thing will continue to serve; it will do. It asserts a consequence the thing will actively institute; it will do. 34

Moral activity then is very much a matter of intelligent problem solving. This means, first, that the moral order is not something settled once and for all but something constantly changing and dependent 30 upon the deeds of men. In Ethics Dewey and Tufts offered a variety of reasons for studying the history of morals, but two were given special emphasis. First, they felt that such a review showed that many present standards and ideals were outdated. Since moral principles are propositions "which describe and define certain things as good, fit, or proper in a definite existential relation, " some of these may apply to present conditions and some may not. Secondly, both men were convinced that ethics is above all else a practical matter. "'In this theater of man's life it is reserved for God and the angels to be lookers on. ' Man must act; and he must act well or ill, rightly or wrongly. " The chief merit of naturalism is its awareness that ethics makes a claim to guiding men's conduct and that moral principles, therefore, should be formed with that claim and task in mind. 35

Dewey's insistence that ethics matters and that moral theory must link up its analysis with the problems of men is a needed addition to a study which has often been dominated by either homiletics or abstruse reasoning. His ethics is essentially an insistence that rigid habits be replaced by critical intelligence and that ideals and values be constantly examined in the light of changing historical conditions. In short, his ethics bids men to examine the meaning of their values in terms of their probable consequences and then to act accordingly. 31

2. The Problem of Obligation

Dewey's naturalism holds that all objectively true statements are also normative; judgments of values and judgments of facts are combined by reason. Certainly, a great deal can be said for the argument that men's efforts to resolve moral problems are greatly aided by knowledge of the interconnections between social forces and a careful consideration of the relation between means and ends. Dewey reminds us that moral perplexities are never completely settled; they are recurring issues that require a con­ tinuous study of specific relationships in order to be intelligently handled. But, as critics of his ethics have repeatedly pointed out,

Dewey's theory cannot really account for moral obligation. One objection to his theory is made by a reductio ad absurdum. If

Dewey is correct in holding that de facto statements are also d£ jure, this would have to apply to all true statements. But to say that a table is brown and will be seen as such by everyone with normal vision does not impose an obligation on anyone. Yet, Dewey's theory 36 seems to commit him to the affirmation of such an obvious absurdity.

The objection then is that Dewey neglects or confuses the difference between rational judgment and the judgment or feeling of moral obligation. A moral dilemma confronts a person not because some obstacle is present or because he needs more information but because there is a genuine conflict between values. For example, a man faced with the decision of whether or not to obey his government's order that he report for military duty may make a totally rational judgment about the effects of service upon his life, the merits of present government policy, and the costs to himself and others of serving or not serving. But this information does not really settle the question of what he should do. He is not confronted with a problematic situation because of a lack of knowledge about a set of conditions but because he must decide between the competing values of obedience and disobedience. It is easy to see in this context the significance of one writer's objection to Dewey's ethics: "in repeatedly deferring to the 'needs' of a not-yet-arrived 'situation' 37 the issue of the ground of moral choice is evaded rather than met. "

Consequences in the future as the test of the "truth" or "value" of an action is no test when a moral dilemma is present now.

Along with intelligence, Dewey introduces a second standard, community norms or social pressues, as part of his theory of right conduct. What Dewey emphasizes is the social context within which individuals must act. While the individual is still personally responsible for the morality of his actions, we cannot ignore the place of social relationships in influencing the individual's choices. In Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey writes:

Why, indeed, acknowledge the authority of Right? .... If a man lived alone in the world there might be some sense in the question "Why be moral? " were it not for one thing: No such question would then 33

arise. As it is, we live in a world where other persons live too. Our acts affect them. They perceive thes.e effects, and react upon us in consequence. Because they are living beings they make demands upon us for certain things from us. They approve and condemn—not in abstract theory but in what they do to us. The answer to the question "Why not put your hand in the fire?" is the answer of fact. If you do your hand will be burnt. The answer to the question why acknowledge the right is of the same sort. For right is only an abstract name for the multitude of concrete demands in action which others impress upon us, and of which we are obliged, if we would live, to take some account. Its authority is the exigency of their demands, the efficacy of their insistencies. There may be good ground for the contention that in theory the idea of the right is subordinate to that of the good, being a statement of the course proper to attain good. But in fact it signifies the totality of social pressures exercised upon us to induce us to think and desire in certain ways. Hence the right can in fact become the road to the good only as the elements that compose this unremitting pressure are enlightened, only as social relation­ ships become themselves reasonable.

Dewey's thesis is that moral progress, the good life, depends upon two closely related developments. Intelligence must effect a transformation and reorganization of men's relations and beliefs when these have become outdated and oppressive. But, at the same time, since every individual "lives in^ a vast network of social relations, the environment must also be refashioned so that a particular type of intelligence or social education is possible. There are, in other words, no one way streets in society; the education of man, his use of intelligence, also requires the simultaneous QQ transformation of the environment that shapes him.

Dewey treats both ideas and ethics as a form of interaction between man and his environment. Problem solving is the way that

Dewey sees the spread of intelligence and the transformation of the environment progressing together. A concrete difficulty calls forth ideas for removing a problem and leads to that action which transforms experience. The environment, since it is not all of one piece and contains forces that create problems, also leads to the education of man. But this education is halting, wasteful, and oppressive where men fail deliberately to seek understanding of the demands of changing conditions. The problem of education is thus the major problem of the human situation. Intelligence is only effective in removing social ills when it has become widespread among the members of a society. And it is Dewey's contention that through education and communication men come to recognize their common interest in solving certain problems. Obligation, in other words, is a function of being a member of a particular type of community: one committed to the common good. By the common good, however, Dewey does not mean a specific end; rather, he means a society that measures its moral progress by the continuing growth and development of individual personality which, in turn, depends upon social cooperation. 3. The Doctrine of Moral "Growth"

Since ethics deals with activity, Dewey advocates "growth" as the only correct moral goal. Throughout his writings, he states:

.. . the process of growth, of improvement and progress, rather than the static outcome and result becomes the significant thing.. .. The end is no longer a terminus or limit to be reached. It is the active process of transforming this existent situation. Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim in living. . .. Growth itself is the only moral end. ^0

For Dewey, morals are not a separate realm, but are "part and parcel of a normal life process. " By growth Dewey means activity that resolves a present problem while opening up the possibility for resolving other problems as they arise. Progress in morals comes with that "kind of expansion in meaning which is consequent upon observations of the condition and outcome of conduct. "

Dewey's application of his ethical criteria to a specific situation makes his meaning clearer. Discussing the factory worker, he points out that all too often the worker produces ends which he

"has no share in forming and in which as such, apart from his wage, he has no interest. " Here there is no meaningful connection between a man's activity and its purposes. That creative and intelligent 41 activity which constitutes morals is, therefore, impossible.

Man must, if he is to develop, actively participate in controlling the decisions that shape his life. Dewey's conception of the good 36 cannot be understood apart from his instrumentalism with its emphasis upon the values of reasoned action.

Moral problems, like any other difficulties, do not occur in a vacuum but within some interaction between the individual and his environment. In Human Nature and Conduct, written in 1922, Dewey explores such "interactions, " a term that he substitutes for the more familiar concepts of the individual and society.

To examine the character of these interactions or the associated individual, Dewey begins with the notion of habit. Habits are defined very broadly:

The essence of habit is an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of response, not to particular acts except as under special conditions, these express a way of behaving. Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will. ^2

Habits define the self, e.g ., character is the "interpenetration of habits, " customs are the collective habits of a group, and, finally, habits or customs are a major cause of the feeling of moral obligation.

While individuals acquire certain skills, habits as arts and techniques, as responses to and ways of controlling the natural environment, the habits learned by interaction with the social environment are far more important. The process of the definition of self or, more simply, the development of character takes place in relations with others:

Some activity proceeds from a man; then it sets up reactions in the surroundings. Others approve, disapprove, protest, encourage, share and resist. Even letting a man alone is a definite response. Envy, admiration and imitation are complicities. Neutrality is non-existent. Conduct is always shared; this is the difference between it and a physiological process. It is not an ethical "ought" that conduct should be social. It is social, whether good or bad. 43

Dewey’s argument is that morality finally comes down to the question of what "habits" or forms of conduct the individual has.

The links between instrumentalism and Dewey's conception of the good are evident in this statement.

There is seen to be but one issue involved in all reflection upon conduct: The rectifying of present troubles, the harmonizing of present incompatibilities by projecting a course of action which gathers into itself the meaning of them all. The recognition of the true psychology also reveals to us the nature of good or satisfaction. Good consists in the meaning that is experienced to belong to an activity when conflict and entanglement of various incompa­ tible impulses and habits terminate in a unified orderly release in action. 44

Habits are necessary and useful guides to conduct; but they also can become outdated or "arrested" as the environment, natural and social, changes. But since the individual cannot suddenly become an isolated atom, his rules of conduct or modes of behavior, his moral growth, depend upon reform of social institutions. When we look at the problem of morality from the side of society, the issue becomes an "engineering 38 issue, the establishment of arts of education and social guidance. "

When Dewey speaks of a "social morality" he means two things. First, he holds that with the increasing complexity of life almost all important ethical problems have to do with the conditions of associated life. Indeed, the individual's inter­ actions "affect at every turn the quality of his happiness and his aspirations. " Problem solving, moral growth, therefore, is a social not an individual task for the "individual by himself can do little to regulate the conditions which will render important values more secure. Secondly, Dewey argues for a society where cooperation, not conflict, characterizes men's relations. He w rites:

Every maladjustment in relations among these institutions and associated activities means loss and friction in the relations between individuals; and thereby introduces defect, division, and restriction into the various powers which constitute an individual. All harmonious cooperation among them means a fuller life and greater freedom of thought and action for the individual person. 46

According to Dewey, only social ends are truly reasonable, since they alone enable the individual to organize his acts so that account is taken of all the consequences implicit in them. In Ethics

Dewey states:

In form, the true good is thus an inclusive or expanding end. In substance, the only end which fulfills these conditions is the social good. 47

Individual moral growth, individuality, is not possible, then, apart from the development of reasonable social relations and institutions, a community. And it is from this perspective that Dewey's later writings inquire into the meaning of economic and political arrang- m en ts. FOOTNOTES

1. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. v.

2. The Quest for Certainty, p. 8.

3. Ibid. , pp. 10-11. Much of Dewey's account of the first quests for certainty is supported by the discussion of mythopoeic thought in Henri Frankfort, et. a l., Before Philosophy (Baltimore, 1961).

4. The Quest for Certainty, p. 21.

5. Ibid. , p .. 8.

6. Sidney Hook, John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait (New York, 1939), p. 44.

7. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 26.

8. Problems of Men, pp. 154, 155, and The Quest for Certainty, chap. II.

9. Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 121, 101.

10. Essays in Experimental Logic, pp. 16, 245.

11. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 182.

12. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, pp. 132-133.

13. Knowing and the Known, p. 53.

14. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 91; Essays in Experimental L ogic, pp. 17-18.

15. The Quest for Certainty, p. 182.

16. Ibid. , pp. 219-220.

17. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 156; Essays in Experimental L ogic, chap. VIII. 40 41

18. "Experience, Knowledge and Value: A Rejoinder, " in Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed. , The Philosophy of John Dewey (Chicago, 1939), pp. 569-574; Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 157; Essays in Experimental Logic, pp. 316-327, 330.

19. Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 188, 189.

20. Ibid. , p. 193.

21. George H. Sabine argues that this focus upon particular case studies has been the major influence of Dewey's work upon political science. "The Pragmatic Approach to Political Science, " American Political Science Review, vol, xxiv (Feb. - N ov., 1930), pp. 865-886.

22. The Quest for Certainty, p. 311.

23. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 192.

24. Joseph Ratner, "Dewey’s Conception of Philosophy, " in Schilpp, op. cit.

25. Som jee, op. c it. , p. 13.

26. "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, " in On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 24.

27. Ibid. , pp. 25-26, and The Quest for Certainty, pp. 227, 232-233.

28. The Quest for Certainty, p. 239.

29. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 19; also see pp. 50-54.

30. Hans Reichenbach, "Dewey's Theory of Science, " in Schilpp, op. cit. , pp. 162-163, 178.

31. The Quest for C ertainty, p. 260.

32. Theory of Valuation.

33. The Quest for Certainty, pp. 260, 259.

34. Ibid. , pp. 260-261. 42

35. E th ics, pp. 4-5.

36. This is the argument made by Morton White in Social Thought in America (Boston, 1968), pp. 214-218. For a summary of the major criticisms of Dewey's naturalistic ethics see, Samuel Cook, An Inquiry Into the Ethical Foundations of Democracy ^unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, Ohio State University, 1954), chap. 5, esp. p. 203 ff.

37. Lee Cameron McDonald, Western Political Theory (New York, 1968), p. 560.

38. Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 297-298. Emphasis added.

39. Dewey's statements about community norms and social pressures as giving authority to the nbtions of right and wrong have been criticized for their reactionary or, at least, conservative implications. For instance, William Yandell Elliott's argument that fascism represented a "pragmatic revolt in politics" rests, in part, upon the contention that pragmatism justifies whatever "works" and subordinates reason to the "reign of social forces. " The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics (New York, 1928). But this is to neglect what Dewey says about the necessity of transforming social institutions so that they are "reasonable. " Social pressures probably do account for much of the individual's sense of what is right; and Dewey's contention is that this makes it all the more important for finding ways to make sure that the habits or rules of conduct enforced by these pressures are moral ones. Certainly, it would be helpful if Dewey were more attentive to the implications of his remarks, but this is no reason for ignoring what he intends for this ethical theory.

40. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 177; Human Nature and Conduct, p. 259.

41. Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 135-138.

42. Ibid. , pp. 40-41.

43. Ibid. , p. 19.

44. Ibid. , p. 196.

45. The Quest for Certainty, p. 40. 43

46. Ethics, p. 430.

47. Ibid. , p. 386. II

Education and Community

Upon some generous souls of the eighteenth century there dawned the idea that the cause of the indefinite improvement of humanity and the cause of the little child are inseparably bound together.

E th ics, p. 449.

Much of the history of American political philosophy can be

told in terms of the country's attitude towards popular education. 1

An educated citizenry has been viewed as a safeguard of the subject's

liberty or, conversely, as a protection against the excesses of

popular rule, both as a method for reducing class distinctions and

as a way of educating each man for his place. This concern with

political education is not peculiar to democratic politics; it is as

old as Plato's picture of the state as a schoolmaster for teaching the

subjects virtue. Nevertheless, democratic theory especially needs

some philosophy of political education since democracy assigns

the individual citizen a central role in the society's politics. Both the meaning ascribed to democracy and the explanations of the political

system have shifted in America with changes in the estimation of

r what can and cannot be expected of the educated or enlightened citizen.

44 45

Dewey's political theory, however, probably comes closer than most to making a reconstructed educational theory the vehicle for a reconstructed theory of democracy as a way of life. This theme is pursued in its more political contexts in later chapters; this chapter discusses Dewey's educational theory and some of its implications for his social and political theory. Perhaps, more importantly, it provides some further substantive elaboration of Dewey's vision of the good society.

A. Democratic Education

The major features of Dewey's philosophy point to education or, more broadly, intelligence as the major means for improving man's condition. His conception of problems as maladjustments between man and the environment, e. g ., the insistence that underlying all forms of conflict between men there are actually objective dishar­ monies between men's beliefs and/or practices, on the one hand, and the demands of the environment, on the other, makes "man's use of intelligence to work 'his' way out of the difficulties 'he' faces the solution to all problems. " Instead of being formed by habit, accidents of circumstance, propaganda, personal and class bias men's beliefs are to be formed on the ground of evidence, procured by systematic

4 and competent inquiry. Dewey's confidence in the power of intelligence to make a major difference in social life is tied to his 46 argument that in principle there is no difference between scientific inquiry and common sense; they are on a continuum. Scientific procedure is a style of thought and mode of activity equivalent to certain common sense rules for determining the validity of any idea or hypothesis; every man, therefore, is potentially capable of guiding his affairs in light of "scientific" knowledge. However, it is clearly absurd to imagine that Dewey believes that education can make instant citizens or immediately responsible political actors out of men. Dewey's social psychology with its focus upon the interactions between the individual and the social means that all social arrangements are to be evaluated in terms of their educational impact, their effect in aiding or hampering the individual's ability to deal successfully with problems. In Reconstruction in Philosophy Dewey gives expression to one of the dominant concerns of classical democratic theory:

Government, business, art, religion, all social institutions have a meaning, a purpose. That purpose is to set free and to develop the capacities of human individuals without respect to race, sex, class or economic status. And this is all one with saying that the test of their value is the extent to which they educate every individual into the full stature of his possibility. Democracy has many meanings, but if it has a moral meaning, it is found in resolving that the supreme test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements shall be the contribution they make to the all- around growth of every member of society. ^

Society is, on the other hand, also shaped by the education, both direct and indirect, given to its members. And formal education 47

does have a special role to play in equipping the newer members of

. society with the habits of mind and attitudes that will enable them

to carry out the reconstruction and reorganization of social institutions

demanded by changing conditions. In Dewey’s thought, then, the

school is conceived of as a society within a larger society; a correct

education demands that the school prepare students for their role

as rational citizens. This means, according to Dewey, that the

educational experience itself must be democratic; an authoritarian

situation in the classroom discourages those very habits of mind and

attitudes that are necessary for a democratic citizenry. But the

larger society must in turn be thought of as a school, since its

institutions also have an educative impact.

Since Dewey's theory of education is largely contained within his

philosophy of ideas and experience, its essential features can be

easily summarized. Most conceptions of education, he argues, suffer

from a common defect: they separate knowing and doing. In Democracy

and Education, published in 1916, he writes:

In schools those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly. Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity. The former is then thought to be purely intellectual and cognitive; the latter to be an irrelevant and intruding physical factor. 48

The intimate union of activity and undergoing its consequences which leads to recognition of meaning is broken; instead we have two fragments: mere bodily action on one side, and meaning directly grasped by "spiritual" activity on the other. ®

In contrast, Dewey contends that a person learns by doing:

"it is through what we do in and with the world that we read its

n meaning and measure its value. " This is the theme of Dewey's

first major book on education, The School and Society. In this work,

Dewey's arguments often draw upon his own experiences as a child

in Vermont. In small self-sufficient communities, he contends,

needs--such as clothing and lighting--were produced by several

people actively working together. More importantly, the individual

participated in such processes from beginning to end; his understanding

was a function of his participation and concern. Such experiences

were truly educative, since the individual had to actively grasp the

relation between means and ends.

Dewey does not imagine that the industrial system can now be

patterned after the practices of a simpler age. Nor does he under­

estimate the benefits produced by technological improvements. What he does believe is that it is possible to greatly enlarge the individual's

participation in those activities that influence the direction of his life and that the special task of education is to teach persons to seek out the connections between their activities and its ends. In short, the development of mind takes place as a part of the experiences that 49

a person has. In the classroom, the teacher's role is to engage the

student's original interests and arrange for him to have experiences

that will develop, through active participation, his powers of observa­

tion and his ability to order means to ends. It is this directive and O guiding role that defines the vital office of the teacher.

Dewey's educational philosophy is also a philosophy of man in

society. What most impresses Dewey about man's condition is that

each individual must be educated for society; indeed, society only

exists by virtue of the transmission of its ideals, hopes, expectations

and traditions from one generation to the next. Life means becoming

-part of a tradition, a shared culture; education is a "necessity of life"

and the way that a society's future is shaped. But becoming part of

a tradition can be liberating or restrictive. To educate the individual

for society so that he becomes a part of society without being cast

into a rigid mold is the essence of the human situation. Dewey's

educational doctrine holds that education is its own end, the growth

of the learner. His words are;

When it is said that education is development, everything depends upon how development is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life is development, and that developing, growing is life. Translated into its educational equivalents, that means (i) that the educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the educational process is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming. 9 50

As a method of "continual reorganizing, " scientific inquiry and education become allied with social reform. Education aims at developing the critical faculties of the child. Instead of simply accepting society’s traditions, the student must engage in a constant examination of beliefs and of the nature of social institutions.

Dewey’s theory of formal education is clearly political in that it sets out to produce individuals who are sceptical of time-honored verities and committed to experimentalism in social action. Dewey often describes education as a process of life adjustment. The phrase is an unfortunate one, since it conveys an image of the individual adjusting his desires completely to the demands of the environment.

Quite the contrary, "Adjustment, " Dewey writes, "must be understood in its active sense of control of means for achieving ends" and as the

"ability to effect subsequent changes in the environment.

Dewey's argument that education is growth has been the source of endless criticism. Critics have charged that "progressive education, although often immensely fertile and ingenious concerning means, was so futile and confused about ends; much of what it had to say about teaching methods was of the highest value, but it was quite unclear, often anarchic, about what these methods should be used to teach. Dewey was not unaware of such objections, he even wrote Experience and Education in 1938 as a mild rebuke to those educators who, in the name of the "New Education," were indiscriminately 51 praising any and every interest and experience of the student.

Elsewhere, he even went so far as to describe the notion that the teacher must not provide any direction or suggest any ends for the 1 ? student's activity as "really stupid. " Dewey attempts to strike a balance between the notion that all learning is equally valuable-- whatever its content--and the position that would merely train the child to take on the values of his elders. He writes:

There is an intermediary between aimless education and the education of inculcation and indoctrination. The alternative is the kind of education that connects the materials and methods by which knowledge is acquired with a sense of how things are done and of how they might be done; not by impregnating the individual with some final philosophy, whether it comes from Karl Marx or from Mussolini or Hitler or anybody else, but by enabling him to so understand existing conditions that an attitude of intelligent action will follow from social understanding.

However, even this side of Dewey's philosophy has been criticized.

Christopher Lasch in The New Radicalism in America charges that

Dewey's advice to educators consciously to use education for promoting progressive social change simply meant "substituting one set of values for another, progressive values for conservative ones. " And he concludes that "The indoctrination remained.

Unless we assume that there is no difference between teaching students to critically examine a system of ideas and training them to parrot what the teacher says, such a criticism is clearly wide 52

of the mark. Dewey's point is that education necessarily involves

the transmission of some cultural values. This transmission occurs

in any case. What Dewey urges upon educators is an awareness

of this process and an effort to distinguish between those values

that are worthwhile and those that are worthless or even perverse.

Further, there is nothing wrong with Dewey's doctrine that life

is growth in this context. Individuality, he contends, is basically

the development of one's ability to relate means and ends, to see the

interconnections between social forces, and to foresee the conse­

quences of some course of action. Individuality means that the

individual has the opportunity and the power to do for himself what he desires to do. In Dewey's language, "choice is freedom" for

without choice a man is a "puppet" whose actions are controlled by external forces.15 Dewey's vision of the intellectually free man is one of a person who has the skills to cope with his problems so that his own purposes and not someone else's direct his actions.

Nevertheless, it is true that Dewey often offers us a "method"

when we expect some statement of ends that will close a particular

discussion or indicate where he stands upon a particular value conflict. 1 fi Although this is understandable in light of Dewey's ethical naturalism, it does not answer the objection that he often avoids profound moral discourse. The peculiarity of Dewey's position has been stated by Lee Cameron McDonald: 53

Dewey was in a somewhat anomalous position, although perhaps he never fully realized it. He had certain values that in practice he advanced with vigor. . . .But philosophically he defended none of them; indeed, he could not consistently defend them, since his sine qua non was a methodology that deferred to the values of each emerging situation rather than some fixed catalogue of ends. I?

McDonald pinpoints the source of much of the dissatisfaction

that persons have felt with Dewey's work. But several things must

be kept in mind when examining Dewey's handling of values or ends.

First, Dewey's theory of method or his discussion of, say, educational

techniques entails criteria for discriminating between the valuable

and the worthless, the educative and the mis-educative. Intelligence

or "method" functions as a standard for defending such values as

individuality, communication, and community in Dewey's work.

These values cannot be separated from Dewey's understanding of

intelligence. Secondly, Dewey believes and indirectly argues that

a commitment to intelligence leads men to other commitments as

a result of their recognition of certain shared problems and common

needs. This is evident in Dewey's picture of the school as a "mina-

ture community, an embryonic society" that can serve as a model

for the larger society.

Learning requires exchange of ideas, cooperative inquiries,

and joint activities. Students, Dewey holds, form a society, "a number of people held together because they are working along 54 common lines, in a common spirit, and with reference to common aims. " Their work requires, if it is to be successful, an inter­

change of thought, a willingness to cooperate. In a schoolroom operating along these democratic lines, discipline or social control is not experienced as something imposed upon an individual. Rather, such control is part of his own activity. In Experience and Education,

Dewey states:

Now, the general conclusion I would draw is that control of individual actions is effected by the whole situation in which individuals are involved, in which they share and of which they are cooperative or interacting parts. For even in a competitive game there is a certain kind of participation, of sharing in a common experience. Stated the other ,^ way around, those who take part do not feel that they are bossed by an individual person or are being subjected to the will of some outside superior person. . .. It may seem to be putting too heavy a load upon a single case to argue that this instance illustrates the general principle of social control of individuals without the violation of freedom. But if the matter were followed out through a number of cases, I think the conclusion that this particular instance does illustrate a general principle would be justified.... In all such cases it is not the will or desire of any one person which establishes order but the moving spirit of the whole group. The control is social, but individuals are parts of a community, not outside of it.

The school as a house of reason operating in accordance with the principle of cooperation provides Dewey with a model that is applied to all areas of social life. Just as the school is conceived of as a society within a larger society, the larger society, in turn, must be conceived of as a school. In other words, Dewey's edu­ cational theory serves many of the functions usually performed by social and political theories. Social, economic, and political ills, for instance, are frequently analyzed in terms of knowledge and ignorance, scientific control and planning versus drift. Conflict and power disparities are not overlooked, but it is held that intelligence operating in a social context, that is, in a community where men are bound together by a commitment to free communica­ tion, open inquiry, and cooperative ventures, can expose and remove social problems. A democratic education demands the institutionali­ zation of the experimental method in the classroom. Similarly, democracy, if the substance is to be part of the form, requires the spread of the experimental attitude in politics. This, Dewey argues, is the only path to a community where the bonds of social unity enlarge, rather than circumscribe, the individual's freedom.

B. Community

1. Society

a. Organicism: In 1888 Dewey wrote "The Ethics of Democracy, " an essay that advocates an organicist view of society. In this paper he defends democracy against the criticisms of Henry Maine by contrasting the organic view of society with Maine's atomistic con­ ception of individuals. By treating society as an aggregation, of 56

num erical units, Maine had been able to charge that democracy,

the rule of the multitude, is the most unstable and least desirable

form of government. Power is divided into small fragments, and,

since a multitude has no common will, an artificial unity has to be

produced by the techniques of party and corruption.

In response, Dewey charges Maine with committing two mistakes.

Maine, he points out, has been one of the most trenchant critics of

the social contract theory of the state. But such a theory rests

precisely upon the same conception of individuals as isolated units,

prior to the formation of the contract, that Maine now employs in

his criticisms of democracy. Maine, therefore, has no right, if

he is to be consistent, to criticize democracy as a form of anarchy.

Dewey argues, secondly, that:

The fact is, however, that the theory of the "social organism, " that theory that men are not isolated non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations to men, has wholly super­ seded the theory of men as an aggregate, as a heap of grains of sand needing some factitious mortar to put them into semblance of order. . . . Society, as a real whole, is the normal order, and the mass as an aggregate of isolated units is the fiction.

In this interpretation of society as an organism, Dewey assigns a collective consciousness to society. He, then, attempts an

explanation of the parts to the real whole in a democracy by suggesting that the vote of the individual, instead of a counting of 57 one, becomes the "expression of society through him. " The

"social organism weighs considerations and forms its consequent judgment. "

From the side of the individual, Dewey holds that the individual only reaches perfection as a part of the whole. The individual has, in a democracy, "concentrated within himself its intelligence and will. " Hence, in contrast to Maine who had defined democracy simply as a form of government, Dewey, following out the logic of his organicism, argues that democracy is a moral association that brings the organic relation between the individual and society to perfection. Dewey insists that individual personality is the highest value, but the "individual is brought to reality in the state.

This early paper by Dewey is interesting primarily for two reasons. First, it indicates his early conviction that the dis­ tinction between the individual and society, taken as the starting point by so many writers for a theory of politics, was false.

But the paper also shows, secondly, that Dewey was uncertain about what to do with the organic approach to society. To put it differently, this essay provides no explanation of how the individual’s will comes to be expressed in the will of the whole. The conception of the individual remains quite ambiguous. The individual, Dewey repeats regularly, is part of the whole, even the individual's 58

anti-social acts are treated as reflections of the whole; consequently,

the "individual" simply becomes a synonym for "integral part of 21 the whole. " Dewey, in short, was much clearer about why the mechanistic approach to society was wrong than he was about the positive implications of organic theory.

Dewey's account of society in this paper could, perhaps, not help but be skeletal, since he had not yet worked out his own social theory. As his own work progresses, he modifies considerably his organic conception of society, employing instead the theme of interdependency. We have already seen some of the results of his theme that analysis must proceed in terms of the interactions between man and the environment, the individual and the social. Human behavior, in his psychology, is explained by reference to the determining influences of the environment. An intelligent and ethical conduct are both defined as essentially social; each requires an awareness of and concern for the common interest. Dewey's argument that the individual's growth is bound up with the reasonable­ ness of social institutions or the whole indicates that he does not completely drop the organic outlook. But in Dewey's writings this conception of a common good is worked out in terms of the common awareness of the consequences of actions affecting the welfare of the public. Again, in his educational theory, it is the principle of cooperation, the shared or joint quality of intelligence, 59 that comes to the foreground. For a theory of society, he relies upon the concepts "association" and "community. "

b. Association: For Dewey, that connections exist between men is a fact requiring no explanation. He writes:

There is no problem in all history so artificial as that of how "individuals" manage to form "society. " The problem is due to the pleasure taken in mani­ pulating concepts, and discussion goes on because concepts are kept from inconvenient contact with facts. The facts of infancy and sex have only to be called to mind to see how manufactured are the conceptions which enter into this particular problem. ^2

Whatever answer might be given to the question of how society started, Dewey holds that we would be right back where we started, with the fact of society to be accepted.

In Reconstruction in Philosophy Dewey defines association as

"any form of experience which is augmented and confirmed by being shared. " As examples, he refers to trades unions, churches, clubs, schools, etc. In effect, he adopts a pluralist view of society:

Groupings for promoting the diversity of goods that men share have become the real social units. They occupy the place which traditional theory has claimed either for mere isolated individuals or for the supreme and single political organiza­ tion. Pluralism is well ordained in present political practice and demands a modification of hierarchical and monistic theory. Every com­ bination of human forces that adds its own contri­ bution to life has for that reason its own unique and ultimate worth. ^3 60

Dewey's pluralist view of society resolves a conflict presented

by his earlier organicist conception of society. This latter conception

was incompatible with the demand of his emerging methodology that

analysis focus upon specific situations. To relate all aspects of

society to a larger whole requires a level of abstraction prohibited

by his theory of inquiry. The pluralist view creates no comparable

difficulty for Dewey. The character of particular associations and

the pattern of relationships among associations is urged by Dewey

as the proper focus of social and political theory. The problem of

the part-whole relation is replaced by a consideration of the ways

in which the various parts interact with one another.

On the other hand, Dewey's organicism is still very much present.

Associations are by definition conjoint activities. Association,

interdependency, and interactions are still the dominant social

facts. But Dewey's developed or more mature approach to social theory is presented in this passage:

... we cannot be satisfied with the general statement that society and the state is organic to the individual. The question is one of specific causations. Just what response does this social arrangement, political or economic, evoke, and what effect does it have upon the disposition of those who engage in it? Does it release capacity? If so, how widely? Among a few, with a correspond­ ing depression in others, or in an extensive and equitable way?. . . Such questions as these.. . become the starting-points of inquiries about every institution of the community when it is recognized that individuality is not originally 61

given but is created under the influences of associated life. ^4

To answer the question of the type of environment that unifies

both aspects of personality--individuality and sociality--Dewey relies

heavily upon the idea of community.

2. Community

a. Definitions and ideals: The Public and its Problems, written

in 1927, argues that society or associations do not automatically

constitute a community. Associations simply describe the fact of

interdependence among men; they are a physical and organic necessity.

Communal life, in contrast, is moral; it must be intellectually,

emotionally, and consciously sustained. To form a community,

each individual must actively participate in determining the values

of the group. A community, then, is a group of men engaged in

collective action who share common beliefs and have some degree 25 of common understanding.

The family and the neighborhood are, for Dewey, representative of the ideal of community life. Such groups are small and closely knit. Personal power and participation count, and the individual learns to relate his desires to the needs of the group. "In its deepest and richest sense a community must always remain a matter of face-to-face intercourse.

While the characteristics of the local community cannot be 62 totally reproduced on a larger scale, men do have interests in common that extend beyond the family, the neighborhood, the club, or some other limited association. Further, these associations or local communities are exclusive and limited; but the idea of the larger community is, in its proper sense, inclusive and integrative. Dewey gives expression to this idea in Democracy and Education. And since he is often charged with failing to provide any criteria for defining the good society, his statement is quoted at length. What is required, he writes, is a measure for the worth of a given mode of social life:

In seeking this measure, we have to avoid two extremes. We cannot set up out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. Now in any social group whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some interest held in common, and we find a certain amount of interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups. From these two traits we derive our standard. How numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms of association?

There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication 63

is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge—a common understanding—like-mindedness as the sociologists say. 217

Dewey has often been accused of emphasizing techniques at the expense of ends or vision. But the idea of community in his writings shows that his argument is that technique cannot, finally, be separated from ends. Community, the end, is ultimately the means, communica­ tion. The ways that men come to view their interests cannot be separated from what those interests will be.

b. The paths to community: Dewey’s idea of community brings us full circle. The two standards used to evaluate the worth of social life are the extent to which interests are freely shared and the freedom with which groups interact with each other. These are the educational ideals of free inquiry, cooperation, and communication transferred to the larger society.

The school, however, is only one path to community. Men do not form their beliefs simply as a result of formal education. Nor are their interests simply dictated by the cool detachment of reason.

The office of reason in men's affairs must always be compared to the place of power in ordering the relations among men. The analysis of education and community, in short, must be accompanied by the study of political and economic arrangements. FOOTNOTES

1. See Rush Welter, Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America (New York, 1962).

2. These shifts in political thought, however, are not simply historical. Indeed, the issues posed by the connections between education and politics and the educational impact of politics usually come to the fore whenever schools of thought offer varying interpretations of the meaning of citizenship and political participation. For instance, much of the current discussion within political science about the merits of American politics and about how to study the political system is a debate over the theoretical and normative utility of such notions as the rational and responsible citizen. See Peter Bachrach, op. cit.

3. C. Wright Mills, Sociology and Pragmatism (New York, 1966), p. 382.

4. The Quest for Certainty, p. 265.

5. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 186.

6. Democracy and Education, pp. 140-141.

7. The School and Society, p. 17.

8. Despite the seemingly ineradicable view that Dewey urged the teacher to leave the student alone to pursue his own interests in his own way, Dewey himself frequently insists upon the teacher's responsibility to guide the student's activities. For example, see "Individuality and Freedom, " in Intelligence in the Modern W orld, pp. 619-627.

9. Democracy and Education, pp. 49-50.

10. Ibid. , pp. 53-54.

64 65

11. Richard Hofstadter, op. cit. , p. 375. Hofstadter reviews many of the absurd practices, "life adjustment" courses, that have been introduced into school curriculums as a result of pro­ gressive education. He is also careful to point out that many of these practices bear little relation to Dewey's original ideas. Nevertheless, he does not excuse Dewey entirely. He writes that: "If for 'Latin', one substitutes 'driver education' or 'beauty culture,' considering each as justified if it makes 'an immediate appeal, ' one senses the game that later educators played with Dewey's principles. Dewey himself presumably would not have made such substitutions, but in his philosophy there are no barriers against making them. " Ibid. , p. 377.

12. Joseph Ratner, op. cit., p. 624.

13. Problems of Men, p. 56.

14. Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America (New York, 1967), p. 161.

15. On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 262.

16. This is a major complaint of Mills against Dewey, _op. cit., p. 405.

17. McDonald, op. cit. , p. 565.

18. Experience and Education, pp. 53-54.

19. "The Ethics of Democracy, " p. 7.

20. Ibid. , p. 19.

21. See Somjee, op. cit., p. 81.

22. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 56, and The Public and its Problem s, p. 23.

23. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 204.

24. Ibid., pp. 197-198.

25. The Public and its Problems, pp. 151-152. 66 26. The Public and its Problems, p. 211.

27. Democracy and Education, p. 83.

> Ill

Politics and Social Control

1. Political Activism

Translated into a guide to political action, Dewey's philosophy encourages political activism. He believes that political power can be used to control social forces so as to greatly improve the quality of men's lives.

At its simplest level, this activism is rooted in Dewey's insistence that social philosophy be relevant to men's efforts to reorganize unsatisfactory experiences. Dewey recognizes that some people might interpret pragmatism's concern with the problems of men as an appeal to philosophers to "desert their studies, libraries, and laboratories" so as to influence the flow of events. But this is a caricature of pragmatism. Dewey's insistence that philosophy be relevant stems, quite simply, from his argument that relevancy

("the need of a situation") is the measure of an idea's truth as well as its utility. The chief advantage of experience as a central category in philosophy, Dewey feels, is that by directing attention to the role of ideas in experience it does away with the attitude

67 68 that rigorous thought is only possible when separated from a concern with the concrete problems in experience. Once the importance of ideas for directing action is grasped, it becomes apparent that what is needed is more, not less, systematic thought. Men, Dewey reminds us over and over, must act in any case; and instrumentalism as a guiding philosophy makes it possible for the philosopher to serve truth through a concern with the problems of intelligently directed social action. ^

Dewey's account of science also fosters an activist attitude towards social problems. Experimentalism or instrumentalism is, after all, a philosophy of experimentation, control, directed change, action. Scientific method applied to social forces means social engineering. In "Social Science and Social Control, " Dewey holds that social science can only be developed through social practice:

... it is a complete error to suppose that efforts at social control depend upon the prior existence of a social science. The reverse is the case. The building up of social science, that is, of a body of knowledge in which facts are ascertained in their significant relations, is dependent upon putting social planning into effect. . .. Physical science did not develop because inquirers piled up a mass of facts about observed phenomena. It came into being when men intentionally experi­ mented, on the basis of ideas and hypotheses, with observed phenomena to modify them and disclose new observations. This process is self-corrective and self-developing. Imperfect and even wrong hypotheses, when acted upon, brought to light significant phenomena which made improved ideas and improved experimentations possible. The change from a passive and 69

accumulative attitude into an active and productive one is the secret revealed by the progress of physical inquiry. 3

Dewey does not mean that the techniques of social experi-

mentalism can be exactly the same as the techniques of the natural

and physical sciences. Rather, it is the characteristic features of

experimentalism that he sees as equally applicable to questions in the physical or social sciences. Science, in his view, is a certain

pattern of problem solving activity. It means paying close attention to the context within which some difficulty originates, not losing sight of the empirical phenomena represented by concepts, and, most importantly, following out what promises to be a successful plan for transforming the situation. Dewey's argument for more social "science" is a brief for more social control.

Dewey's epistemology with its stress upon knowing through acting, his account of the problematic in experience whereby problems occasion some action, his doctrine of validating values by trying them out: all the major features of his system of thought contribute to a manipulative and activist attitude. The purpose of social and political action is nothing less than the creation of individuality.

Dewey writes:

Now it is true that social arrangements, laws, institutions are made for man, rather than that man is made for them; that they are means and agencies of human welfare and progress. But they are not means for obtaining something for 70

individuals, not even happiness. They are means of creating individuals. ’

Much of the appeal of Dewey’s writings derives from the fact that his major teaching is so simple: men should rely more upon reason in dealing with social problems and with each other. Baldly stated, Dewey's thesis is that problems are problems with identifiable causes and, within the limits of available knowledge, reasonable solutions. But, as Dewey recognizes, social conflicts are often conflicts between different views about what is the right or the just thing to do. Also, men's different interests, economic, political, and social, are often the cause of social clashes. Indeed, it is

c because of these differences that you have conflict. ° But this does not mean, Dewey argues, that experimentalism cannot be used to settle social conflicts. Rather, conflicts of values, he contends, can only be settled by a thoroughgoing naturalism, and different interests can only be reasonably adjusted by an appeal to what needs to be done to solve specific problems. What Dewey attempts, then, is to get things so stated that intelligence, inquiry, or scientific method becomes a way out of social conflict.

There is no need to repeat here earlier comments about Dewey's effort to derive the "ought” from the "is. ” The issue now is not whether naturalism can prove something is a value; rather, interest is in naturalism and its corollary experimentalism as a way of 71

arbitrating disputes. Indeed, a question most in keeping with Dewey's

own intentions for his ethical theory would be "what can be said for

experimentalism as a way for reaching social agreement? "

Naturalism, according to Dewey, avoids certain pitfalls common

to most disputes over values. First, it abandons moral "systems, " that is, abstract principles of good and evil that do not have a working relationship to actual conditions. Disputes over general notions of right and wrong can go on endlessly for nothing empirical can check what is said. This is why Dewey wants attention shifted to the particular difficulty at hand. Besides, he holds that:

Most conflicts of importance are conflicts between things which are or have been satisfying, not between good and evil. And to suppose-that we can make a hierarchical table of values at large once for all, a kind of catalogue in which they are arranged in an order of ascending or descending worth, is to indulge in a gloss on our inability to frame intelligent judgments in the concrete. °

For example, political disputes over "collectivism" versus

"individualism" simply postpone an inquiry into actual economic problems. But such inquiry might, Dewey writes, "disclose certain specifiable conditions under which both of the methods vaguely rr pointed at by these words would operate to advantage. " Naturalism makes bitter debates over the "truth of creeds, religious, moral, and political" unnecessary by substituting inquiry into the probable 72 consequences of following this or that standard in a given situation for such general creeds.

So long as values are thought of as absolute or, at the other extreme, as mere subjective feelings, disputes between men will have to be settled by an appeal to force or to custom; they cannot be settled by reason, since from these standpoints reason cannot make any practical difference. "The question at issue, " Dewey states,

"is a practical one. Are there in existence the ideas and the know­ ledge that permit experimental method to be effectively used in social interests and affairs? " Dewey, then, presents the answer of pragmatism:

Where will regulation come from if we surrender familiar and traditionally prized values as our directive standards? Very largely from the findings of the natural sciences. For one of the effects of the separation drawn between knowledge and action is to deprive scientific knowledge of its proper service as a guide to conduct. . . a moral that frames judgments of value on the basis of con­ sequences must depend in a most intimate manner upon the conclusions of science. For the knowledge of the relations between changes which enable us to connect things as antecedents and consequences is_science. ®

Dewey, as Mills argues, uses "problem" as a surrogate for

"value. " In effect, conflicts of values and interests are transferred to the sphere of the problematic, since problems are objective and amendable to intelligent resolution in a way that questions of general values are not.

The crux of naturalism and social experimentalism as ways of 73 arbitrating social conflicts is to postpone a decision about what is desirable or valuable until a particular problem is understood. Goals are treated experimentally, as an "outgrowth" of what is going on or, in other words, of inquiry and communication. It is much simpler, according to this argument, for men to reach an agreement about the need to remedy some specific abuse than it is to get them to assent to some general doctrine. By not insisting that men agree about all things, experimentalism makes it possible for them to undertake practical measures to solve those problems about which they do agree.

And after solving one problem they can move on to the next one. In

Freedom and Culture, Dewey writes:

When general ideas are not capable of being continuously checked and revised by observation of what actually takes place, they are as a mere truism, in the field of opinion. Clash of opinions is in that case the occasion for controversy, not, as is now the case in natural science, a location of a problem and an occasion for making further observations. If any generalization can be safely laid down about intellectual matters and their consequences, it is that the reign of opinion, and of controversial conflicts, is a function of absence of methods of inquiry which bring new facts to light and by so doing establish the basis for consensus of beliefs. 9

2. A Pragmatic Style of Politics

The type of social intelligence and political action that Dewey's philosophy recommends can best be described as a form of trial and error rationalism. Rational conduct means the calculated linking 74

of means to ends through a process of trial and error during which

the ends as well as the means are adjusted to deal with a situation

as it unfolds. Ends, Dewey argues, must be evaluated in light of

the means necessary for achieving them. Further, ends, by their

nature, are always plural. By this, Dewey means that ends must

be seen in three closely related ways: the end is that which is

immediately desired; the conditions or means that are necessary to

achieve the end are themselves ends of an immediate type, ends-in-

view; and, finally, the specific end desired and the means necessary

for achieving it must be seen as potential resources or obstacles to

other goals. **

Rational action is also "deliberate" for it is guided by some plan; this distinguishes it from "mere activity. " This deliberateness, however, is combined with "flexibility" so that adjustments of both means and ends can be made as a plan is tried out. Intelligent action is "practical"; it is neither bound by tradition nor tied to any fixed theory. 12

Finally, reasonable conduct is also specific in its operations.

Both common sense and scientific research teach us, Dewey writes, that "every reflective problem and operation arises with reference to some specific situation, and has to subserve a specific purpose 13 dependent upon its own occasion. " Both Dewey's conceptions of science and action narrow the range of rational conduct to the 75 handling of concrete difficulties. Dewey's words are:

Scientific method would teach us to break up, to inquire definitely and with particularity, to seek solutions in the terms of concrete problems as they arise.. . for doing always means the doing of something in particular.

The rationalism of experimentalism, as Somjee has argued, is not the rationalism of some teleological process where action approximates some antecedent goal. Nor is its rationalism that of logical consistency alone. Rather, "Its rationalism is that of trial and error. For Dewey, we never get beyond the trial and error experience for two main reasons. First, it is impossible to foresee all the connections between social forces as these affect the outcome of some course of action. This means, secondly, that every idea must be tested in the real world by a process of trial and error.

Freedom and Culture, published in 1939, is Dewey's most systematic transfer of his model of trial and error rationalism to a theory of politics. Dewey argues three themes. First, he contends that the perspectives provided by a cultural approach to society and politics outlaw any but a pluralist and interactionist explanation of social change. The book is also a polemic against formal political theories in general and Marxism in particular. Finally, Dewey defends democratic processes in terms of their institutionalization of the methods and reasonableness of trial and error rationalism.

Dewey begins this book with a very broad conception of culture.

Culture, he says, refers to all the social relations that influence 76

men's beliefs and habits. Echoing an earlier argument in his more

philosophical writings, he states:

No matter what is the native make-up of human nature, its working activities, those which respond to institutions and rules and which finally shape the pattern of the latter, are created by the whole body of occupations, interests, skills, beliefs that constitute a given culture.

Social and political analysis must proceed by seeing problems as

"interactions of components of human nature on one side with

cultural conditions on the other. "

Since social pluralism, as demonstrated by a cultural perspective,

is an established empirical fact, Dewey believes that it is "pure

willfulness if anyone pretending to a scientific treatment starts 1 7 from any other than a pluralistic basis...." The fault with most theories of politics from this standpoint is that they take one or the other side of the interaction process as the whole. The "individualism" of early democratic theories, for instance, assumes a certain type of human nature and neglects forces in the environment as these influence individuals. Marxism errs in the opposite direction;

"it explains events and frames policies exclusively in terms of conditions provided by the environment. "

We shall take up Dewey's revisions of democratic theory in later chapters. Here we shall focus upon his objections to Marxism, since his own pluralist or interactionist position is clearest when seen in this context.

Dewey criticizes Marxism on scientific, practical, and moral grounds. He credits Marx with penetrating further than anyone before him into the role of economic forces in society and with showing many of the adverse consequences of capitalism for freedom. But his complaint against Marxism is that it treats the economic element as

"the cause of all social change. ” Such a theory, Dewey argues, is clearly "dated" Or pre-scientific:

There is a worldwide difference between the idea that causal sequences will be found in any given set of events taken for investigation, and the idea that all sets of events are linked together into a single whole by one causal law. ... For just as necessity and search for a single all-comprehensive law was typical of the intellectual atmosphere of the forties of the last century, so probability and pluralism are the characteristics of the present state of scien ce. *8

Dewey's thesis is that, given the nature of science, the only way to know in a given instance which consequences are due to forces of economic production and which ones are not is to investigate. And this means dropping any monistic theory in favor of the pluralistic position of considering "a number of interacting factors--of which a very important one is undoubtedly the economic. "

Dewey's practical objection to Marxist theory is that it hampers problem solving:

Any monolithic theory of social action and social causation tends to have a ready-made answer for 78

problems that present themselves. The whole­ sale character of this answer prevents critical examination and discrimination of the particular facts involved in the actual problem. In conse­ quence, it dictates a king of all-or-none practical activity, which in the end introduces new difficulties. 19

Marxism falsely claims for itself a comprehensive understanding

of all the interconnections between social forces; but such knowledge

is, again from the scientific standpoint, simply impossible. Marxism,

consequently, is just not useful as a guide to political action.

Nevertheless, Dewey recognizes that Marxism does offer a

formula for uniting theory and practice through the notion of the

class struggle. But Dewey rejects this formulation for two main

reasons. First, although class conflict has often played a role in bringing about social change and progress, Dewey contends that

Marxism neglects the importance of cooperation as a tool for social progress and the utility of intelligence as a way of resolving class conflicts. Obviously, some way must be found to settle social conflicts; but progress, Dewey continues, can be measured by the extent to which "the method of cooperative intelligence replaces on the method of brute conflict. " The doctrine of the class struggle presumes, secondly, that there are only class interests; but such a view, Dewey holds, will not withstand a "realistic examination of facts. " Through cooperative inquiries and social action, men do and can discover more "inclusive interests" for judging their "special claims. " In short, against the Marxist notion of the class struggle 79

Dewey sets the notion of the democratically organized community, of which more later.

Dewey's explicit moral objections to Marxism are linked to his hostility to communian as practiced in Russia. 21 His position is that the repressions and intolerance practiced in Russia ultimately have their roots in Marxism's claim to be an absolute "Truth. " Dewey sides with those who see a practical and logical connection between philosophical absolutism and political absolutism. The arbitrariness of political power, he writes, "varies in direct ratio to the claim for absoluteness on the part of the principle in behalf of which power is exercised. " Absolute principles or, more correctly, those who hold them are intolerant of dissent for this is considered a sign of

"heresy" or, in Russia, of "counterrevolution. " Since some body must translate any general theory into practice, the absoluteness of the doctrine becomes in effect a cloak for the absoluteness of a set on of rulers. Once ideas, standards, principles, rules are treated as experimental and tentative guides to action, they lose all "pretence of finality—the ulteriour source of dogmatism. "

It is no part of my purpose to evaluate the merits of Dewey's critique of Marxism. Certainly, it can be argued that Dewey does not pay sufficient attention to the distinctions between Marx's thought and the later ideology of Marxism. But Dewey does not really argue an interpretation of Marx's writings so much as he uses Marxism 80

for a contrast with his own pluralist picture of politics. Indeed, he

concludes his discussion in the chapter on "Totalitarian Economics

and Democracy" by holding that an exposure of Marxism's claims to be scientific suggests as an alternative the "potential alliance between 23 scientific method and democratic method. ..."

3. Experimentalism and Democratic Methods

Throughout his writings Dewey's most consistent orientation to

democracy is to identify it with intelligence or scientific method.

Both science and democracy, he holds, welcome a diversity of opinions before reaching any decisions; and the decisions or conclusions reached are left open to revision in light of further experience.

Dewey believes that freedom of inquiry and communication, the toleration of diverse views--these are part of both the democratic and the scientific way of living:

The very heart of political democracy is adjudica­ tion of social differences by discussion and exchange of views. This method provides a rough approxima­ tion to the method of effecting change by means of experimental inquiry and test: the scientific method. The very foundation of the democratic procedure is dependence upon experimental pro­ duction of social change; and experimentation directed by working principles that are tested and developed in the very process of being tried out in action. ^4

Unlike Marxism, experimentalism or instrumentalism is not a theory for totally transforming the social system so as to usher in the good society; rather, it is a theory for solving problems within 81 society so as to effect specific improvements in the quality of men's lives. Problem solving aims at transforming particular situations or remedying specific abuses. Piecemeal social reforms and incremental social change are the political equivalents of Dewey's model of trial and error rationalism. For example, in Reconstruction in Philosophy Dewey combines cultural pluralism and scientific problem solving in these words:

Just as "individual: is not one thing, but is a blanket term for the immense variety of specific relations, habits, dispositions, and powers of human nature that are evoked, and confirmed under the influences of associated life, so with the term "social. " Society is one word, but infinitely many things.... The new method (of science) takes iffect in substituting inquiry into these specific, changing and relative facts. . .for solemn mani­ pulation of general notions. ^5

In an argument that has since been elaborated by incrementalist theories of the decision-making process, Dewey contends that, although the piecemeal solution of problems and the openness of the democratic process leads to some "looseness of cohesion and indefiniteness in direction of action, " the results are still more likely to be reasonable than where men are committed to a definite creed. Again, his own words are:

.. . there is generated a certain balance of judgment and some sort of equilibrium in social affairs. We takeifor granted the action of a number of diverse factors in producing any social result. There are temporary waves of insistence upon this and that particular measure and aim. But there is at least enough democracy so that in time 82

any one tendency gets averaged up in interplay with other tendencies. An average presents qualities that are open to easy criticism. But as compared with the fanaticism generated by monistic ideas when they are put into operation, the averaging of tendencies, a movement towards a mean, is an achievement of splendor. 26

There are certain other parallels between Dewey's defense of democracy and incrementalist theory as presented, say, by Charles 2 7 Lindblom in The Intelligence of Democracy. Both argue that it is impossible to have the type of comprehensive knowledge that is required for any central coordination of political life; both emphasize the tendency towards equilibrium in a political system that is open so that different interests are given a hearing. The parallels, however, must not be overstated. Experimentalism is not a politics of bargaining and compromise in the sense of Lindblom's "partisan mutual adjustment. "

Some of the ways in which Dewey's thought is at odds with Lindblom's work are instructive. Partisan mutual adjustment, for example, does not recognize "correct" and "incorrect" understandings of a problem. Rather, partisans are partisans because a decision maker

. . . does not assume that there exists some knowable criteria acceptable to him and all the other decision makers that is sufficient, if applied, to govern adjustments among them; and he therefore does not move toward coordination by a cooperative and deliberate search for and/or application of such criteria or by an appeal for adjudication to those who do search and apply. ^ From this perspective, social conflicts can be settled because antagonists have a common interest in reaching some agreement and are willing to adjust their demands accordingly. Partisan mutual adjustment, Lindblom argues, encourages agreement through bar­ gaining, alliance-building, compromises, and persuasion rather than through the use of coercion. Different interests, preferences, or values are reconciled "not by sacrificing, to some degree, one or more of the conflicting values to others, but by modifying values, interests or preferences, and by dropping troublesome values and formulating new ones, so that agreement replaces conflict to an important degree. " This process, he contends, is more likely to be reasonable than central coordination for a number of reasons.

The multiplicity of partisans or decision makers in the policy making process increases the probability that various aspects of a problem will receive a hearing. This pluralism, in other words, enhances the intelligence of policy making and makes it less likely that any particular values or interests will be overlooked. Lindbolm thus locates the reasonableness, rationality, or intelligence of this type of political arbitration in the demands made upon the partisans so

29 as to reach an agreement. In contrast, for Dewey, an agreement is neither rational nor desirable simply because it is an agreement.

The conditions that Lindblom equates with rationality--specificity of focus, adaptation to past decisions, compromise, incremental change-- 84

are, in Dewey's work, only conditions that increase the likelihood

of intelligent social action. In other words, the intelligence exemplified

by scientific method is different from the intelligence of adjustment

p olitics.

Dewey's thesis is that there do exist "knowable criteria" for

settling social conflicts. While Lindblom's analysis focuses upon

the conflicts between men, Dewey shifts attention to the experienced

difficulties that give rise to such conflicts. At the bottom of all social

conflicts, according to Dewey, is some "problem" or disharmony between men's actions and the needs of a situation. Problems are

objective; unless this point is recognized, we will m iss the entire

thrust of Dewey's political writings. Secondly, Lindblom assigns a

positive value to conflict as a way of settling disputes. But from

Dewey's conception of the problematic in experience, it is only a

short step to the argument that the "rivalry of parties" is a "source

of division and confusion" and that the first necessity for problem 30 solving is "cooperative action" guided by "collective intelligence. "

Dewey assigns partisanship a negative value. Consider the following

statement by Dewey in support of the League for Independent Political

Action, an organization that he joined in the thirties:

We believe that actual social conditions and needs suffice to determine the direction political action should take, and we believe that this is the philosophy which underlies the democratic faith of the American people.. . .Our program is, in an 85

ultimate sense, partial and tentative, experimental and not rigid. .. politics is a struggle for possession and use of power to settle specific issues that grow out of the country's needs and problems. ... Because we desire a union of forces. .. we are strongly opposed to all slurs and sneers at the farmers, engineers, teachers, social workers, small merchants, clergy, newspaper people, and white- collar workers who constitute the despised middle- c la ss. 31

Finally, Dewey's theory of politics also differs from Lindblom's in that Dewey is much less optimistic about the reasonableness of the political process apart from cultural conditions in general. For

Dewey, the basic freedom is freedom of mind, the education of personality. Dewey's analysis, consequently, takes a different and more reform oriented direction than Lindblom's. The education of personality involves a set of demands about the organization of industry and the creation of a community where participation and power are widely shared.

4. Some Normative Implications of Politics as Problem Solving

Both problem and science, as Dewey uses them, are value-laden concepts. Problems, from the perspective of Dewey's theory, are signs of political malaise. Stated the other way around, a healthy political system is one that intelligently solves, or, since social processes are dynamic, is continually solving, its major problems.

Problem solving is not simply a method: its necessity provides a standard for judging a society's politics. 12 Problem solving as a 86 central theme for political thought and as a guide to political action yields a theory of the "improving" society. For instance, in a society such as America which professes a commitment to values such as individual freedom and equal opportunities, Dewey’s theory serves as a reminder that such ends are not automatically guaranteed; institutional arrangements must be continuously evaluated and adjusted in terms of their effects upon such values.

Perhaps, the significance of Dewey's position is suggested by the fact that many of today's political scientists who are especially concerned about the substantive performance of the American political system have fallen back upon a position very similar to Dewey's.

In this view, America's continued involvement in Vietnam, urban decay, the absence of major improvement in the social and economic position of minorities, and other problems are objective indictments of the failure of American politics. Problems set the stage for inquiry and what one "ought" to do becomes a function of what is needed to solve the problem. This, of course, is the political significance of

Dewey's naturalism; the factual and normative are joined in the pursuit of possible solutions to problems. Certainly, we are less confident than Dewey that "science" will only vouchsafe one particular solution to a problem; rather, we are more inclined to see the argument for a particular way out of a difficulty as itself problematic. But what we can learn from Dewey is the sterility of the facts-values dispute 87

that has misdirected so much American political science discussion.

Every theory of politics if it is at all intelligible is grounded in

empirical reality; and, at the same time, any analysis will involve

possible solutions, statements about what is desirable. Dewey's

point is that what is desirable must be related to what is sociologically

possible but that the desirable must also go beyond things as they

are. ^

Dewey is quite clear that he is more concerned with questions

of how to reach social agreement and solve problems than he is with

spelling out exactly what the reformed society will look like after­

wards. ^ But he is equally clear in his arguments that there are

certain links between "science" or "intelligence" and traditional

liberal values. This is evident in his discussion of the similarity between the methods of democracy and the methods of science. But there is more to it than this. Dewey takes quite seriously the traditional classical belief that +he quality of a country's politics depends upon the civic virtue of its people. If such a view seems alien to us, it is simply because, as political scientists, our "models" of the political "system" have become increasingly refined in their measurement of the machinery of politics and, at the same time, increasingly insensitive to the quality of the ideas and purposes that motivate and influence the machinery's performance. Referring to the use of intelligence in physical inquiry, Dewey writes; 88

Suppose that what now happens in limited circles were extended and generalized. Would the outcome be oppression or emancipation? Inquiry is a challenge, not a passive conformity; application is a means of growth, not of repression. The general adoption of the scientific attitude in human affairs would mean nothing less than a revolutionary change in morals, religion, politics and industry... . Take science. .. for what it is, and we shall begin to envisage it as a potential creator of new values and ends. We shall have an intimation, on a wide and generous scale, of the release, the increased initiative, independence and inventiveness, which science now brings in its own specialized fields to the individual scientist. It will be seen as a means of originality and individual variation. 3^

Dewey's argument, then, is that the commitment to intelligence would serve as the harbinger of a major cultural transformation.

And although, as we shall see, there are serious difficulties with

Dewey's analysis of politics, certainly one of the major achievements of his writings is that they make clear why political activism, not political quietism, is the only course open to men committed to improving the quality of social life. As one writer remarks:

It is a mistake to complain that the progressives sought to institutionalize a mood without recognizing that this was also their most characteristic achievement. 33

5. Criticisms: "Reason" Versus Politics

In beginning a critique of Dewey's political theory at this point,

I do not want simply to register my disagreements with parts of his analysis but also to elaborate further upon certain key points in his thought. As presented so far, there are three major weaknesses 8'9 in Dewey’s account of politics: his conception of the problematic, his overestimation of the benefits to be gained by a focus upon the specific, and his underestimation of the requirements for organized political action.

Dewey wrote an essay for The New Republic which has the revealing title "Education As Politics. " Discussing the need for an education that develops a critical intelligence among students, Dewey w rites:

When this happens schools will be the dangerous outposts of a humane civilization but they will also begin to be supremely interesting places. For it will then have come about that education and politics are one and the same thing because politics will have to be in fact what it now pretends to be, the intelligent management of social affairs.

Reversing the title of Dewey's essay provides, to my mind, a valuable insight into his political theory. Politics as education

(not merely as educational) is a doctrine that comes very close to explaining all of political life in terms of the need for more "inquiry. "

Dewey often imagines that more facts, further investigation, and increased knowledge will settle social conflicts in "the interests 37 of all--or at least of the great majority. " Central to such an argument is the notion that social problems are "objective" in the same way as problems in nature are, and that reason, therefore, can manage the former in the same clear-cut manner that it does the latter: 90

"Laws" of social life, when it is genuinely human, are like laws of engineering. If you want certain results, certain means must be found and employed. ^

But Dewey's arguments on these points are unconvincing. He describes problems as though they only involve a conflict between a "correct, " a "scientific" and a non-scientific understanding of a situation. For example, Dewey criticizes the Marxist doctrine that intensification of the class conflict is the way to solve the class conflict, but his proposed alternative is far from adequate. He states that:

... what generates violent strife is failure to bring the conflict into the light of intelligence where the conflicting interests can be adjudicated in behalf of the interest of the great majority. 39

The point of Marx's argument that Dewey fails to consider seriously is the contention that different classes want different things not simply due to misunderstanding or perversity but because the economic structure is such that their interests are antithetical.

One group wants to maintain certain institutional arrangements while the other wants to bring about a new pattern of relationships. It is not simply a question of understanding versus misunderstanding; rather, men's activities and, consequantly, their interests are different because they occupy different places in the economic structure of society. ^0

Whether one considers disputes between workers and employers, conflicts occasioned by religious or racial intolerance, disputes 01 between conservationists and land developers or industrialists, what is most evident is that they have interests which are not capable of being totally reconciled. Despite the currency of the notion that communication is the path out of social troubles, there are good reasons for suspecting that the balance of power will have more to do with the outcome of most social conflicts than reason.

The crux of Dewey's difficulty is that he believes that all problems can be reduced to some difficulty in man's interaction with the

"objective" environment. But this obscures the fact that some conflicts and problematic situations involve rival claims between men.

The demand for stability or the claims of authority, for example, are often assertions by some men that there _i£ not a problematic situation, that conditions do not need changing. Insofar as this situation is problematic, it is related to a conflict of values and interests, not to some difficulty in man's interaction with the environment. Therefore the suggestion, as offered by Dewey's naturalism, for settling conflicts by postponing a decision until partisans have agreed upon the "needs" of a situation is no solution at all.

One of the oldest and, perhaps, most common errors in philosophy is the tendency for a man who has uncovered some error or weakness in previous philosophies to fall into the trap of exaggerating the merits of an opposing principle or method. Dewey, in my opinion, is guilty 92 of something like this in his emphasis upon the merits of reducing intellectual inquiries to the question of specific cases. Dewey has encouraged a much needed reformation in our thinking about political creeds by persuasively arguing that their "truth" often hinges upon their ability to state their doctrines so that they can be neither proven or disproven by what occurs in the real world. Conflicts between men are intensified and prolonged whenever neither side is willing to consider the specific consequences of acting upon its doctrine. But the fact that men disagree over general and abstract creeds does not justify the conclusion, argued by Dewey, that they are less likely to disagree sharply about specific issues. Indeed, it can be argued that it is precisely the application of general principles to specific cases that gives rise to some of the most bitter disputes and antagonisms between men. For example, men committed to the principle of equal educational opportunities may divide strongly when it comes to the question of how to guarantee that opportunity. And, indeed, an appeal to the general principle may play some part in adjusting their differences. When a conflict is not over the "needs of a situation" but over the meaning and implications of various values, beliefs, and interests, the conflict cannot be settled by attempting to transfer the location of the difficulty to some other realm.

Dewey's belief that the 'Ultimate fate is the fatality of ignorance, and the ultimate wickedness is lack of faith in the possibilities of 93 intelligence applied inventively and constructively" accounts for his aversion to ideological groups, parties, or movements with "embody moral emotions rather than the insight and policy of intelligence.

This also explains why Dewey, although he supported many liberal causes, never completely identified with any party. For example, although he campaigned actively for the election of Norman Thomas, he did so as a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an adjunct of the Socialist-party and composed mainly of intellectuals organized as a study group. 42 Similarly, Dewey avoids calling any of his political proposals, even his call for the public control of industry, socialism for that is too much a "party word. " The crux of Deweyls style of politics is this effort to shift attention from the antagonisms between different groups and classes to their common stake in solving "problems. " Consequently, no conventional political labels can be fixed to either Dewey or his theory of political activism.

And "This, " Sidney Hook argues, "is what we should expect about 43 anyone faithful to the spirit of the experimental philosophy. "

Judged in terms of reason, deliberateness, or scientific method, political activity often seems deliberately to spurn such standards.

Both Dewey's ethical theory and his educational theory pivot upon the intellectual growth of the individual. And since he approaches politics from this angle, it is not surprising that he condemns much of the normal game of politics. There are actually two somewhat 94 different attitudes towards the characteristic features of electoral politics evident in Dewey’s writings. The first and earlier one criticizes political practices because of men’s failure to apply the same intelligence to social affairs that they do to problems in nature.

A typical charge by Dewey is that:

It would be a waste of words to expatiate on the meaninglessness of present political platforms, parties and issues. The old-time slogans are still reiterated, and to a few these words still seem to have a real meaning. But it is too evident to need argument that on the whole our politics, as far as they are not covertly manipulated in behalf of the pecuniary advantage of groups, are in a state of confusion; issues are improvised from week to week with a constant shift of allegiance.... Political apathy broken by recurrent sensations and spasms is the natural outcome. 44

Political parties and elections, he argues, are little more than a sham. The fundamental political problem, according to Dewey, is mainly an educational one, the expansion of the experimental attitude in politics.

Dewey's second position, advanced in Freedom and Culture, considers more carefully the significance of parties and elections as these affect the way that power is exercised. Here, as we have seen, he holds that the procedures of democracy—free discussion, social pluralism, voluntary associations--increase the probability of trial and error political action. This expanded attitude can be explained, in part, by Dewey's belief that in 1939 a new set of circumstances had to be taken into account. Conditions in totalitarian 95 countries, he argues, demonstrate that there is a large "gulf between a country having suffrage and popular representation and a country having dictatorships...." Although he still insists that democracy is more than a form of government, Dewey now holds that electoral politics has a value "critics of partial democracy

(including himself) have not realized. "45

There remains, however, a clear ambivalence in Dewey's judgment of political activity when compared to experimentalism and science as modes of activity. He writes:

What purports to be experiment in the social field is very different from experiment in natural science; it is rather a process of trial and error accompanied with some degree of hope and a great deal of talk. Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies. .. the real problem is that of building up an intelligent and capable civil-service.... 46

Dewey never satisfactorily brings together his desire, on the one hand, to promote an activist political philosophy that measures progress in politics by the progressive expansion of the scientific management of social affairs and his recognition, on the other hand, that political activity is not like scientific activity. In effect, Dewey never sufficiently recognizes the problems peculiar to political action. For instance, his standards of rational conduct make him suspicious of parties and political movements for these often depend for their success upon loyalties and practices that are motivated by 96 faith in the group's program or its general principles. But it is difficult to imagine how any political group could motivate its members by insisting upon its own limitations and the merits of the opposition. 47

Further, Dewey underestimates the positive functions of social conflict. Competition between parties, groups, and different philosophies is not simply a necessary evil but a positive good.

It provides at least some modest insurance that various grievances are given a hearing. Electoral politics, even though it entails compromise with principles and a "great deal of talk, " helps, nevertheless, to prevent political power from being exercised arbitrarily. The objection, then, is that there is an anti-politics strain in Dewey's writings which--praising politics for what it could 48 be--mistakenly criticizes much of what it is. This, of course, is characteristic of many of the progressives who often proposed to improve political life by taking the politics "out of" government.

However, it is clear that Dewey's philosophy of political activism also assigns a considerable importance to politics. First, a society's politics, its political techniques and its publicly sanctioned norms, represent its choices about the type of individual that members of that society approve; this is the meaning of political education.

Secondly, problem solving is above all else a political enterprise. The promise of politics is that through public action society can reasonably manage social forces in ways that individuals acting separately cannot. FOOTNOTES

1. Utility, however, must not be narrowly interpreted. Sidney Hook puts it this way: "To begin with, when Dewey speaks of practice, he does not mean that philosophies must serve some immediate practical interest but that if they have meaning they commit us to some activity in relation to the world or situation which calls it forth. This activity or practice may be evaluated as useful or useless, good or bad; but the crucial question is whether such practice is relevant to the problem with which the philosopher is concerned, whether he is aware of its relevance, and is prepared to accept the consequences as evidence for or against the validity of his philosophy. " op. cit., pp. 45-46. Also see Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco, 1964), pp. 43-44.

2. Individualism: Old and New, pp. 140-141.

3. Intelligence in the Modern World, pp. 951-952.

4. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 194.

5. Liberalism and Social Action, p. 79.

6. The Quest for Certainty, p. 266.

7. Freedom and Culture, p. 118.

8. The Quest for Certainty, pp. 273-274.

9. Freedom and Culture, p. 116.

10. See Somjee, op. cit. , pp. 60-61 and passim.

11. Theory of Valuation and Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 212, 228.

12. For Dewey's account of the nature of trial and error rationalism, see Democracy and Education, pp. 104-106, 148-151.

97 98

13. Studies in Logical Theory, p. 50.

14. Individualism: Old and New, p. 165.

15. Somjee, op. cit., p. 60.

16. Freedom and Culture, p. 7.

17. Psychological Review, Vol. 24, p. 269; cited in Mills, op. cit., p. 428.

18. Freedom and Culture, p. 84.

19. Ibid. , p. 100.

20. Liberalism and Social Action, p. 81, and Freedom and Culture, pp. 86-87.

21. See "Why I Am Not a Communist" Modern Monthly, VIII (April, 1934), pp. 135-137.

22. Freedom and Culture, pp. 102, 90-91. Dewey and various other writers argue that philosophical relativism and empricism are linked to democracy. But other theorists have argued that reverse position. In this view, totalitarianism is the denial of any values; and democracy is combined with a belief in the absoluteness of certain values. Felix Oppenheim persuasively maintains, in contrast to both of these positions, that there is no necessary logical, political, psychological, or historical connection between any one particular school of philosophy and any one political doctrine. "Relativism, Absolutism, and Democracy, " American Political Science Review, XLIV (Dec., 1950), pp. 951-960.

23. Freedom and Culture, pp. 101-102.

24. Problems of Men, p. 157. Dewey's argument is obviously correct insofar as one accepts his definition of science as a pattern of behavior and a set of attitudes that includes tolerance, completely open inquiry, experimentalism, etc. But there are other theories of science, less methodologically oriented than Dewey in their views, which argue that scientific activity occurs within a frame­ work of principles and logical laws about reality that are to a large degree arbitrary. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1964). Dewey's defense of 99

democratic methods must stand, as I think it can, upon the worth of those methods apart from any appeal to the methods of scien ce.

25. Reconstruction in Philosophy, pp. 199-200.

26. Freedom and Culture, pp. 94-95.

27. Charles Lindblom, The Intelligence of Democracy (New York, 1965).

28. Ibid. , pp. 28-29.

29. Ibid. , pp. 207. 151.

30. Liberalism and Social Action, pp. 70-71, and Freedom and Culture, pp. 72-73.

31. "The Future of Radical Political Action, " Nation, CXXXV (Jan. 4, 1933), pp. 8-9.

32. See David Spitz, "Politics and the Critical Imagination, " The Review of Politics, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1970), pp. 419-435.

3$. In Individualism: Old and New, for example, Dewey writes: "The art which our times needs in order to create a new type of individuality is the art which, being sensitive to the technology and science that are the moving forces of our time, will envisage the expansive, the social, culture which they may be made to serve. I am not anxious to depict the form which this emergent individualism will assume. Indeed, I do not see how it can be described until more progress has been made in its production. " p. 99.

34. Ibid. , pp. 155, 160-161.

35. Rush Welter, op. cit., p. 266.

36. Characters and Events, Vol. II, p. 781. Emphasis added.

37. Liberalism and Social Action, p. 79.

38. The Public and Its Problems, p. 197.

39. Liberalism and Social Action, p. 80. 100

40. Cf. Mills, op. cit., pp. 412-413.

41. Characters and Events, Vol. II, p. 719.

42. For Dewey’s relationship to the Socialist party in America, see David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (Chicago, 1967), pp. 54-56 and passim.

43. Hook, op. cit., p. 162.

44. Individualism: Old and New, pp. 59-60.

45. Freedom and Culture, pp. 93-94.

46. Ibid. , p. 65.

47. Cf. George Raymond Geiger, "Dewey’s Social and Political Philosophy, " Schilpp, op. cit.

48. One of the best statements of the value of politics because of its compromises, its preoccupation with procedures and forms, and its conflict of interests is Bernard Crick, In Defense of Politics (Baltimore, 1964). IV

The New Liberalism

Toward the end of the nineteenth century and in the early part of the twentieth century, writers in both England and America begin to use such phrases as authentic democracy, the new freedom, and the new liberalism to indicate their belief that old doctrines needed to be brought up to date. * In America this movement was closely tied to the emergence of progressivism. Publicists and philosophers alike began to demand that ideas come to grips with reality. This demand that more attention be paid to the substance rather than the form of politics, law, and economics was usually made in the language of pragmatism, the philosophical compass guiding the thought of O this period. Individual freedom and the democratic state remain preeminent values, but the "old" liberalism's views of how best to realize these values are sharply criticized. In part, the new liberalism is simply an effort to devise new means for achieving traditional liberal ends. Dewey, for instance, frequently asserts that:

The ends remain valid. But the means of attaining them demand a radical change in economic institu­ tions and the political arrangements based upon them. ^

101 102

There is also, however, the suggestion that the substance of liberalism's goals must be defined anew. It is not surprising, therefore, that Dewey refers to two liberalisms, the old and the new.

This chapter first sketches some of the major distinctions between early and later formulations of liberalism, then looks at

Dewey's discussion of these distinctions. Secondly, Dewey's idea of freedom, the core of his version of the new liberalism, is evaluated.

A. Modernizing Liberalism

1. Classical Liberalism and Welfare State Liberalism

Classical liberalism, as I see it, is the liberalism of constitu­ tionalism (John Locke), the negative state and individualism (John

4 Stuart Mill), and, in political economy, laissez-faire (Adam Smith).

Although there are important differences between the early advocates of liberalism, each sees the major political problem as equipping the government with sufficient powers to arbitrate those conflicts that threaten the social order and at the same time guarding against the danger that the government's powers will become excessive and tyrannical. Since liberalism, both as a philosophy and as a move­ ment, originated at a time when arbitrary government was the most obvious restraint upon men's freedom, suspicion of government power is a major feature of classical liberalism. To the liberal, government power is only to be used when the need is great and not otherwise 103

met. The French writer Morellet expressed the general view in

this terse statement:

Since liberty is a natural state, and restrictions are, on the contrary, the state of compulsion, by giving back liberty everything reassumes its own place, and everything is in peace, provided only that thieves and murderers continue to be caught. ®

Freedom, whether it is defined as the enjoyment of natural rights

or as the absence of restraints, is seen as dependent upon a system

of mutual forbearance whereby each man can enjoy his liberty so

long as he does not interfere with others. John Stuart Mill's famous

essay On Liberty is the best example of this effort to make the

distinction between those actions which primarily concern the individual

and those actions which are injurious to the interests of others.

Whether or not Mill’s principles really enable us to make a dis­

tinction between private and public acts is not important at this point g in the discussion. What is significant is Mill's clear insistence that the resort to social or political control should be rare. Even

when government actions do not involve an infringement of liberty,

Mill advances a number of reasons for being wary of government

interference. He approves of the political economists' arguments that the "ordinary processes of industry" are best left alone. Also, he advises that although the government*could possibly do something better than men acting separately, it is still wiser to let them do it themselves as "as means to their own mental education. " Finally, 104 he emphasizes that any addition to the government's power is an evil to be avoided.

The doctrine of individualism and the negative state was strongly reenforced by the expectation that the free market system would enable each individual to become whatever his talents and tastes dictated. Adam Smith's teaching that each individual in pursuing his own selfish interests also serves the happiness of the greatest number provided a sufficient prescription of optimism to buttress the notion that the claims of the individual are antithetical to the collective power of society. 8

What unites the new liberals, in contrast to the early liberals, is the view that many problems do require the use of public, that is, state power to solve them. Whether we look at the English g writers T. H. Green and Leonard Hobhouse or, in America, John

Dewey, positive action by the state is no longer seen as the occasional exception. In effect, it is argued that the expectation that men left alone will be able to make their way in the world is false. For example, freedom for all from the state's power is too easily translated, when it passes through the economic system, into freedom for a few and economic bondage for the many. With the rise of large corporations and the concentration of capital in a few hands, those already advantaged by the workings of the economic system benefit the most from the absence of government interference. Dewey 105

has forcefully stated his opinion on this point:

The notion that men are equally free to act if only the same legal arrangements apply equally to all--irrespective of differences in education, in command of capital, and the control of the social environment which is furnished by the institution of property--is a pure absurdity, as facts have demonstrated. 10

The new liberals, therefore, argue that the use of government

power to regulate working conditions or to effect a wider distribution

of wealth, to cite two examples, actually enlarges the sphere of

freedom for most men: "The restraint of the aggressor is the

freedom of the sufferer. .. .

Crucial to the thought of the new liberals is the belief that mutual

aid, not merely mutual forbearance, is a mark of the good society.

To make liberalism a more reform oriented political theory, all

of the new liberals attack the individualism of classical liberalism

from a number of perspectives. And no one has done this more

persuasively than has Dewey.

2. Individuality and Society

Dewey frequently uses words such as individuality and liberty

and individualism and liberalism interchangeably. However, when he contrasts the old and the new liberalism, he often uses the word

individualism in connection with the former but generally uses the

word individuality when discussing the latter. In any case, throughout the 1930's Dewey, writing in an atmosphere where the doctrine of 106

laissez-faire and, to the extent that its principles overlap, liberalism

seemed responsible for the misery wrought by the depression and,

more directly, the initial reluctance of the state to combat economic

problems, continuously examines the problem of individuality and

collective action. Two books, Individualism: Old and New and

Liberalism and Social Action, and a group of essays later collected

and published as the Problems of Men have as their common topic

the growing corporateness in America and the consequent need for

collective action to solve problems. His major thesis is that

"individualistic liberalism" sets up a false antagonism between the

individual and organized society but that "collectivistic liberalism"

does away with this opposition.

Before revising the notion of individualism, Dewey admits that

this doctrine did perform several important tasks at the time of its

origin. Older forms of organized power, especially the state, were

exposed as arbitrary and oppressive once men began to press the

rights of the individual. Further, individualism taught the importance

of freedom of discussion and expression for the growth of man. But the tragedy of liberalism, Dewey contends, has been its lack of a historical sense. Interpretations of liberty and individualism have been put forth as "immutable truths good at all times and places. "

Liberalism, in short, has itself become a formal and fixed creed.

Liberalism's failure to see that the practical significance of ends and the means to their realization varies with historical circumstances accounts for an inner split in liberalism. On the one hand, many liberals are now committed to the use of government action to improve the condition of those at an economic disadvantage so that they will be free in fact as well as in theory. Yet, Dewey observes that others, under the label of "rugged individualism," use liberal principles to defend illiberal ends. Liberty Leagues claim title to the tradition of liberalism by relying upon the principle that any government action is an infringement upon liberty. However, such a claim, Dewey argues, is really quite spurious. Laissez-faire political and economic principles, Dewey argues, must be seen for what they were—procedures or means to an end, the increased freedom of the individual. For

Dewey, in other words, it is no sign of political virtue to keep faith with the form of a tradition at the expense of its substance. And much of Dewey's critique of the old liberalism pivots upon a revision of its form so as to give practical effect to its values.

From Dewey's writings, we can identify three features of liberalism that he felt needed reminting in modem coin: 1) its conception of human nature, 2) its presumption of a permanent opposition between the individual and organized social action, freedom and authority, and 3) its laissez-faire principles of political economy.

a. Social man: Dewey argues that the "essential fallacy of classic Liberalism" is that it really has no theory of man's development 108 through society. Rather, men are cloaked in the mantle of natural rights, powers, and liberties as though these were "ready-made possessions" apart from what happens to men in society. 1 9 But men, as Dewey has constantly labored at demonstrating, are always social beings. Therefore, he writes:

Individuality in a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out. It means initiative, inventiveness, varied resourcefulness, assumption of responsibility in choice of belief and conduct. These are not gifts, but achievements. As achieve­ ments, they are not absolute but relative to the use that is to be made of them. And this use varies with the environment.

Although Dewey's writings often give the impression that the good life is easy to achieve, that all that is needed is a greater reliance upon science, his argument here is exactly the opposite.

To put it differently, Dewey challenges the early liberals' assumption that all that is needed to protect and to further individualism is the removal of external restrictions and formal obstacles. It is this theory, according to Dewey, that is too easy. Such a theory imagines that the task of political action is largely negative--setting up no trespass signs around "natural rights. " But if individuality is something to be won, then the task of politics is an infinitely more varied and difficult one--the creation of a positive pattern of inter­ actions between the individual and his environment. In "The Future of Liberalism" Dewey writes: 109

Liberalism knows that social conditions may restrict, distort and almost prevent the development of individuality. It therefore takes an active interest in the working of social institutions that have a bearing, positive or negative, upon the growth of individuals who shall be rugged in fact and not merely in abstract theory. It is as much interested in the positive construction of favorable institutions, legal, political and economic, as it is in the work of removing abuses and overt oppressions.

b. The good of social institutions: One of the first major revisions of liberalism occurred with the publication of Mill's essay

On Liberty. 1 S Mill added to early liberalism the recognition that political institutions are part of a larger social setting. Mill argued that it was necessary to defend individual freedom not simply against an arbitrary government but also against an intolerant public opinion.

The enjoyment of liberty was no longer merely a function of constitutional government, it also depended upon a liberal society. A further addition to the theory of liberalism came about with the recognition that the government's power could be used to restrain factory owners, to regulate working conditions, and to combat monopolies so as to release the workingman from the restraints of private powers. However, such additions do not necessarily revise the dichotomy established by classical liberalism between the individual and society. Such changes in the evolution of liberalism still reflect a view of society where individuals, on one side, confront various coercive social institutions, on the other side. Mill, for instance, carries over the liberal suspicion of political institutions and applies it to society. Dewey's 110 revisions of liberalism go beyond such additions to the doctrine by arguing against both the individual-society dichotomy and such a negative view of organized social power. 1-10 fi

Individuality, Dewey argues, entails social unity, cooperation, and collective action. Writing about the philosopher James Marsh he describes this connection. He begins by stating that the pioneer period in America has been little understood:

The true individualism of that era fyas been eclipsed because it has been misunderstood. It is now often treated as if it were an exaltation of individuals free from social relations and responsibilities. Marsh expresses its genuine spirit when he refers, as he does constantly, to the community of individuals. The essence of our earlier pioneer individualism was not non-social, much less anti-social; it involved no indifference to the claims of society. Its working ideal was neighborliness and mutual service... .Community relationships were to enable an individual to reach a fuller manifestation of his own powers, and this development was in turn to be a factor in modifying the organized and stated civil and political order so that more individuals would be capable of genuine participa­ tion in the self-government and self-movement of society. ...^

Individuality and community, then, are two sides of a single phenomenon.

Since men live in association, the individual's opportunities for action, initiative, and choice become a function of his participation in a community which uses its collective resources to promote the good of each of its members. Dewey's theory of "social man" culminates in a vision of a society where men associate as equals and where social institutions give support to the growth of the individual. Ill

Most men can easily respond to a vision of a "community of individuals. " But although a vision can be important as a posture or personal ethic justifying the refusal to participate in a social system on the terms dictated by existing practices, it is no substitute for a set of propositions that translate the vision into a political program.

Socialism and, in a much wider context, political participation are the key aspects of Dewey's conception of how to improve man's condition.

c. Socialism; Two doctrines are often confused in discussions of liberalism; the liberal theory of the state and the economic theory of laissez-faire. Consequently, later writers have seized upon the liberal definition of freedom as the absence of restraint--which is primarily an assertion of the values of freedom from arbitrary government--to argue against government intervention in the economy.

But although liberalism does begin with the definition of freedom as the absence of restraint, it does not end there. The political freedoms defended by liberals require, for instance, that social and political controls be used to protect those freedoms from those who would violate them or, mutatis mutandis, they require a citizenry willing and able to prevent the government from abusing such freedoms.

More importantly, there is no necessary connection between the political theory of liberalism and the theory of the free market. 1 ft °

Quite the contrary, Dewey argues that the success of political 112 liberalism now depends upon adopting some form of socialism.

For Dewey, socialism is first a method for controlling the abuses of economic power. Just as the early liberals recognized that uncontrolled political power leads to the abuse of the ruled by the rulers, so the new liberalism sees that uncontrolled economic power leads to the abuse of the many by the few. In Liberalism and Social

Action Dewey writes that the early liberals:

. . . had no glimpse of the fact that private control of the new forces of production, forces which affect the life of everyone, would operate in the same way as private unchecked control of political power. They saw the need for new legal institutions, and of different political conditions as a means to political liberty. But they failed to perceive that social control of economic forces is equally necessary if anything approaching economic equality and liberty is to be realized. 19

Dewey's argument, then, is that once it is recognized that the significance of individuality and liberty depends upon the conditions in which individuals find themselves, social policies must be altered accordingly. Reviewing the economic inequalities and poverty in

America during the 1930's Dewey argues:

There is, accordingly, no doubt in my own mind that laissez-faire liberalism is played out, largely because of the fruits of its own policies. Any system that cannot provide elementary security for millions has no claim to the title of being organized in behalf of liberty and the development of individuals. 20

Although Dewey advocates socialism, he really has no 113

theory of socialism as a way of distributing power. For instance,

he speaks of the need for the "cooperative control of industry" and

urges the creation of a council composed of the "captains of industry

and finance" and representatives of labor and of the government.

But he does not explain how these men are to be chosen or what their

respective powers and the powers of the council should be. 21 Dewey

is less interested in how the control of the forces of production and

production itself would work than he is with the educational impact

of such control. For Dewey, socialism is a method of collective

control of economic forces; but, even more importantly, it is an

ethical ideal—a political and economic means to the development of

individuality.

In discussing socialism Dewey's major theme is the adverse

effects of impersonal economic forces upon the individual's sense

of security, self-direction, and self-control. The opportunities, the choices, and the actions of individuals, Dewey argues, are

increasingly shaped by large corporate organizations and impersonal

economic forces. The forces of economic combination and institutional

organization, and the breakdown of community life, have all combined to limit the development of the individual. With the increasing complexities of industrial life, the individual has little understanding of the consequences of his actions, Dewey writes: 114

The theory of the self-actuated and self-governing individual receives a rude shock when massed activity has a potency which individual effort can no longer claim. ^

Dewey is sensitive to the hardships imposed by unemployment,

poor wages, and unsafe working conditions; but he argues that the

economic problem cannot be thought of as simply a "bread-and-butter"

issue. The deeper issue is the type of society that men are going to form. It is from this moral standpoint that he criticizes capitalism:

This state of affairs must exist so far as society is organized on a basis of division betv/een laboring classes and leisure classes. The intelligence of those who do things becomes hard in the un­ remitting struggle with things; that of those freed from the discipline of occupation becomes luxurious and effeminate. Moreover, the majority of human beings still lack economic freedom. Their pursuits are fixed by accident and necessity of circumstance; they are not the normal expression of their own powers interacting with the needs and resources of the environment. Our economic conditions still relegate many men to a servile status. As a consequence, the intelligence of those in control of the practical situation is not liberal. Instead of playing freely upon the subjugation of the world for human ends, it is devoted to the manipulation of other men for ends that are non-human in so far as they are exclusive. ^

Socialism--popular participation both in the factory and in controlling the consequences of the economic system --is, for Dewey, a way to solve the "crisis in culture, " e. g ., the gap between the ideal of a community of individuals and the reality of the private control of industry with its emphasis upon satisfying selfish interests. 115

Social legislation characteristic of the welfare state, although

beneficial, is not enough. Rather, there must be a new "social

orientation and organization, " including socializing the forces of

production, so that the structure of the economy itself pivots upon 24 the needs of the mass of individuals. Finally, the transformation

of the economic associations among men is identical with the "recovery

of composed, effective and creative individuality. " Socialism, then,

is a further route to a community that uses "socially organized

intelligence" to solve its problems.

3. Problems in Dewey's Political Technology

A political thinker must have both vision and technique, both ends and means. Now Dewey clearly has a general political creed which, if labels are needed, comes very close to democratic socialism.

Many of the problems of interpretation and evaluation of Dewey's work, therefore, have to do with his political technology--his account of how to get from where we are to where we need to be in order to solve our problems. Such difficulties become apparent when we look closer at Dewey's efforts to modernize liberalism so that it can serve as a guide to a comprehensive program of political action.

While most observers have viewed Roosevelt's New Deal as the

2 c triumph of political pragmatism in America, Dewey did not uncritically celebrate the New Deal. Quite the contrary, we have seen that many of his political writings at this time criticize the 116

government for improvising programs to meet "special occasions. "

The New Deal, he contends, lacks any general social policy for

guiding its decisions about what to do. In the 1930's Dewey clearly

feels that something more is needed than specific problem solving.

He holds that the strength of classical liberalism stemmed from its

possession of "a thought out social philosophy, a theory of politics

sufficiently definite and coherent to be easily translated into a

program of polities to be pursued. " The new liberalism, therefore, must now construct a political philosophy that will make room for "far 2 6 reaching experiments in construction of a new social order. "

Dewey's arguments here have led to the charge that there is a basic inconsistency within his work:

Comprehensive measures, however, are in fact in direct contravention to the spirit of trial-and- error procedure, which implies cautious, well- thought-out, and manageable experiments so that the harm done by any errors may not be irremedial.. . . Consequently, Dewey's advocacy of positive measures is invariably carried to the extent where these measures come in direct conflict with his laboriously argued out philosophy of trial and error. ^7

There is much in this criticism by Somjee that one can sympathize with. The major thrust of Dewey's philosophy is towards political action that remedies specific evils. And certainly Dewey's constant attacks upon general principles or "inclusive ideals" discourages efforts to link various reform policies under one political umbrella 117 or social program. But in Dewey's defense it can be argued that there is nothing in his philosophy which prohibits support for a comprehensive social program. Although Dewey insists that under­ standing must always start with specific experiences, by the 1930's he argues that experience(s) has revealed an interdependency between such problems as unemployment, unsafe working conditions, the insignificance of the individual's participation in directing the purposes of his work, and the principles of capitalism. Consequently, these specific problems can only be fully solved by changing the economic system itself.

Secondly, Dewey attempts to resolve the tension created by his admiration for the piecemeal and trial and error methods of science and his desire at the same time to see comprehensive changes in social conditions by distinguishing between a broad vision and its incremental implementation. Liberalism must become "radical" in the sense of bringing about thoroughgoing changes in institutions; but since the goal is the creation of a new type of man and a new type of society, the process will necessarily be a gradual one requiring changes on many fronts. Dewey writes:

The human ideal is indeed comprehensive. As a standpoint from which to view existing conditions and judge the direction change should take, it cannot be too inclusive. But the problem of production of change is one of infinite attention to means; and means can be determined only by definite analysis of the conditions of each problem 28 as it presents itself.

Despite Dewey's awareness of the utility of a cohesive social and political program, it nevertheless is true that the final impact of his arguments is to discourage the type of thought and inquiry necessary to develop such a program. Dewey recognizes that a political creed, such as classical liberalism, organizes the discrete and the concrete into a generalized system of principles for inter­ preting and evaluating specific political phenomena. What he does not recognize is that such a program will not be born out of a "scientific" mode of inquiry which insists upon the uniqueness of each experience and always focuses upon concrete and specific problems. Although

Dewey does not want to restrict the range of political discourse and inquiry, the practical effect of his writings is to encourage the adjust­ ment style of politics for which he criticized the New Deal.

Dewey's dilemma stems from his mistrust of creeds, since these too easily become dogmatic and formal, and his perception, however incomplete, of the need for such creeds. This is, in effect, the major obstacle to his effort to modernize liberalism. Writing about different types of liberalisms, he states:

As a social philosophy, 'liberalism' runs the gamut of which a vague temper of mind--often called forward- looking--is one extreme, and a definite creed as to the purposes and methods of social action is another. The first is too vague to afford any steady 119

guide in conduct; the second is so specific and fixed as to result in dogma, and thus to end in an illiberal mind. Liberalism as a method of intelligence, prior to being a method of action, as a method of experimentation based on insight into both social desires and actual conditions, escapes the dilemma. It signifies the adoption of the scientific habit of mind in application to social affairs. ^9

But liberalism as "intelligence" does not really escape the dilemma posed by Dewey. If, for instance, we ask how socialism, one element of the new liberalism, is to come about, the answer given by Dewey is that there must be a greater reliance upon intelligence in social affairs. In a work such as Individualism:

Old and New, for instance, Dewey argues as though once men

"recognize" the corporate age in which they live "the issue will define itself" as the public control of industry. In other words,

Dewey wants to reform political life by reforming men's ideas and beliefs. Politics qua politics is played down—"Politics is a means, not an end. " Dewey sharply criticizes the exigencies of organized politics with its slogans and preoccupation with immediate demands.

He argues that the spread of intelligence "does not demand the creation of a formal organization: it does demand that a sense of the need and opportunity should possess a sufficiently large number of 30 minds. " But Dewey does not explain how or why "recognition" is going to overcome the reluctance of the capitalist class to give up their position in the economic system. Discussing the goal of a 120 new individualism where society uses its collective resources and socially organized intelligence to further the growth of each person,

Dewey writes:

The greatest obstacle to that vision is, I repeat, the perpetuation of the older individualism now reduced, as I have said, to the utilization of science and technology for ends of private pecuniary gain. I sometimes wonder if those who are conscious of present ills but who direct their blows of criticism at everything except this obstacle are not stirred by motives which they unconsciously prefer to keep below consciousness.^*

Dewey almost recognizes here the chief problem with his confidence in the power of reason to change social and economic arrangements; what he does not see is that the inability of intelligence to overcome refractory social habits and beliefs--which are closely tied to men's interests--is the broken link in his whole chain of reasoning.

Five years later, in Liberalism and Social Action, Dewey moves to a position that sees that intelligence must have behind it the power of organized individuals to be really effective: "It is in organization for action that liberals are weak, and without this organization there is danger that democratic ideals may go by default. " But it is still the political high road that Dewey chooses to travel. In the same work, he tends to look upon electioneering as "propaganda" and the manipulation of symbols. Thus, an appeal to all liberals to unite behind the general goal of socializing the forces of production is 121

as far as he is willing to go in meeting the need for a "concrete

program of action. " 32 But with such a broadly defined goal, combined

with hostility towards party politics, Dewey has little basis for hope

or confidence.

In the final analysis, Dewey's political philosophy rests upon a

faith in the power of intelligence to make a real difference in human

affairs. In order for Dewey's theory to work there actually must be

a new style of citizen politics in a democracy. But surely it is some­

what ironical that a political philosophy which has been highly touted for its "pragmatic" or "practical" qualities actually rests upon certain ideally rationalist assumptions, the most important being that politics can become more like education.

B. The Idea of Freedom

1. Variations of a Theme

Dewey's argument for a "renascent liberalism" involves more than simply discovering new means to old ends. Rather, there must be a basic alteration in the ideas, especially freedom and individuality, that define the liberal experience. For Dewey, one of the major obstacles to a liberalism relevant to modern conditions is an outdated conception of freedom which, primarily negative and indivualistic in its emphasis, discourages positive and collective social action aimed at solving widespread problems. Again, running

throughout Dewey's writings is the theme that performance counts:

"consequences in the lives of individuals are the criterion and measure 33 of policy and judgment. " From this standpoint, freedom, Dewey

holds, must be understood to include the means or the power necessary

for individuals to be free in fact as well as in theory. Dewey's

second major theme is that it is possible to have a type of association

or society where individuals equally participate in regulating their

common concerns. Such a society approaches the ideal of a community

in which the bond that holds the community together is the commitment

of each of the members to the organized and intelligent management

of the group's interests. Where individual control and community

control are similar, i. e ., the intelligent management of social

affairs, social control is not experienced as something external to

the individual but is a part of his own activity.

Earlier I stated that Dewey's confidence in reason or education

to reform social and economic institutions was not sufficiently justified even in terms of his own recognition of the connection between men's interests, beliefs, and their position in the economic

structure of society. But there is a second sense in which we talk of the place of intelligence or reason in political life. Dewey has never imagined that reason is simply a technique for linking means 123 to ends. Reason also has the task of interpreting the meaning of political phenomena. Given the number of different doctrines about, say, the meaning of the state, the temptation is strong, Dewey argues,

"to drop all doctrines of this kind overboard, and stick to facts verifiably ascertained. " But such an attitude is really impossible to adopt. Dewey writes:

Political facts are not outside human desire and judgment. Change men's estimate of the value of existing political agencies and forms, and the latter change more or less.. .. Bodies of men are constantly engaged in attacking and trying to change some political habits, while other bodies of men are actively supporting and justifying them. It is mere pretense, then, to suppose that we can stick by the de facto, and not raise at some points the question of de jure; the question of by what right, the question of legitimacy. 34

The fundamental insight into political life evident in such a statement is that men's political actions ultimately involve an appeal to this or that doctrine, some set of ideas. Consequently, Dewey is quite correct in holding that the success or failure of liberalism is connected to the clarity and validity of its main ideas. There can be no neat separation between ideas and action, since the latter is always, however indirectly and hidden, informed by the former.

With this in mind, I want now to consider Dewey's theory of freedom which is not only central to his account of the new liberalism, but also brings together the many different parts of his political and social theory. 124

2. Negative and Positive Concepts of Freedom

The most common distinction among theories of freedom is between negative and positive conceptions of freedom or liberty

(freedom and liberty are used here and by Dewey as synonyms).

All negative views of freedom argue that the core meaning of freedom is the absence of restraints. But such writers will disagree about which freedoms are most important and which restraints are justifiable and important. Similarly, all positive theories of freedom see it as doing what one "ought" to do; but this ought is variously defined as obedience to the law, following the principles of right reason, or obeying the will of God.

It is clear that the problem of freedom is not one but a series of problems. We need to know how a man defines freedom, how he distinguishes the important from the secondary or trivial freedoms, how he relates freedom to other values, and how he determines the principles that are to serve as criteria for guiding men's choices.

What is distinctive about Dewey's theory of freedom is his combination of a positive view of freedom as a form of self-perfection or growth

q r with the negative idea of freedom as the absence of restraint.

In other words, Dewey uses the negative and positive conceptions of freedom to answer questions about the different dimensions of

O £* freedom. His theory of freedom encompasses four major points: 125

a. Negatively, Dewey writes, freedom "signifies freedom from subjection to the will and control of others; exemption from bondage; release from servitude; capacity to act without being exposed to direct obstructions or interference from others. But the "most common mistake" made about freedom is to define it solely as the absence of restraint. Even in those contexts where he is discussing freedom as the removal of obstacles that prevent men from doing what they desire to do, Dewey contends that men must have the means, especially economic, to translate their desires into deeds. His second objection to the negative concept of freedom is a more philosophical one. Freedom, he holds, is only achieved when the individual’s actions are intelligently informed. Otherwise a man may fail to achieve his purposes and will become the slave of his emotions and/or be manipulated by others.

b. The central meaning of freedom, for Dewey, is the better realization of one's self. This means individuality, growth in character, the ability to control the environment and to solve problems, to work one’s way out of difficulties. All of these terms refer most directly to Dewey's notion of education, in its broadest sense, as the key to the good life. Dewey shares with writers such as Bertrand

Russell, Robert Maclver, and Isaiah Berlin the belief that there are no final truths and that freedom of action and opinion are essential to protect the value of individual personality. But Dewey insists that freedom means more than freedom of action or opinion and the availability of choices; for Dewey, it is the quality of an individual's actions, not simply the absence of constraints, that measures his freedom .

c. Since individuality, the character and behavior of a person is tied to the nature of his associations, Dewey rejects the freedom- authority dichotomy of classical liberalism as an error analagous to the separation of the individual and the social. Freedom, he holds, is to be found in a particular type of interaction between the individual and the group, freedom and authority. "Liberty, " Dewey states,

"is that secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which takes place only in rich and manifold association with others.. .. 1

d. Dewey reasserts the merits of the negative concept of freedom, once it has been put into a proper perspective. Since ideas and actions are interdependent, freedom as the positive growth of the individual requires "free play of physical movements. " The absence of obstacles to men's actions is the means to realizing a higher freedom, the education of personality.

Dewey's theory of freedom, as here outlined, dove-tails nicely with his theory of inquiry, his ethical theory, and his associations or interactions theory. Intelligent action, instrumentalism, becomes the measure of our freedom. Similarly, since the ethical goal is that activity which resolves a present problem while opening up the 127 possibility for future growth, Dewey holds that the free man and the

on good man are the same. Finally, freedom is identified with that type of association where individuals use "organized intelligence" to improve social conditions.

3. The Many Elements of Freedom

Freedom is a word, in Dewey's phrase, of "varied plumage. "

Whenever we find some central political idea such as freedom that almost all men approve, it is a fair suspicion that there is a direct relationship between the idea's appeal in general and the fact that men mean many different things by it in particular. Even if we only consider the general categories of negative and positive freedoms, it is evident that men want different and even contradictory things 40 in the name of freedom. It is not simply that freedom has become what one writer colorfully calls a "hurrah" word. Freedom is also used in a number of different contexts to discuss different types of problems. In philosophy, for example, the problem of freedom is often discussed in terms of the controversy over free will and determinism. The classic instance of the problem of free will occurs in Christian theology with the riddle posed by the Christian teachings that all men are free to act but that at the same time, since God is omniscient, he knows how men will choose. ^ But this problem does not occur simply in theology. Dewey poses an analagous issue in his discussion of the contrasting views of man's nature as either somehow 128

"original" or determined by the environment. In political discourse,

the problem of freedom commonly focuses upon the relational or

juristic sense of freedom whereby one man'§ freedom is measured

by the restrictions imposed upon him by other men, especially when

organized as the state.

One of the merits of Dewey's social and political philosophy is

that he sees that the problem of freedom is multidimensional. He

has attempted to develop a systematic theory of freedom which takes

account of the many sides of freedom. In a 1928 essay "Philosophies

of Freedom" he examines three dominant philosophies of freedom

in the modern world: freedom as choice, as power, and as reason.

Critically evaluating the insights of each notion of freedom, he presents

a reconstructed version of freedom in which all three elements play

an equally important role. Since he in effect combines the elements

of choice and reason in the notion of freedom as rational conduct,

his doctrine of freedom can most simply be examined under this

heading and under the heading freedom as power.

a. Freedom as rational conduct: Dewey's interest in the problem

of free will can be seen in the larger context of his organic view of

society. Every individual, he argues, is born into a pre-existing system of "deeply grooved interactions" that make up society. In this interaction Dewey is quite clear that the environment plays the stronger role. In Human Nature and Conduct, for instance, Dewey 129 argues that the formation of a person's desires and aims, his freedom, cannot be understood apart from a socio-psychological study of human nature, i. e ., the habits and beliefs that the individual acquires from his environment. Even in Freedom and Culture which employs a much larger view of culture to include more than just the socio- psychological habits encouraged by the environment, Dewey insists that a man's nature can not be understood apart from the environment.

It is against this background that Dewey considers the dispute over free will and determinism. He relies upon the notion of inter­ actions to argue that both the determinist view that men lack any control over the environment and the position, at the other extreme, that men have some sort of "original nature" are equally false.

The analysis is structured around the meaning of choice.

Any system of praise and blame, reward and punishment, Dewey argues, presumes that men are the authors of their own actions. The idea of freedom and the very possibility of moral responsibility are closely linked. There is "an inexpugnable feeling that choice is freedom . ..." But, upon closer examination, choice is seen to be the choice of this or that particular human being in his "concrete make-up of habits, desires, and purposes. " It is at this point that the determinist asserts that a man's actions are decided by his acquired nature, a product of the environment. If this is true, Dewey asserts that choice, an important element of freedom, is meaningless; man would be a 130

"puppet" without any acts that he can call his own.

Dewey approves of the determinist's objections to the notion that man has some sort of original nature that alone accounts for his actions. Indeed, upon first glance Dewey’s own account of human nature would seem to resemble the determinist position. But Dewey locates the significance of choice by arguing that it is continuous with but not reducible to a man's habits or modes of behavior as these are a product of his interaction with the environment. A man's history,

Dewey argues, is not all of one piece; every man has a "variable life history" and "undergoes varied and opposed experiences. " Choice becomes important for deciding among preferences by "the forecast of the consequences of acting upon the various competing preferences. "

This, in turn, is possible because man has the power of deliberation; choice, however influenced, is not determined. 42 Dewey's theory of human nature leads to the conclusion that an intelligent self in control of the environment is an important part of freedom. He w rites:

To foresee future objective alternatives and to be able by deliberation to choose one of them and thereby weigh its chances in the struggle for future existence, measures our freedom. It is assumed sometimes that if it can be shown that deliberation is determined by character and conditions, there is no freedom. This is like saying that because a flower comes from root and stem it cannot bear fruit. The question is not what are the antecedents of deliberation and choice, but what are their 131

consequences? What do they do that is distinctive? The answer is that they give us all the control of future possibilities which is open to us. And this control is the crux of our freedom. Without it, we are pushed from behind. With it, we walk in the light. 43

This statement clearly anticipates the fact that, for Dewey, it is not any choice but those choices that are intelligently informed that further a man's freedom. A man may both be free to choose and free to act, but this is no guarantee that his freedom is genuine.

The challenge posed by those who define freedom as reason, Dewey argues, is the recognition that men's choices and actions may be foolish, blind, and impulsive. 44 Mere freedom of action and choice, therefore, is not enough. In the Outlines Dewey writes:

Actual freedom lies in the realization of that end which actually satisfies. An end may be freely ddopted, and yet its actual working out may result not in freedom, but in slavery. It may result in rendering the agent more subject to his passions, less able to direct his own conduct, and more cramped and feeble in powers. Only that end which executed really effects greater energy and com­ prehensiveness of character makes for actual freedom. In a word, only the good man, the man who is tr-uly realizing his individuality, is free, in the positive sense of that word. 4^

There is, Dewey recognizes, certain dangers attending the definition of freedom as rational conduct. For instance, it is easy to conclude that a man who is forced to act in a manner that someone else, whether a single person or the majority, defines as rational is not being coerced but is "really" free. Dewey's doctrine of 132

freedom as rational conduct, however, must be kept distinct from

this other doctrine of "enforceable rational freedom. " Maurice

Cranston captures the major difference between the two doctrines

in this succinct statement:

Rational freedom finds freedom in self-discipline. Enforceable rational freedom finds freedom in discipline. 4°

For Dewey, there is a necessary link between freedom as growth

in developing preferences into intelligent choices and the individual's

freedom to choose and to act for himself. First, growth in individuality--

rational conduct--is not something that can be done for the individual,

it is something that must happen to_him through his own participation.

Secondly, since, for Dewey, reason is instrumental to reorganizing new experiences and problems, choice is not something fixed. 47 Freedom is "a growth, an attainment...." The individual's political education and freedom requires that he himself learn by choosing, responding to, and utilizing the conditions present in the environment. And Dewey writes:

No individual can make the determination for anyone else; nor can he make it for himself all at once and forever. 48

A man's freedom is one with his individuality. Freedom to choose his own direction enlarges the individual's range of action which, in turn, makes choice more intelligent, since the processes of action and choice are both educational. 133

Seen from the standpoint of the relationship between rational choice and action, the importance of political and economic freedoms,

Dewey argues, "is not an addendum or afterthought. " Freedom of speech, for instance, occupies an obviously central role in the process of intelligent growth. In short, individual growth does not occur in a vacuum; there must be favorable social, political, and economic conditions.

The first part of Dewey's discussion of political arrangements is still mainly a philosophical one. His definition of freedom as rational conduct has both a negative and a positive side. Negatively, it leads Dewey to criticize classical liberalism's definition of freedom and how to attain it. The old liberalism, Dewey argues, views freedom as simply the power to act which, in turn, is to be secured by the removal of those "oppressive measures, tyrannical laws, and modes of government" that obstruct and interfere with such action. Such a view of freedom is wrong, he contends, both in its statement of freedom's meaning and in its proposed techniques for guaranteeing it. First, the theory thinks of "individuals as endowed with an equipment of fixed and ready-made capacities. " But this idea neglects the importance of the surrounding social medium as this affects desires and impulses. Secondly, Dewey argues that although the common criticism of the liberal school is that it was too individualistic, "it would be equally pertinent to say that it was 134 not 'individualistic* enough. " In other words, while the philosophy of liberalism removed many obstructions and arbitrary restraints upon men's actions, it did not automatically promote the "general liberation of all individuals. " One need only consider the consequences of the economic doctrine of laissez-faire to appreciate this point.

Positively, Dewey's analysis of the significance of choice as an element of freedom leads to the conclusion that intelligence is the most basic part of freedom. In any essay on "Democracy and

Educational Administration, " he states:

. . . democracy is so often and so naturally associated in our minds with freedom of action, forgetting the importance of freed intelligence which is necessary to direct and to warrant freedom of action. Unless freedom of individual action has intelligence and informed conviction back of it, its manifestation is almost sure to result in confusion and disorder. The democratic idea of freedom is not the right of each individual to do as he pleases, even if it be qualified by adding provided he does not interfere with the same freedom on the part of others. " While the idea is not always, not often enough, expressed in words, the basic freedom is that of freedom of mind and whatever degree of freedom of action and experience is necessary to produce freedom of intelligence. ^9

Again, freedom in this view is something to be won; freedom requires positive and constructive changes in social conditions, not simply the removal of obstructions. Most importantly, in the political context individuals must have the power to act.

b. Freedom as power: Since a person can only grow by his experiences, Dewey insists that men must be free to act. But he 135 observes that there is something shallow in the phrase freedom of action when "To say that a man is free to choose to walk while the only walk he can take will lead him over a precipice is to strain words as well as facts. "50 In a series of political essays, Dewey argues that wealth, education, privilege, all operate to deny freedom to the less fortunate where the latter have no means to protect themselves or to better their position. Therefore, he holds that freedom must be understood as power. In "Liberty and Social Control, " he writes:

It (liberty) is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large. If one wants to know what the condition of liberty is at a given time, one has to examine what persons can do and what they cannot do. The moment one examines the question from the standpoint of effective action, it becomes evident that the demand for liberty is a demand for power, either for possession of powers of action not already possessed or for retention and expansion of powers already possessed.

Freedom, then,, is one with the means necessary for a man to accomplish his ends. Dewey rejects the classical liberal notion of freedom as only freedom from arbitrary controls, from coercion.

Rather, the new liberalism or the new freedom promises individuals ancequal chance to realize their purposes or desires. 52 Dewey's definition of freedom as power justifies a reform politics geared to guaranteeing equality of opportunity and, although this is never spelled out, equality of power insofar as this is necessary for most men to have freedom of action. 136

At least since De Tooqusville argued that men's taste for equality

may become so strong that individuality and freedom will be lost,

various writers have held that liberty and equality are incompatible

goals. An increase in one, it is argued, must be traded for a decrease

in the other. More exactly, a policy such as socialism can produce

greater economic equality among all men and increase the freedom

of some, perhaps, most men; but socialism also requires restraints

or controls which limit the freedom of other men. 53

Dewey responds to the problem of the relationship between

liberty and equality in two ways. First, he argues that the choice

is not between liberty or equality; it is a choice between certain

liberties and certain equalities along with their concomitant restraints.

In the second response, he argues for a more generous and constructive view of liberty and equality as "coordinate ideals" in defining a

particular type of community.

Dewey's first response builds upon his view of freedom as power.

Since liberty is relative to the distribution of power in society, Dewey argues that the liberty enjoyed by some is accompanied by restraints elsew here. In his words:

The system of liberties that exists at any time is always the system of restraints or controls that exists at that time. No one can do anything except in relation to what others can do and cannot 137

From this perspective, the choice, say, between capitalism and

socialism is falsely posed when it is put as choosing between

"collectivism" or "individualism" or, again, between liberty and

equality. Such statements mask the fact that the choice is really between one system of control of the forces of economic production

with a particular distribution of liberties and another "system of

social control which would bring about another distribution of

liberties. " Capitalism, Dewey argues, is a system of private

control and economic inequalities that furthers the "economic liberty

of the few at the expense of the all-around liberty of the many. "

Economically, therefore, liberty for most men is not the antithesis of economic equality; rather, the former depends upon the latter.

Dewey also argues that the inequalities that do exist in society should reflect the real differences among men, as opposed to the artificial inequalities imposed by birth and institutions that automatically advantage some at the expense of others. And even such natural inequalities, he argues, should be modified l?y laws and institutions so that the less fortunate do not suffer serious handicaps and hard­ ships. Here, Dewey begins to add to the discussion of liberty and equality the third value of the democratic triad--fraternity. Dewey's thesis is that the opposition so frequently stated between liberty and equality rests on too narrow an understanding of freedom in the community. Equality, for instance, does not simply mean equality 138 of opportunity, it means "the unhampered share which each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated action. " In this sense, liberty and equality are complementary, since equality means that everyone should enjoy the liberty of being an "individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying 55 in its own way the fruits of association. " Fraternity or community is the ideal that unites liberty and equality. It is a vision of the good life where men's relations are marked by harmony and respect for the uniqueness of each person that underlies Dewey's idea of freedom. The democratic creed in all of its fullness can only be realized in a community bound together by a common good through the participation of each individual in directing the affairs of the whole.

Freedom in the positive sense as intelligence, as ability, is important because it gives men the method for readjusting external relations so that they promote the freedom of each person. As a method positive freedom is united with political freedoms, since it is through democracy with its emphasis upon participation, inquiry, and communication that men become part of a community intelligently regulating its affairs. Political education is both the means and the substance of freedom.

4. Science, Authority, and Freedom: A Critique

Dewey's idea of freedom is generous in its view of man’s character and, although sensitive to problems, optimistic about the

chances for the development of a community of free men. Dewey's

abiding faith is in the dignity and ability of each personality. Dis­

satisfied with formal definitions of freedom, he attempts to fill up, so to speak, the content of liberty by making power, reason,

and certain equalities integral parts of the life of a free man. But

even those who agree with Dewey's values must take note of certain

confusions and mistakes in his arguments. It can be argued, for

instance, that Dewey is much too loose in his use of the word

freedom. In employing freedom to stand for "reason, " a man's

"better self, " and moral "growth, " Dewey often increases the ambiguity surrounding a word already difficult to define. But although I can sympathize with the impatience of the person who

wishes that Dewey would use words more cautiously and economically,

I have tried to show that Dewey's many sided view of freedom is an effort to deal with the problems^ of freedom in a variety of contexts. There are, however, other flaws in Dewey's idea of freedom that are important. What Dewey does, in effect, is to shift many of the critical problems of freedom from a question of the individual's relationship to the community to the technological or instrumental issue of successful problem solving by the society.

Certain key issues about freedom (for instance, the consequences of coercion) are, consequently, ignored or misconstrued. This 140

is most apparent in his analysis of freedom and authority.

In line with his instrumentalist philosophy, Dewey looks at

freedom in terms of consequences. Freedom, he insists, is not

simply the absence of restraints or the existence of alternative

opportunities; rather, freedom is the realization of choice in action.

Positive freedom, in short, means successful problem solving. My

argument is that the effect of this teaching is to divert attention

from the ways that the regulations and controls of society and

especially the state impinge upon and restrict the individual's

freedom of action.

Dewey's argument begins on a persuasive note. He points out,

as we have seen, that to decry all authority and social control is

to stifle social and economic reforms that are necessary for most

men to be free in fact. And I have no quarrel with Dewey's contention that laws and social controls upon some men can liberate other men.

But Dewey is saying something more than this. He argues that

it is a mistake to view freedom and control as distinct experiences.

Rather, they are said to be complementary parts of a single phenomenon: the effort to solve problems through collective action.

In "Authority and Resistance to Social Change" Dewey states that the question is the "relation between authority and liberty. " To view them as antithetical, he argues, is merely to postpone a solution to how they can be united so that the individual's actions will have 141

the backing of social institutions. In other words, since the individual's

fate is bound up with his environment and favorable social conditions,

Dewey offers a new way of looking at freedom and authority. His

words are:

In effect, authority stands for stability of social organization by means of which direction and support are given to individuals; while individual freedom stands for the forces by which change is intentionally brought about. ^6

Here Dewey has shifted the problem of freedom to the issue of how

to direct social change. Scientific method, then, becomes the answer

to the issue of freedom's relation to authority.

Dewey relies upon the model of authority in science to support

his contention that there is an "organic union" between freedom and

authority. The authority of science, he holds, is not arbitrary;

rather, it "issues from and is based upon collective activity,

cooperatively organized. " Science is an activity that requires men

to share their ideas and to submit their findings to the community

of scientists for verification. Without cooperation and collective

efforts, science would not be possible. Therefore, belonging to the

scientific community and submitting to its authority is not a restriction upon the individual scientist. Authority is not experienced as some­

thing outside of or external to his own purposes. Quite the contrary,

such authority is part of his own activity and gives it its meaning. In

short, the authority of the principles and beliefs that are found in the 142

scientific community stems from cooperative inquiries; the authority

is a cooperative authority. The existence of such an authority among some groups has certain implications for authority in other areas.

Dewey writes:

The thesis that the operation of cooperative intelligence as displayed in science is a working model of the union of freedom and authority does not slight the fact that the method has operated up to the present in a limited and relatively technical area. On the contrary, it emphasizes that fact. If the method of intelligence had been employed in any large field in the comprehensive and basic area of the relations of human beings to one another in social life and institutions, there would be no present need for our argument. The contrast between the restricted scope of its use and the possible range of its application to human relations-- political, economic, and moral—is outstanding enough to be depressing. It is this very contrast that serves to define the great problem that lies before us. 57

Dewey's arguments.here are the same as his arguments about authority in the classroom. Where social control or authority is rooted in cooperative inquiries--whether in the classroom or in the scientific community--it is the "moving spirit of the whole group" that controls each member's activity. The control is social and, therefore, it is not a restriction upon individual freedom. The ideal of freedom, for Dewey, is a community regulating its affairs through widespread participation so that finally the community operates the same as the individual who intelligently directs his own affairs. The goal is an educational one: the extension of the area of reasonableness. 143

The persuasiveness of Dewey's thesis derives in large measure

from his argument that what is true for science can be true for politics.

But there are alternative views of science which suggest that the ways

of the scientific community are more complicated that Dewey imagines.

For example, Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

presents a conception of science and scientists which directly challenges

Dewey's model of authority in science. Briefly, Kuhn points out that

every scientific field possesses a "paradigm" or model based upon

widely recognized scientific achievements in that field. Such a

paradigm tells the practitioner of a particular science what entities

exist in the world; it dictates what shape explanations and laws must take; and it tells the scientist what many of his research problems are likely to look like. A person entering the scientific profession spends much of his time, according to Kuhn, learning the postulates and rules of the reigning paradigm. And most normal scientific activity involves "solving puzzles" within the framework of this general model. Most scientists spend the greatest part of their time gathering new facts, fitting new facts into the paradigm, and articulating the paradigm theory.

Two points are especially significant in Kuhn's account of science.

First, he points out that the normal activity of puzzle solving rarely involves the testing of long-accepted beliefs.. His words are:

The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, 144

display order, and test long-accepted beliefs. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges himis the conviction that, if only he is skillfiil enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. ^8

This, of course, is a picture quite different from Dewey's account of science as a venture in which men equally and cooperatively determine which beliefs and which rules are to control the activities of the members of the scientific community. In Kuhn's account, the individual learns the rules; he does not make them. (Individual inventiveness and imagination do, however, play a major role whenever a new paradigm challenges a current but inadequate one.)

Kuhn argues, secondly, that the scientific community uses its authority to require acceptance of the major paradigm by its members, especially its newer ones. He writes:

Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community's willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. ^

Kuhn contends that the scientific community is sufficiently open so that it can switch from an old to a new paradigm whenever this is necessary for solving new and critical problems within a particular 145 scientific field. But it is not necessary to describe here his account of how scientific revolutions or paradigm switches occur. What is clear is that he views the authority exercised by the scientific community as much more rigid than Dewey does.

I do not really know whether Kuhn’s conception of science or

Dewey's account is the correct one. Such a judgment would require a greater knowledge of the philosophy and history of science than

I have. But if Kuhn's arguments are correct, Dewey's strong reliance upon the example of science to support his case for a cooperative authority that liberates the individual, even though it governs much of his behavior, may be a weak support indeed.

Whatever is true of authority in science cannot really settle the question of how we are to understand and judge the exercise of political power. And a central weakness in Dewey's entire political theory is that his preoccupation with scientific method tends to blur the distinctly political context within which the problem of freedom and authority arises for most men most of the time. Dewey, for example, makes several false analogies between the scientific world and the political world. First, political problems are not like problems in nature. The problem of how to build, for instance, a pollution free engine involves, so far as the scientist is concerned, mainly a question of the necessary knowledge and, next, the performance 146 of a series of instrumental actions. Power, for the scientist, is simply an instrument or technique for controlling the interaction of natural forces so as to produce a desired outcome. In marked contrast, political problems involve antagonisms between men who often want to go in different directions; or, even if they agree upon a general end, they disagree about the means. Consequently, any political action that relies upon power, as most decisions must, to determine the solution to a conflict or "problem" means that the answer is imposed upon some men. When men use power to solve problems in nature, they simply enforce their will upon nature. But the exercise of political power means that some men impose their will upon the will of other men.

The chief advantage of the negative idea of freedom is that it calls attention to the, finally, coercive element in any organized control of one individual by others. Freedom is a relational problem; it involves conflicts between men; one man's freedom can be measured

R1 by the power that other men have over him. The negative idea of freedom focuses attention upon the need to justify social controls in terms of the liberty lost or, more accurately, the liberties lost by some men and the goods gained by other men. In each case of control, some price has to be paid. The price may, of course, be worth paying; but we need the ideas of authority and freedom as distinct types of experiences in order to confront such issues. Dewey's 147 notion of a cooperative authority that "has the backing of socially organized intelligent control" whereby control and freedom are viewed as complementary makes it difficult to meet such questions head-on.

Despite Dewey’s arguments, for example, there is a tension between liberty and certain equalities. State regulations that provide each person with an equal or, at least, an equal opportunity for good health care by a program of compulsory health insurance that regulates both the fees of doctors and requires workers to contribute to the program is a regulation—an interference--with the freedom of doctors to charge as much as the market will bear or the freedom of the worker to spend his income as he sees fit. But freedom is not the only value, and for many people the values of socialized medicine have more merit than the liberty sacrificed. But Dewey's theory of socially organized intelligent control leads to the position that no freedom has been sacrificed. Dewey wants to shift the emphasis from the absence of restraints to a notion of positive freedom; but this is a mistake since freedom from, not freedom to, is the primary criterion of a man's freedom. In other words, economic equality may solve the problem of means; education and the spread of intelligence may solve the need for intelligently guided action; but neither of these conditions necessarily solves the problem of freedom, since freedom depends upon freedom of action—the absence of restraints. So long as conflicts occur between the individual and the whole, controls 148 must be seen as impositions and authority must be recognized as a restriction. ^

5. Summary

At this point, it might seem obvious to conclude that there are, indeed, two liberalisms, an old and a new. But the fact that we use liberalism to refer to both invites a remark about what is common to each. Liberalism, in both its classical and modern formulations, means political freedom and the constitutional state. Further, liberalism, old or new, is distinguished by its commitment to the value of personality, individual opportunities for choice and action.

Dewey, no less than Mill, insists that freedom of discussion and of opinion are essfential marks of the liberal order. Dewey's theory of freedom does not refute this classical liberal idea of freedom; quite the contrary, Dewey insists that, although other persons or conditions can help or hinder a person, the individual must have control over his own life and assume the responsibility for his choices and actions. And Dewey, no less than Locke, believes that a state's powers must be limited, that the methods whereby power is exercised are important for determining whether the citizen's or the ruler's interests are promoted.

There is, however, an important difference between Dewey's liberalism and classical liberalism. Individuality, Dewey rightly argues, depends as much upon a person's association with others 149 as it does upon his right to go his own way. Dewey's political theory, consequently, pivots upon the individual's participation in collective action. Liberalism has usually been preoccupied with limiting the abuses of power, devoting too little attention to the possible uses of power and collective measures for improving the quality of men's lives. FOOTNOTES

1. Gf. Charles Forcey, The Crossroads of Liberalism (New York, 1961), p. x.

2. The best study of this "revolt against formalism" during this period is Morton White, Social Thought in America (Boston, 1957).

3. Problem s of Men, p. 125.

4. These are only the more obvious names associated with classical liberalism, I make no assumption that this sketch captures the complexity of a theory that contains many intellectual streams. But so long as the reader is thus warned, there is no harm, and some utility, in drawingrthe larger distinctions between the two liberalisms.

5. Lettres de l'Abbfe Morellet a Lord Shelburne, p. 102. Quoted by Elie Halevy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (Boston, 1960), p. 116.

6. An entire literature has grown up around the value and usefulness of Mill's theory of liberty. A recent and sharp criticism of Mill's work and liberalism in general is Robert Parul Wolff's The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston, 1968). A balanced defense of Mill's essay is presented by S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters, The Principles of Political Thought (New York, 1965), pp. 257-271.

7. On Liberty (New York, 1951), pp. 220-223.

8. The links between Adam Smith's economic theories and the political theories of the utilitarians and the early liberals is exhaustively examined by Elie Halevy, op. cit., chap. III.

150 151

9. A special word of caution, however, is in order as regards Green's views towards state activity. Although Green's definition of freedom as a form of self-perfection leads him to assign the state a positive role in promoting conditions favorable to moral development, Melvin Richter cautions that when Green was faced with choosing between socialism or having the state only establish minimum standards of economic well-being, "His choice was minimum standards. " The Politics of Conscience (Cambridge, 1964), p. 285.

10. On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 271.

11. Leonard Hobhouse, Liberalism (New York, 1964), p. 50. Hobhouse also states that in general, we are justified in re­ garding the State as one among many forms of human association for the maintenance and improvement of life;" and, he continues, "this is the point at which we stand furthest from the older lib era lism . " p. 71.

12. T. H. Green makes almost the same complaint against the early liberal writers charging them with leaving "out of sight the process by which men have been clothed with rights and duties, and with senses of right and duty, which are neither natural nor derived from a sovereign power. " Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (Ann Arbor, 1967), p. 121. Dewey was quite familiar with Green's work and wrote three early essays about Green's philosophy. But Dewey was primarily interested in Green's criticisms of British empiricism, not in his political writings.

13. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 194.

14. In Problems of Men, p. 136.

15. Cf. George Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York, 1961), p. 710.

16. Individualism: Old and New, pp. 33-34.

17. Problems of Men, pp. 374-375. This essay appeared in 1941.

18. See Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (New York, 1965), pp. 364-371. 152

19. Liberalism and Social Action, p. 36.

20. P roblem s of Men, p. 132.

21. That Dewey has no theory of socialism as an economic system — he says nothing, for instance, about the wage relationship— accounts, I think, for the superficiality of those writers who have tried to rely solely upon Dewey for such a theory. Two studies that rarely go beyond making an impassioned plea for the good life are Jerome Nathanson, John Dewey: The Reconstruction of the Democratic Life (New York, 1951) and Gerald Lee Steibel, John Dewey's Philosophy of Democracy Applied in a Critique of Classical Liberalism (Columbia University, 1951), unpublished Ph. D. thesis.

22. Freedom and Culture, p. 63.

23. Democracy and Education, p. 136.

24. Individualism: Old and New, p. 135.

25. Louis Hartz, op. cit.

26. Nevertheless, Dewey remains suspicious of "wholesale creeds. " In this same work which calls for a new liberal creed, he writes: "We are given to thinking of society in large and vague ways. We should forget 'society' and think of law, industry, religion, medicine, politics, art, education, philosophy--and think of them in the plural. For points of contact are not the same for any two persons and hence the questions which the interests and occupations pose are never twice the same. " Individualism: Old and New, p. 166.

27. Somjee, op. cit. , p. 156.

28. Freedom and Culture, p. 170. In "The Economic Basis of the New Society" Dewey makes this distinction: ".. . an immense difference divides the planned society from a continuously planning society. The former requires fixed blueprints imposed from above and therefore involving reliance upon physical and psychological force to secure conformity to them. The latter means the release of intelligence through the widest form of cooperative give-and-take." Intelligence in the Modern World, pp. 431-432. 153

29. Characters and Events, Vol. I, pp. 100-101.

30. Individualism: Old and New, p. 139.

31. Ibid., pp. 99-100.

32. Liberalism and Social Action, p. 91.

33. Ibid. , p. 7.

34. The Public and Its Problems, p. 6.

35. For Dewey's general and distinct position among the many ideas of freedom, cf. Mortimer Adler, The Idea of Freedom (Garden City, 1958, 1961), 2 vols. His classification of Dewey's theory is in vol. I, p. 594 and passim.

36. What I have in mind here is a distinction similar to Sir Isaiah Berlin's argument that the negative sense of freedom is involved in the effort to answer the question of in what areas should the individual be allowed freedom of action, to do whatever he wants to do so long as he does not interfere with others. The positive sense of freedom, he argues, is an effort to answer the question of the nature of the control that makes a person be or do something different from what he otherwise might be or do. Four Essays on Liberty (New York, 1969), pp. 121-122. We can elaborate upon Berlin's distinction by suggesting that negative freedom is primarily an external freedom; it involves the relations between men. Positive freedom appears more commonly as an internal freedom; for Dewey, it means such things as ability, intelligence, or in a word, character. And it is this latter freedom that he is mainly concerned to explain.

37. Ethics, p. 437.

38. The Public and Its Problems, p. 150.

39. Outlines, p. 164.

40. See David Spitz, The Liberal Idea of Freedom (Tuscon, 1964), pp. 115-116.

41. Cf. Maurice Cranston, Freedom (New York, 1954), pp. 81-82. 154

42. On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, pp. 262-267.

43. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 285.

44. On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 273.

45. Outlines, p. 164.

46. Cranston, op. cit. p. 21. In Problems of Men, Dewey writes: "The idea of forcing men to be free is an old idea, but by nature it is opposed to freedom. Freedom is not something that can be handed to men as a gift from outside, whether by old-fashioned dynastic benevolent despotisms or by new-fashioned dictator­ ships, whether of the proletarian or of the fascist order. It is something which can be had only as individuals participate in winning it, and this fact, rather than some particular political mechanism, is the essence of democratic liberalism. " p. 132.

47. On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 275.

48. Individualism: Old and New, pp. 166-167.

49. In Problem s of Men, p. 61.

50. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 279.

51. Problems of Men, p. 111. Friedrich Hayek strongly criticizes Dewey's identification of freedom with the means necessary to achieve one's purposes because, he argues, it is "only another name for the old demand for the equal distribution of wealth. " And he believes that this demand must lead to an increased centralization of political power and social engineering which deprives men of their freedom. However, Hayek does not really answer Dewey's objection that one cannot merely trust to the operation of the free market for the establishment of a distribution of liberties that benefits most men. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, 1944), p. 26. A different argument for keeping clear the distinction between freedom and means is offered by Dorothy Fosdick. Fosdick argues that the state can play a major role in establishing a more desirable system of liberties and restraints. And the redistribution of means, she argues, is one way that this can be accomplished. However, she too believes that liberty mus t be kept distinct from means less we lose sight of the fact that even though men enjoy economic equality they may not be free in the 155

negative sense of the absence of controls or restraints upon their actions. What is Liberty? (New York, 1939), pp. 120, 79.

52. Problems of Men, p. 116.

53. Fosdick, op. cit.

54. Problems of Men, p. 113.

55. The Public and Its Problems, p. 150.

56. Problems of Men, p. 94. Also see p. 101.

57. Ibid., pp. 107-108.

58. Kuhn, op. c i t ., p. 38.

59. Ibid., p. 5.

60. For an analysis of how this part of Kuhn's account of science might be significant for understanding the enterprise of political science, see Sheldon Wolin, "Paradigms and Political Theories, " in Politics and Experience (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 125-152.

61. Maurice Cranston fairly reminds us that "The word 'liberty' has its least ambiguity in political use in times of centralized oppression." op. cit. p. 8.

62. In a 1919 essay "Force and Coercion" Dewey attempted to develop a theory of power in strict accordance with the logic of instrumentalism. Therefore, he argues that the only basis for distinguishing between the various forms of power is their relative "efficiency. " Power, he argues, is simply a neutral term referring to "effective means of operation. " When power is wasteful, that is, fails to achieve purposes, it is "violence. " And coercion and law are said to occupy a middle ground: "Coercive force occupies, we may fairly say, a middle place between power as energy and power as violence. To turn to the right as an incident of locomotion is a case of power: of means deployed in behalf of an end. To run amuck in the street is a case of violence. To use energy to make a man observe the rule of the road is a case of coercive force... . Constraint or coercion, in other words, is an incident of a situation under certain conditions--namely, where the means for the realization of an end are not naturally at hand, so that energy has to be 156 spent in order to make some power into a means for the realization of an end. " The effect of this doctrine is to turn the problem of political power simply into a case of efficiency: .. the only question which can be raised about the justification of force is that of comparative efficiency and economy in its use. " Liberty itself is to be assessed merely as an "efficiency factor. " Characters and Events, Vol. II, pp. 782-789. Dewey's instrumentalism clearly blinds him in this essay— and throughout the World War I period—to the fact that political power is not simply in the hands of efficiency experts or im­ partial social engineers. Randolph Bourne, a sharp critic of Dewey's support of the war, understood quite clearly the limitations of this side of Dewey's doctrine: "Dewey's philosophy is inspiring enough for a society at peace, prosperous and with a fund of progressive good-will. " But Bourne immediately adds that "this careful adaptation of means to desired ends, this experimental working out of control over brute forces and dead matter in the interests of communal life depends on a store of rationality, and is effective only where there is strong desire for progress. " Bourne's own suspicion was that it was only the school, the institution to which Dewey first applied his philosophy, that ever came close to meeting these requirements. War and the Intellectuals (New York, 1964), pp. 55-56. A modest but nevertheless unsuccessful effort to defend Dewey's instrumentalist conception of force is Hu Shih, "The Political Philosophy of Instrumentalism, " in Sidney Ratner, ed., The Philosopher of the Common Man (New York, 1940), pp. 205-219. V

Democracy and the Politics of Participation

Recently, political theorists have again turned their attention to what is involved in the notion of the citizen's participation in the exercise as well as the control of political power. There are, in other words, two distinguishable aspects to the democratic experience: constitutional and political arrangements for limiting the state's power and the popular exercise of political power with the belief that such participation contributes to the development and growth of man as a citizen and individual. This dual aspect of democracy can be approached from a number of angles. A recent author contrasts the "politics of power" with the "politics of participation. "

The former, it is argued, gives primary responsibility to a few men for the authoritative decisions in a society. In a democracy, these few are elected; but they, nevertheless, are the active citizens, the leaders. Popular political participation in such things as elections, therefore, is considered significant not as a record of the vox populi with all this implies about direction as well as control from below

157 but as a method for choosing those individuals who are to have the power to decide public policies. Participation, in contrast, means

"group undertakings which not only involve a common membership but rely on this membership to initiate and direct those undertakings....

This is the politics of participation which requires constant efforts to expand the role and the scope of the individual's participation in those groups that control his life.

Other writers have drawn the difference between these two elements in the democratic tradition in a number of different ways.

Most commonly, some conception of participatory democracy is contrasted with, say, Schumpeter's "process theory of democracy" which defines the core feature of democracy as the competition between elites; or, again, participatory democracy is contrasted with the pluralist theory of "countervailing coalitions. While the particular formulation of the issue may vary, the problems remain pretty much the same. Namely, it is possible to realize the values of classical democratic theory under modern conditions? Some current authors do, of course, present participatory democracy as an alternative to liberal democracy or constitutionalism; but the two concerns were actually combined in classical democratic theory as represented by someone like John Stuart Mill.

Mill set forth two major defenses of democracy. First, he viewed democracy as a form of government for controlling the uses 159 and, more importantly, for limiting the possible abuses of political power. Democratic procedures and freedoms, from this perspective, are important mainly as a means of self-protection. Mill's familiar words are:

Men, as well as women, do not need political rights in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned. ^

This first defense of democracy by Mill has been the one most commonly adopted by later democratic theorists. Definitions of democracy as a set of institutional arrangements for checking the power of rulers through periodic elections have their roots in classical liberalism's belief that how power is acquired is a major factor in determining how it is exercised.

Although Mill's first defense of democracy has been favored by many seeking a definition of democracy that fits with what we now know about the obstacles to widespread mass political participation and the large role played by elites in a corporate society, Mill himself argued that there was a "superior” defense and, by implication, definition of democracy. The real test of a good government, he argued, is its contribution to the citizen's political education:

The first element of good government, therefore, being the virtue and intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most important point of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people them selves.. .. The government which does this the best has every likelihood of being the best in all other 160

respects, since it is on these qualities, so far as they exist in the people, that all possibility of goodness in the practical operations of the government d e p e n d s .^

From this perspective, democracy is important as a way of develop­ ing both the intellectual and moral capacities of the individual.

By making the individual responsible for some of the business of governing. Mill held that democracy increases the citizen's competence and his feeling for the public or social interest. The emphasis here is not simply upon the control of power but upon politics as a form of civic virtue and education whereby power is widely shared and

5 individuals are socially minded.

The suggestion here is that we look at Dewey's democratic theory as an effort to meet many of the problems raised by the commitment to partipicatory democracy. Since pragmatism is a philosophy of experience, it is not surprising that Dewey makes public participa­ tion and political education key features of the democratic society.

In pursuing this theme, Dewey also engages in a polemic against those writers who define democracy as primarily a form of govern­ ment. Dewey adds to the notion of democracy the theme that participa­ tion cannot be limited to one set of experiences such as the political.

Rather, he contends that since the total culture influences the character of the individual, participation must be extended to as many spheres as possible. For Dewey, democracy is nothing less than a way of life, inseparable from the customs, occupations, education--the 161 entire culture of a society. This can be seen as one strategy for realizing participatory democracy. Namely, the entire weight for political education is not placed simply upon the political process.

Rather, just as the problem of power is multidimensional, political education is not one but many processes. Further, Dewey’s view of reason as common sense sharpened makes him confident in the people's ability to exercise power intelligently. What is required, he holds, is the effective removal of the obstacles to the participation g of the public so as to make the operation of reason effective.

A. The Democratic Public

1. Dewey and Lippmann

In 1927 Dewey published The Public and Its Problems, a work that defines democracy in terms of the citizen's participation in the direct formation of the public interest. Dewey's book had been preceded by the appearance of Walter Lippmann's two studies of the public's role in a democracy. Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom

Public (1925). Comparisons between Lippmann's and Dewey's works are almost inevitable, since they both deal with a similar issue but arrive at widely different conclusions. Also, Lippmann had been strongly influenced by pragmatist philosophy, especially by William 7 James, while Dewey acknowledged his debt to Lippmann in his own study of the public. 162

Lippmann borrowed from pragmatism the preoccupation with intelligence as a guide to action. In his writings he argues that the public is incapable of meeting the demands of informed action.

For instance, he begins Public Opinion by contrasting the "picture in our heads" with the situation in the objective or real world.

Censorship, the reliance upon stereotypes, the limited time and interest of most men, all intervene between the events in the real world and men's opinions about these events; and this produces a partial and distorted image of reality. Although he does without the metaphysics, Lippmann, in effect, argues the traditional Platonic distinction between knowledge and opinion. And most men, in his judgment, see largely the shadows on the walls of the cave--an inferior and imperfect image of events in the real world of politics.

Therefore, when the government relies too heavily upon public O opinion to guide its actions, it inevitably makes mistakes.

Lippmann does not condemn the public for its ignorance; rather, he attacks those theorists who expect the public to have a "knowledge beyond their reach. " He traces this demand to the "original democrats" and the old democratic philosophy. This philosophy, according to Lippmann, assumed that so long as political power is derived from the right origin, the public, that good government will follow. The democrat upheld the dignity of man, but he "risked the dignity of man on one very precarious assumption, that he would 163

exhibit that dignity instinctively in wise laws and good government.

But the public does not always choose wisely, and this, Lippmann

contends, accounts for the enfeeblement and incompetence of democratic

government when leaders are overly sensitive to the mood of the

public.

Lippmann proposes that the old democratic philosophy be replaced

by a new democratic theory that recognizes that the public can only

judge the soundness of a decision "after the event. " Political

participation or popular rule (as distinct from popular control) is,

in other words, harmful and needs to be dropped from what Lippmann

was later to call the public philosophy. As "outsiders, " the public’s

role is to say yes or no to the performance of the "insiders, " those

who must daily administer to social affairs. Democracy needs the

organization of expert "intelligence bureaus" to advise the government

and "to make the invisible world visible to the citizens of a modern

state.

In Lippmann’s new democracy, government is to be judged by its performance or consequences. Men, he contends, desire

democratic government not for its own sake but for its results.

Lippmann puts his version of the pragmatic philosophy of successful problem solving this way:

The democratic fallacy has been its preoccxipation with the origin of government rather than with the processes and results. .. .But no amount 164

of regulation at the source of a river will completely control its behavior, and while democrats have been absorbed in trying to find a good mechanism for originating social power, that is to say a good mechanism of voting and representation, they neglected almost every other interest of men. For no matter how power originates, the crucial interest is in how power is exercised. What determines the quality of civilization is the use made of power. And that use cannot be controlled at the source.

The criteria which you then apply to government are whether it is producing a certain minimum of health, of decent housing, of material necessities, of education, of freedom, of pleasures, of beauty, not simply whether at the sacrifice of all these things, it vibrates to the self-centered opinions that happen to be floating around in men's minds. 11

Lippmann's reliance upon "expert leadership" was rejected by many pragmatists as too elitist. Further, Lippmann has never been able to discover a successful solution for developing expert but politically accountable leaders. However, most writers accepted the fact that he had uncovered a crucial weakness in the democratic arm or.

Dewey's objections to Lippmann, as stated in The Public and Its

Problems, is not that he sees unreal problems but that he does not see far enough. Dewey, in contrast to Lippmann, inquires into the meaning of the public as an association, not merely as an aggregation, of individuals. The public, for Dewey, means far more than public opinion. Rather, he uses the concept to define the characteristic features of political activity and the nature of the state. Also, 165

Lippmann's view of the public's role as that of occasionally checking

the government's power can be contrasted with Dewey's picture of

the public as participants in a group or community activity that

produces a set of interests that are then represented or looked after

by the state.

Dewey begins with a series of specific objections to Lippmann's

elitism. In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey recognizes, as

Lippmann does not, that a government of experts where the masses have little opportunity to inform the experts Of their needs can never

"be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few. "

And history supports Dewey's judgment that "The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. " To

Lippmann's criticisms of the quality of public opinion, Dewey makes three points. First, he points out that any argument for rule by experts invariably "proves too much for its own cause. " That is, if the masses are as intellectually irredeemable as this theory holds, then, there is little reason to expect that they will quietly submit to rule by experts. Their very ignorance and passionate nature will lead them to demand a share of power for themselves. Dewey's objection here is similar to the one made much earlier by Hobbes against the classical doctrine that wise men or philosophers should rule. Namely, Hobbes pointed out that even if some men are wiser than others, there is no man that would not rather rule himself than 166 be ruled by another. Dewey argues, secondly, that it is usually assumed that rule by experts will be benevolent or in the common interest. But Dewey insists that the only way that the common interest can be uncovered is through the participation of the public in governing. Otherwise, rulers, experts or not, are "shut off from knowledge of the needs which they are supposed to serve. "

Dewey's third argument is by far the most important one. He agrees with Lippmann's arguments against the old democratic philosophy's belief that the individual is by himself equipped with the intelligence necessary for reasonable political action. But in attacking the notion of the "omnicompetent" individual Lippmann stops short; he does not see that the whole notion rests upon a false understanding of the individual. Dewey's argument begins by pointing out the significance of the individual in association:

A single man when he is joined in marrage is different in that connection to what he was as single or to what he is in some other union, as a member, say, of a club. He has new powers and immunities, new responsibilities. He can be contrasted with himself as he behaves in other connections. He maybe compared and contrasted with his wife in their distinctive roles within the union. But jis a member of the union he cannot be treated as antinthetical to the union, his traits and acts are evidently those which he possesses in virtue of it, while those of the integrated association are what they are in virtue of his status in the union. 167

As a part of an association, an individual is different from what he is in isolation; the character of an association, on the other hand, is not simply defined by the sum of its members; rather, its nature is determined by the pattern of interaction between individuals. For instance, when we talk about the intelligence of public opinion, the first thing to recognize, Dewey contends, is that it is the level of public, not individual, knowledge and understanding that is important.

Intelligence is not merely a "personal endowment or a personal attainment. " Knowledge, Dewey writes, "is a function of association and communication; it depends upon tradition, upon tools and methods 13 socially transmitted, developed and sanctioned. " As a member of the public, the individual both shares in and contributes to the store of social knowledge. Majority rule is never simply majority rule; it is the process whereby the majority is formed that is important.

If men share in the process of the free communication of their needs and desires so that they perceive consequences, then there will be a public in fact as well as in name.

2. "the public is a political state. "

Dewey argues that the main problem of politics involves controlling consequences, and he immediately makes a distinction between two kinds of actions: private and public. Private acts are those whose consequences are largely confined to the persons directly engaged in a transaction. For example, the activities within the family 168

usually only involve the interests of its members. Dewey’s contention

is that when men appreciate the consequences of their actions at

once, "Special organization to care for them is a superfluity. "

There is, in other words, no justification for assigning to the public,

especially when organized as the state, the responsibility for those

actions and associations that do not depend upon the state for their

control. More importantly, since such associations and actions

are felt to be valuable and to derive their worth apart from the state, the interference of the state is not only unnecessary but harmful.

There are, however, actions whose consequences are so wide­ spread and important "as to need control, whether by inhibition or promotion. " Men have a common interest in controlling such actions; and this perception of a shared interest leads to organization "so as to secure some consequences and avoid others. " This provides us with the key to the nature of the public and the state:

Those indirectly and seriously affected for good or for evil form a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name. The name selected is The Public. This public is organized and made effective by means of representatives who as guardians of custom, as legislators, as executives, judges, etc., care for its special interests by methods intended to regulate the conjoint actions of individuals and groups. Then and in so far, association adds to itself political organization, and something which may be government comes into being: the public is a political state. ^ Central to much liberal thought is this belief that drawing a

distinction between private and public actions is essential for un­

covering the proper limits and uses of the state's power. Usually,

this issue is seen as one of setting off the respective realms of

freedom and authority. Mill, for example, argues a distinction

between that part of life "in which it is chiefly the individual who is

interested, and the part which chiefly interests society. " At a

minimum, the acceptance of individual liberty as a value requires

that a person be free to do whatever he wants so long as he does not

harm the interests of another, even if his actions displease others.

Mill, I believe, is correct in his stand against the use of legal or

social coercions merely because one does not like the actions of

a n o t h e r . Nevertheless, as Mill's critics have charged, there are

very few individual actions or interests that do ntit concern society.

Mill's distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions

cannot provide us with any final criteria for discriminating between

those interests that should be left alone and those that society can

control.

Dewey, in contrast to Mill, eschews any effort to set down some

formal principles for drawing the line between private and public

acts. Since the consequences of actions change as conditions change, the line between the private and the public is constantly shifting— formal principles, therefore, are of little use for marking off their 170 respective spheres. Dewey, consequently, escapes many of the objections to Mill’s essay by approaching the issue of the distinction between the private and public from a very different angle. He recognizes that "many private acts are social. " For instance, the philanthropist's actions are private but not merely individual; what he does has social consequences. Any transaction between two or more persons is social. Consequently, Dewey holds that the dis­ tinction between private and public can be "in no sense equivalent to the distinction between individual and social, " even if we grant that this latter distinction has a real meaning, a point which Dewey generally is not willing to grant. Instead, the line between private and public must be drawn in terms of the different consequences-- direct or indirect, narrow or widespread, temporary or irredeemable of various transactions. Discussing private and public transactions,

Dewey states:

Sometimes the consequences are confined to those who directly share in the transaction which produces them. In other cases they extend far beyond those immediately engaged introducing them. Thus two kinds of interests and of measures of regulation of acts in view of consequences are generated. In the first, interest and control are limited to those directly engaged; in the second, they extend to those who do not directly share in the performance of acts. If, then, the interest constituted by their being affected by the actions in question is to have any practical influence, control over the actions which produce them must occur by some indirect means. 171

Dewey contends that it is neither possible nor desirable to mark off once and for all a class of actions as beyond the purview of public control. Those actions that the public has a stake in regulating cannot be permanently defined. It does not make sense, therefore, to ask how Dewey draws the line between the private and public, since the very notion of drawing a line goes against both the admonition to take care of specific consequences and the argument that we cannot know what actions are public beforehand. The political process is one of continuous adjustment and control:

Our hypothesis is neutral as to any general, sweeping implications as to how far state activity may extend. It does not indicate any particular policy of public action.. .. The consequences vary with concrete conditions; hence at one time and place a large measure of state activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence and laissez- faire. Just as publics and states vary with conditions of time and place, so do the concrete functions which should be carried on by states. There is no antecedent universal proposition which can be laid down because of which the functions of a state should be limited or should be expanded. Their scope is something to be critically and experimentally determined.^

3. Search for the Public.

Dewey's concept of the public provides the key to understanding his political thought. What Dewey attempts to do in The Public and

Its Problems is to uncover the proper relationship between the individual and the group that will both protect individuality and justify social control. Although he does not use the more recent language of 172 alienation and estrangement, his point is similar: man can only be free in_the community. This thesis also provides Dewey's answer to the question of the rationality of political authority--the problem of political obligation. Dewey justifies political power by the common awareness of the need to take care of consequences.

As a citizen, the individual, according to Dewey, is an "officer of the public, " whether his role is that of a voter or of a government official. The purpose of the state is to serve public, not private, interests. To put it somewhat differently than Dewey does, the state's control of 'special' interests is undertaken in order to regulate their public consequences. The significance of political democracy is that it attempts to order political institutions so as to secure the representation of the public interest. It is a recognition that men do not shed their class, family, or clique interests and become citizens as easily as they don a new suit of clothes. The popular election of officials, the principle of majority rule, the freedoms of speech and assembly, all sustain the proposition that political power and the selection of rulers should be geared to representing the common or community interests and needs. They also are important conditions for making possible the formation of that interest; but Dewey argues that this is only half of the meaning of democracy. He charges that those who define democracy simply as a form of government do not pay sufficient attention to the other part of democracy—the public. 173

Democratic government presumes, if it is to be meaningful, a democratic public. The representatives of the public interest cannot represent that interest if there is no public worthy of the name.

Dewey allows that in its richest meaning community is always a matter of local face-to-face relationships. A pattern of local community units provides individuals with an important medium through which their interests and individual judgments, expanded and reenforced by participation in the cumulative intelligence of the community, can be represented to the government. The idea of community, however, is also the measure of the public or democratic nature of the larger society. The "Great Community" is one where there is full and free interaction between groups so that common interests, the widespread consequences of men's actions, are per­ ceived and cared for. This conception of the public gives :•

a criterion for determining how good a particular state is: namely the degree of organization of the public which is attained, and the degree in which its officers are so constituted as to perform their function of caring for public interests.

Since democracy means the the public interest is dominant, Dewey links democracy to community. He writes:

Regarded as an idea, democracy is not an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.

Or, again: 174

The clear consciousness of a community life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy. *0

Democracy and community are in turn linked to communication

and free inquiry in the following passage:

... if the Great Society is to become a Great Community; a society in which the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in the full sense of that word, so that an organized, articulate Public comes into being. The highest and most difficult kind of inquiry and a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it... . Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion. ... It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.

Although Dewey never explicitly discusses the problem of political

obligation, it is not difficult now to find his answer to why men should

obey the state. First, Dewey agrees with Lippmann that there is

little to be gained from looking at the state in terms of its "authorship. "

Explanations of the state that have reference to God's will, the essential

nature of man, or a social contract, all suffer from a common error:

"the taking of causal agency instead of consequences as the heart of

the problem. " Such theories, consequently, are simply arbitrary

statements; one is as good as another, and the dominance of a given

one largely depends upon the dominant circumstances and mood of

an age. But the major fault of those theories that seek to explain the

state in terms of "doers of deeds" or authorship is that they give

i 175 rise to the false issue of command and obedience. If the state has to be thought of as the product of some will, it "is conceived either as sheer oppression born of arbitrary power and sustained in fraud, or as a pooling of the forces of single men into a massive force which single persons are unable to resist. ..." In short, the state must be explained either in terms of the superior strength of the rulers or as the result of a mythical social contract. The alternative to these theories Dewey argues

... is surrender of the causal authorship theory and the adoption of that of widely distributed consequences, which, when they are perceived, create a common interest and the need of special agencies to care for it. 22

There is implicit in such statements the view that participation in the creation of the public interest is the basis of political obligation.

The same point is evident in Dewey's identification of democracy with community. Obligation results from the cooperation necessary for collective problem solving. Dewey writes:

Wherever there is conjoint activity whose con­ sequences are appreciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a community. 23

The point of Dewey's argument is that both collective action and individual liberty are essential for realizing the value of individuality.

The concept of the public is a way of resolving the dialectic of social 176 control and individual liberty. Conjoint activity, communication — in a word, community--are as important to the development of personality as the right to be left alone. Throughout The Public and

Its Problems Dewey suggests a line of political action and social development whereby the personality of each person can develop in harmony with that of every other person. By placing the idea of community underneath the theory of democracy Dewey points the direction that must be taken if the values of individual choice and the values of collective social action are to be realized together.

In the modern corporate age our most serious political choices are not between control and individual spontaneity, authority and freedom, the individual good and the common good. Rather, we must choose between public policies and collective actions that enhance each individual's life and those that enrich the lives of a few at the all around expense of the lives of the many. But such choices, as we shall see in a moment, are not as easy as Dewey would have us believe. He leaves us only with a set of promising beginnings.

Dewey, unfortunately, does not explore the question of political obligation. And it is this issue that brings out the fact that harmonizing social control and individual choice is more difficult than he imagines.

For instance, Dewey's suggestion that political participation is a sufficient basis for political obligation presumes an idealistic set of circumstances. Participation must be widespread; and, more critically, the dominant political interest or solution to 177 a problem must be the same as the public interest. Where these conditions do not exist and in those cases where the will of the individual clashes with the will of the larger group, one can under­ stand Bertrand Russell’s complaint that Dewey's philosophy is a power philosophy which, however, does not emphasize individual power. Rather, it is the power of the community or state that is valued. 24 Russell's warning takes on added significance when we look at Swhat Dewey says about law.

Since the state is the organization of the public to control the consequences of men's actions, Dewey contends that law is m is­ understood when it is looked upon as commands. Such a view of law, he argues, leads one to look for the will behind the commands.

Thus, men become preoccupied with such questions as why should the rulers have authority? Or why should men submit to the law?

Such questions disappear, however, once we recognize that "Rules of laws are in fact the institution of conditions under which persons make their arrangements with one another. " Relying upon the language of consequences Dewey makes law the very embodiment of the good sense of the community. He writes:

What happens is that certain conditions are set such that if a person conforms to them, he can count on certain consequences, while if he fails to do so he cannot forecast consequences.. . . There is no reason to interpret even the "prohibitions" of criminal law in any other way. Conditions are stated in reference to consequences which may be incurred if they are infringed or transgressed... . "The law" formulates remote and long-run consequences. It then operates as a condensed available check on the naturally overweening influence of immediate desire and interest over decision. It is a means of doing for a person what otherwise only his own foresight, if thoroughly reasonable, could do.. .. Upon this theory, the law as "embodied reason" means a formulated generalization of means and procedures in behavior which are adapted to secure what is wanted.

In this statement, Dewey locates the rationality of political authority in a collective act of intelligence. Since law accomplishes what the individual acting alone cannot--and since instrumentalism measures acts by their consequences--positive law is seen by Dewey as both reasonable and natural. Such a view makes it difficult to imagine grounds upon which one could challenge the law. And it also hides from view the fact that laws often favor some persons at the expense of other persons. Again Dewey pushes conflict out of his account of politics. Political power is viewed merely as an instrument—to be used well or poorly--to desired ends. Of itself, it requires no searching examination. Thus, Dewey takes it for granted that where the conditions exist that call a public into existence a sufficient basis for political action and, hence, obligation exists. This view, of course, rests upon Dewey's account of how problems arise and upon his faith in the abilityof creative intelligence to resolve most, if not all, social conflicts. But insofar as these arguments are cast into doubt, we cannot be satisfied with Dewey's answer to why a man is obliged to obey the state. Although he points a new direction 179

2 fi that discussion of the problem of political obligation might take,

Dewey does not solve the problem.

In a chapter on "The Eclipse of the Public" Dewey offers a summary diagnosis of the problem of modern democracy. At the core of his diagnosis is the argument that men must participate in the events that effect them not simply experience them, e. g ., they must shape rather than just be shaped by external forces. He writes:

The local face-to-face community has been invaded by forces so vast, so remote in initiation, so far- reaching in scope and so complexly indirect in operation, that they are, from the standpoint of the members of local social units, unknown. Man, as has often been remarked, has difficulty in getting on either with or without his fellows, even in neighborhoods. He is not more successful in getting on with them when they act at a great dis­ tance in ways invisible to him. An inchoate public is capable of organization only when indirect consequences are perceived, and when it is possible to project agencies which order their occurrence. At present, many consequences are felt rather than perceived; they are suffered, but they cannot be said to be known, for they are not, by those who experience them, referred to their origins. It goes, then, without saying that agencies are not established which canalize the streams of social action and thereby regulate them. Hence the publics are amorphous and unarticulated. 27

Dewey contends that modern technological society with its corporate organization of the economic system has created a situation where

"relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life. " Although modern society has emancipated many persons from old habits, rigid customs. 180

and restrictive institutions, no new pattern of meaningful social connections has arisen to take their place. Men's opinions and their behavior tend to become regimented; public opinion is poorly formed and hence mediocre. When associative ties disappear, authority and power become remote. Politics becomes dominated by "bosses with their political machine (who) fill the void between government and the public. " When the public operates under such conditions,

Dewey agrees with Lippmann that the public simply "obscures, confuses, and misleads governmental action in a disastrous way. "2®

Put in the language of participatory democracy, Dewey's position is that although the public may check political power, there is little, if any, popular political rule. Thus, the democratic experience is parsimonious rather than enriching, restrictive rather than educative, dominated by selfish claims rather than responsive to common interests.

The crux of Dewey's theory of the democratic public is that the style of politics is, indeed, the substance of politics. Dewey's theory of the democratic public is committed to no particular end; it insists, instead, upon opening up the means whereby men can become committed. It is a theory of politics where action defines the ends as well as the means of political life. The nature of jthe public interest is inseparable from the ways that the public is formed.

Thus, Dewey states: 181

The essential need, in other words, is the improve­ ment of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public. ^9

Under favorable conditions, the formation of the public proceeds,

according to Dewey's account, through three stages: consequences,

perception, and organized action. Certain actions of men in

association have large scale ramifications. If men are not isolated

from one another, they become aware of these consequences through

communication and their participation in politics or the public

business. Such a perception "generates a common interest" in

controlling such consequences so as to further desired ends and to

eliminate undesired ones. Political purposes, plans, and policies

arise as guides to political action: politics is the art of collective

problem solving.

This description of political activity is probably too schematic

in that it suggests a linear progression from one stage to the next.

It can be argued that existing political institutions or forms of

organization often assume the lead in identifying (or, conversely,

obscuring) the common or public interest. But Dewey is painting

with broad strokes here in an effort to capture the general rhythm of

political activity. His point is that the direction of a society's

politics is determined by the interaction between emerging public needs and wants, on the one hand, and institutionalized political forms and machinery, on the other. Society is always in a state of flux; 182 the formation of the public thus entails the pressing of new claims, the reconstruction of old interests and the awareness of new interests.

Established institutions, however, tend towards stasis and often are committed to familiar and past claims. Thus, Dewey writes:

To form itself, the public has to break existing political forms. 30

What we learn from Dewey is that the responsiveness of the state is not something accomplished once and for all. Rather, it is something to be attained through continuous political action, through pressure from the community upon the state. Community is the key to a genuinely democratic experience where each man's individuality is made secure, since community demands a "concern on the part of each in the joint action and in the contribution of each

Q 1 of its members to it. "

B. Democracy as a Way of Life

Dewey, as one writer has suggested, is both a theorist of democracy and a democratic theorist; that is, his theory of democracy proper is intertwined with his philosophy of the democratic possibilities of a wide range of experiences, e. g ., from the art of thinking to the art of planning, from what takes place in the school to what occurs in the factory. The result is a theory of technique or method, on the one hand, and a doctrine of desirable ends, on the other. Democracy, for instance, carries a heavy load of 183

meanings in Dewey’s work; it is, he argues, both a form of government,

a set of procedures and freedoms for making the state responsible

to the public, and a way of life or a particular type of culture, one

marked by the spread of the "intelligent" or "scientific" attitude

within all social institutions.

Although the two cannot finally be separated, Dewey advances both an empirical and a normative set of reasons for viewing democracy

as more than a form of government. Within the descriptive framework of a cultural account of social realities and an interactions theory of human nature, both political institutions and political behavior are seen to be parts of a larger web of relationships. For example, while political and legal institutions shape other associations in society, they are obviously affected by those associations. There are, then, no one way streets in society; one cannot accurately portray the operations or the significance of a particular dimension of society without referring to the larger context of which it is a part. In

Freedom and Culture, Dewey contends that the fault with most theories of democracy is that they take one part of the interaction between the individual and cultural conditions or between the political and the other aspects of society as the whole. Most democratic theorists begin with the individual as a given, and this failure to see the individual in relation to his environment leads to the mistaken belief that the problem of democracy is essentially a personal one. To be sure. 184

early democratic theorists were aware of the relations, say, between

economics and politics; but they thought that self-government could be assured simply by establishing certain procedures for making officials accountable to the people. They assumed that a desire for freedom was inherent in every individual, and that control of their

representatives exhausted the requirements for self-government.

Once the interdependency between man's nature and all aspects of a culture is recognized, however, it becomes clear that human nature does not necessarily dictate democratic institutions. Every­ thing that Dewey has said about the forces of economic combination, the breakdown of community life, and the increasing significance of impersonal forces in controlling the course of events supports his conclusion that the very idea of democracy is now subject to basic

on strain. The lessons to be learned from these developments are clear. In Dewey's words:

The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, religious. 33

Dewey also holds, as has been noted earlier, that there is a parallel between the openness of democratic procedures and the openness of the scientific method of solving problems and validating values. Freedom of inquiry and communication, the toleration of diverse views--these are part of both the democratic and the scientific 185

way of life. I have already examined this thesis from the standpoint

of the validity of the analogy drawn by Dewey between authority in

science and authority in politics. Interest now is in Dewey's account

of the foundations of democracy: 1) the commitment to intelligence,

and 2) cooperation as "the root principle of the morals of democracy. "

The basis of democracy, for Dewey, is "faith in the capacities of human nature; faith in human intelligence and in the power of

pooled and cooperative experience. " The democrat affirms that, although intelligence is unequally distributed, each individual has something vital to contribute and the process of experience is itself educative. Democracy is valued by Dewey as the setting within which the experimental method of thought and action can take place.

But this is not simply a commitment to method; it is a commitment to the worth of each individual. The importance of political democracy, for instance, is that it removes many of the restrictions that prevent the individual from having a share in shaping and directing the social institutions that affect him. Political democracy affirms that each person "is equally an individual and entitled to equal opportunity in

Q A development of his own capacities, be they large or small in range. "

But although Dewey shares the values of political democracy, he holds that it uses are primarily negative, the removal of some repressions and oppressions. But since the goal of democracy is growth in the capacities of each individual, positive conditions are also needed. In a crucial essay, "Democracy and Educational Ad­ ministration," he writes:

The political and governmental phase of democracy is a means, the best means so far found for realizing ends that lie in the wide domain of human relation­ ships and the development of human personality. It is, as we often say, thought perhaps without appreciating all that is involved in the saying, a way of life, social and individual. The keynote of democracy as a way of life may be expressed, it seems to me, as the necessity for the participa­ tion of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together: which is necessary from the standpoint of both the general social welfare and the full develop­ ment of human beings as individuals.

The commitment to intelligence in Dewey's theory of democracy is a commitment to participation and ideas in action.

On participation, Dewey argues:

Personality must be educated, and personality cannot be educated by confining its operations to technical and specialized things, or to the less important relationships of life. Full education of each person, in proportion to capacity, in shaping the aims and policies of the social groups to which he belongs. This fact fixes the significance of democracy. ^6

Finally, bn ideas in action, he holds:

The very idea of democracy, the meaning of democracy, must be continually explored afresh; it has to be constantly discovered, and redis­ covered, remade and reorganized; while the political and economic and social institutions in which it is embodied have to be remade and reorganized to meet the changes that are going on in the development of new needs on the part of human beings and new resources for satisfying those needs. ^ The crux of Dewey’s theory of democracy as a way of life is the argument that democracy affirms the values of individuality and community both as the means and the ends. The characteristic features of instrumentalism--inquiry, communication, experimental action—also point to the end: the growth of individual personality through participation and cooperation with others in controlling social forces and instilling associations with purpose. Similarly, democracy also asserts that the state is but one among many form of associations; but it has a very special purpose, to look after common interests.

But, again, the end is also the means, since the state can only perform its function insofar as it respects the community as a source of legitimate claims. Dewey does not assume, although he is confident, that what men want will always be congruent with what needs to be done to solve the problems of men. His hopes for democracy pivot upon the belief that in a genuine community men's wants and their needs will come together. There are no guarantees; but "A free man, " Dewey writes, "would rather take his chance in an open world than be guaranteed in a closed world. "38 FOOTNOTES

1. Pranger, op. c it. , pp. 3, 12.

2. Cf. Arnold S. Kaufman, The Radical Liberal (New York, 1968), pp. 60-67. See also Richard Flacks, "On the Uses of Participa­ tory Democracy, " Dissent, XIII (November-December, 1966), pp, 701-708.

3. Mill, op. cit. , p. 391.

4. Ibid. , p. 259.

5. Ibid. , pp. 272-274. For a discussion of this aspect of Mill’s political writings, see H. J. McClosky, "Mill's Liberalism, " Isaac Kramnic, ed., Essays in the History of Political Thought (Englewood Cliffs, 1969), pp. 371-384.

6. Dewey adds a third dimension to the meaning of democracy here. To the liberal concern with constitutional controls and the democratic emphasis upon popular participation, he adds a discussion of the rationality or reasonableness of the political process in terms of its probable decisions. For a discussion of various democratic theories in terms of these three major dimensions of political life, see David Kettler, "The Politics of Social Change: The Relevance of Democratic Approaches, " in William E. Connolly, ed. , The Bias of Pluralism (New York, 1969), pp. 213-249.

7. Lippmann's pragmatism and his relationship to William James is discussed by Charles Forcey, op. cit., pp. 96-97.

8. Public Opinion (New York, 1965), pp. 18-19.

9. Ibid. , p. 197.

10. Ibid., p. 202.

11. Ibid., pp. 196-197.

188 189

12. The Public and Its Problems, p. 189.

13. Ibid. , p. 158.

14. Ibid. , p. 35.

15. Two of the best defenses of the usefulness of Mill's principles are H. L. A. Hart, Law, Liberty, and Morality (New York, 1963) and J. C. Rees, "A Re-Reading of Mill on Liberty, " in Kramnick, op. cit., pp. 357-371. Although I sympathize with both of these works, I believe that Dewey comes closer to the truth in suggesting that all of men's actions may at some time affect society and, hence, be subject to control.

16. The Public and Its Problems, p. 35.

17. Ib id ., pp., 73-74.

18. Ib id ., P- 33.

19. Ibid. , P- 148.

20. Ibid. , P- 129.

21. Ibid. , P- 184. - -

22. Ib id ., P- 54.

23. Ibid. , P- 149.

24. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1967), p. 827.

25. The Public and Its Problems, pp. 55-57.

26. A recent and excellent discussion of how obligation can be derived from participation or membership in a group is the work of Michael Walzer. Walzer's work also highlights one of the crucial weaknesses in Dewey's account of obligation. Namely, Walzer argues that "men have a prima facie obligation to honor the engagements they have explicitly made, to defend the groups and uphold the ideals to which they have committed themselves, even against the state...." Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge, 1970), p. 16. The fact that men do not belong simply to the "Great Community" but are members of many communities makes the problem of obligation more complex than Dewey presents it. 190

27. The Public and Its Problems, p. 121.

28. Ibid. , p. 125.

29. Ibid.. p. 208.

30. Ib id ., p. 31.

31. Ibid. , p. 188.

32. Freedom and Culture, pp. 57-61.

33. Ibid. , p. 173.

34. Problems of Men, p. 60.

35. Ibid. , pp. 57-58.

36. Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 209.

37. Problems of Men, p. 47.

38. Human Nature and Conduct, p. 285. VI

Conclusions

Dewey's political philosophy combines a tough-minded insistence

upon solving specific problems with a vision of a democratically

organized community. This corresponds to his conception of the

dual function of philosophy, as the logic of method and as the art of

criticism. You must, Dewey believed, have both your method and

your vision. Consequently, I have explored how effectively he brings

the two together. Generally, we have seen that he is more successful than many of his critics allow. Indeed, Dewey is often at his best

when describing the positive roles for political philosophy. Dewey >.»■ ■■ realized that a value-free social science is impossible and even un­ desirable. Once men address problems, select and eliminate facts, and form laws or principles about relationships, they begin to suggest things to do and not to do, they begin to change men's attitudes towards the world. Therefore, in Freedom and Culture, Dewey wrote:

Anything that obscures the fundamentally moral nature of the social problem is harmful, no matter whether it proceeds from the side of physical or of psychological theory. Any doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values

191 and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those chosen weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action.

It is true, however, that Dewey's concern with testing ideas

through action often got in the way of his effort to provide us with a

criterion or an idea for action. In part, Dewey posed a false dilemma

for political theory. Arguing that concrete problems demand specific

cures, Dewey wrongly concluded that our ideas must also be narrowed

down to specific hypotheses. If by problem solving we mean only that type of action engaged in by men as they actually go about making particular decisions or choices, then it is clear that formal principles and broad theories cannot "solve" problems. But, as critics of incremental is t theories have argued, rational problem solving also

requires that we stand back from the immediate pressures of technical decision-making or, to change the imagery but not the meaning, the demands of the movement. Distance must not be confused with detachment, but we should admit a distinction between theory and

practice. Otherwise, we run the risk of assuming that the context

within which problem solving takes place is itself a normatively acceptable context. It is, afterall, the increasing evidence that even in an open political system there are organizational biases that advantage some groups and disadvantage others that accounts for much of the widespread dissatisfaction with the standard pluralist interpretations of American politics. Incremental problem solving always runs the risk of closing out alternative views for reconstructing society. We

need political philosophy to avoid the status quo bias of "problem solving,1

o especially of incrementalism.

Nevertheless, we must also recognize that Dewey's most important

contribution to political theory has been his emphasis upon action and

consequences. A positive philosophy for improving social life will

not be discovered unless we are willing to test our concepts, theories,

and judgments in terms that ultimately refer back to the quality of

life enjoyed by the members of society. Political theory has all too

frequently committed many of the sins for which Dewey criticized

it. The manipulation of concepts and an endless parade of "the newest

approach" to the study of politics are of little avail if they only resolve

imaginary problems of imaginary men. There are, of course, pitfalls

surrounding the demand for knowledge that is relevant or socially useful, particularly the temptation to sacrifice rigorous thought for a

3 momentary impact. But, as we have seen in looking at Dewey's

work, the alternative to formalism need not be mere rhetoric.

Dewey's writings have captured the attention of a large audience

precisely because he combined a concern with the problems of men

and a keen awareness that such concern can only be productive when

combined with sound methods of inquiry and a generous imagination.

The facts provided by science, he insisted, are of no use unless men

cast off "intellectual timidity" and ask whht sort of "disposition of action 194 toward the world the scientific disclosures exact of us."

Dewey wanted a society where each individual could develop his tastes and talents free from senseless restrictions. Too often, he argued, personality is cramped within narrow boundaries that are either outdated or indefensible. The organization of the school, the structure of the work place, and the operations of the political system are often set up so as to encourage conformity and complacency. Thus,

Dewey fought constantly to abolish the rigid routines and authoritarian teaching methods that have, as a recent study argues, made the classroom a "joyless and oppressive place. " Dewey forcefully and persuasively criticized an economic system with the means but not the will to free men from economic insecurity and to enlarge their opportunities for action. In politics, Dewey valued fraternity because he saw in the principle of cooperation the only sure way to individuality.

Liberty, he contended, is a personal enjoyment that has to be collectively achieved.

Finally, Dewey believed that intelligence and good will were the keys to realizing a better society. While he emphasized the special role of the school in evoking and transmitting the sentiments and skills needed in a democratic community, he did not limit the idea of education to schooling. Rather, it is the entire culture and organization of the community that educates man and forms his character. Education is not merely a reliable tool for improving society; rather, the characteristics of a democratic education establish goals worthy of the larger society in all of its dimensions. The task of education and political thought, Dewey argued, is to make sense of the environment that surrounds a man, to relate events that occur on the external scene to the inner life of man and his fortunes and misfortunes.

Philosophy's purpose is to supply the individual with an orientation whereby current troubles and difficulties are made sense of by explaining the interactions between man and his society. This, Dewey felt, was the only way "in which the philosopher can look his fellow man in the face with frankness and with humanity. " This is still a worthwhile aspiration for political philosophy. FOOTNOTES

1. Freedom and Culture, p. 172.

2. See the comments by Enid C. B. Schoettle in the American Political Science Review, LXIV (Dec., 1970), pp. 1268-1272.

3. Cf. David Kettler, "The Vocation of Radical Intellectuals" (unpublished monograph).

196 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DEWEY’S WORKS CITED*

Characters and Events, 2 volumes, New York, 1929. Democracy and Education, New York, 1966. Essays in Experimental Logic, New York, 1916. Ethics, with James H. Tufts, New York, 1908. The Ethics of Democracy, Ann Arbor, 1888. Experience and Education, New York, 1967. On Experience, Nature, and Freedom, edited by Richard J. Bernstein, New York, 1960. Freedom and Culture, New York, 1963. Human Nature and Conduct, New York, 1957. Individualism: Old and New, New York, 1962. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, New York, 1951. Intelligence in the Modern World, edited by Joseph Ratner, New York, 1939. Knowing and the Known, with Arthur F. Bentley, Boston, 1949. Liberalism and Social Action, New York, 1963. Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, New York, 1957. Problems of Men, New York, 1946. The Public and Its Problems, Chicago, 19 54. The Quest for Certainty, New York, 1960. Reconstruction in Philosophy, Boston, 1965. The School and Society, Chicago, 1900. Studies in Logical Theory, Chicago, 1903.

*An invaluable guide to Dewey's writings and writings about Dewey is the exhaustive bibliography compiled by Milton Halsey Thomas, John Dewey, Chicago, 1962.

197