The Public and its Problems by John Dewey

The Public and its Problems Reviews

• 
  Sarah Clement

  I became obnoxious to everyone around me whilst reading this book, mainly because - even almost a century after its publication - so much of it rings true. All of us know democracy isn't perfect. Young people in the western world have mostly lost faith in democracy, according to most recent surveys, but it seems to me that we've lost interest in discussing this social experiment and how we can make it better. Some of what Dewey has to say will seem absolutely out of reach in the modern world, and some of it will seem simply naive, but if you can accept the premise about what is broken and what needs to be fixed, then there's a lot to latch onto here.
  
  Present day pragmatists have kept Dewey's spirit alive, especially through deliberative democracy, but I do find it surprising that there aren't more of them in academia. Among this group word pragmatism has come to mean, as far as I've seen, either a word that biophysical scientists use when they don't understand what social scientists have to say, or a word to describe research driven by political expediency. While those casual meanings are all well and good, I wish we'd reconnect with pragmatism as a philosophy, and along with that what it has to say about matters that Dewey discusses in this book, like defining the public, exploring the relationship between the public and the state, providing room for conflict and a diversity of legitimate interests, etc.
  
  One of my biggest frustrations with the present day view of democracy is that the role of the citizen (and the 'mandate to govern') is boiled down to the act of voting. And then once that flawed process is complete, there's no ongoing dialogue about what we expect (save the clever quips on the internet from otherwise disengaged publics...and disengaged for good reason). This book taught me that this simple view of voting is certainly not new. Even early in the 20th century, he was saying: "...the heart of the matter is found not in voting nor in the counting the votes to see where the majority lies. It is in the process by which the majority is formed. The minority are represented in the policy which they force the majority to accept in order to be a majority; the majority have the right to "rule" because their majority is not the mere sign of a surplus in numbers, but is the manifestation of the purpose of the social organism." The purpose is found through deliberation. Many (including me, on my dark days) would say that deliberation is unrealistic in the modern era, but I'd actually say that the time is even more right than in Dewey's day. Quips and memes on the internet do not have to be the entirety of discussion. We have many more ways to deliberate, but we also have to be sure someone is actually listening, which most of us are not.
  
  This book is dense and thought-provoking, but I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in politics and social science,
• 
  Laura

  As in his other writings, Dewey's social philosophy is centered around the interconnectedness of individuals and social groupings. No person or grouping acts entirely in isolation. Every action is modified by its connection with others. "The actions and passions of individual men are in the concrete what they are, their beliefs and purposes included, because of the social medium in which they live." Ideas of the individual and the social are hopelessly ambiguous when each is seen as the antithesis of the other. But association does not in itself make a society or a community. Shared experience, communicated experience, dialogue, shared ideas, and personal intercourse in the local community are all aspects of Dewey's vision of 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. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means of life and not its despotic master. Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free an enriching communion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication."

  
  As for his political philosophy, Dewey asserts that the form of the State is always an experimental and a trial process. He wholly rejects absolutistic and dogmatic concepts. Even ideas/ideals such as fraternity, liberty, and equality are empty when isolated from meaningful communal life. There is no single format, general principle, or theory that should be followed to create a "good" State. "In no two ages or places is there the same public. Conditions make the consequences of associated action and the knowledge of them different." The State must always be rediscovered. It is always an experiment, a trial process.
  
  His logic of method involves the following factors:
  1) "The concepts, general principles, theories, and dialectical developments which are indispensable to any systematic knowledge are to be shaped as tools of inquiry" (not dogma)
  2) "The polices and proposals for social action should be treated as working hypotheses, not as programs to be rigidly adhered to and executed."
  
  I always love engaging in Dewey's writings and ideas. There is much more to this little volume than I summarized here. What I value the most, though, is his prioritization of "enriching communion" for meaningful communal life and his emphasis on continual processes of improvement, not final answers.
• 
  Illiterate

  A normative and functionalist analysis of policy and the state as experiments in problem-solving.
• 
  Chris

  Reading this book reminded me why I'm not a poli-sci or sociology major. It's not that there was anything awful about the book, it's just not my 'cup o tea' as it were.
  
  The book is actually a collection of thoughtful and insightful lectures-turned-essays contemplating the form of democracy and what truly constitutes a "public", a "society", a "community" and what government's involvement should be in all these.
  
  For me, the writing had some great nuggets scattered throughout but unfortunately I found myself bogged down by writing that felt otherwise tedious. Dewey is obviously very smart and full of great ideas. Too often for my taste, this resulted in (what I felt) lengthy passages where he took a ton of effort to try and expound on a single thought without getting to a clear point until wandering around the subject for 5 or 6 pages.
  
  Again, my distaste is mainly due to not having any real deep interest in the subject (which is part of what he exposes as one of the problems of a public…that there are far too many things out there such that a person can't truly be educated or even interested in everything). I found my eyes growing heavy many times and had to put the book down at risk of falling asleep.
  
  Still, as I persevered an applied heavy concentration, I found myself enjoying and agreeing with many of his premises.
  
  I really appreciated his assertion on the importance of consequences and how it is the consequences of a thing that brings people together. Where a lot of the problems come about is that there are far too many distractions out there such that an individual, or even a collective "public" can't focus on all of the necessary consequences. As a result, even in a "democracy", there are only a handful of individuals sufficiently knowledgeable to properly react to the stimuli around us and predict the consequences to the extent that they can ensure a promising future.
  
  Along with the 'uneducated' implication of having all these stimuli, we also have a problem in that everyone is being pulled in so many disparate directions that we've lost any real sense of community. There are "too many publics" out there. We can't have a solid national or global community because everything is truly a microcosm of each of our individual interests, needs and desires. Any "community" we have is generally very small based on a handful of common interests with others and a single person may be a member of multiple "publics" or "communities", sometimes even at odds with one another.
  
  Until society can find some way to use its collective knowledge and advances in technology and communication, we can never truly have a "Great Community" in the sense of a solid national or global community all united and on the same page.
  
  What was very intriguing to me is that this book was written 80 years ago and many of the anecdotes he uses could be used today without changing any of the language. If anything, in the past 80 years, I would suggest that the world has gained even more "publics" and an even more disparate society that continues to lack in a great sense of "community." At the same time, some technologies such as the various social networking sites, tweeting, and the blogosphere are helping to create a sense of community. But this isn't the type of community Dewey would have preferred as he was a proponent of truly getting to know the individual…and when we're veiled behind the mask of the Internet and technology, we lose something.
  
  ***
  2.5 stars (though I can definitely recommend this higher to a follower of poli-sci or sociology)
• 
  annabelle

  horrendous. inaccessible. boring. reading this book was genuinely such a bad experience. i honestly couldn’t even tell you what this book is about lmfao.
• 
  Zachary

  In The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey offers an explanatory account of what he terms the “public,” or political community, and the state, a critical account of how the public has been “eclipsed,” or disappeared, in complex industrial nations, and a constructive account of what conditions must obtain for the public to be able to identify itself once more in democratic societies. While relatively brief, The Public and Its Problems covers an immense amount of territory: in addition to the above aims, Dewey critiques abstract and absolutist theoretical conceptions of the state, provides a historical explanation for the rise of democratic institutions, upends modernist assumptions about an essential, pre-political human nature, and explains the close connections between classical liberal democratic theory and free-market capitalism. Overall, Dewey presents a persuasive vision of democracy not merely as a form of political constitution, but as a way of life with its attendant habits and virtues. In this, Dewey is a kind of liberal communitarian, but his radically democratic political theory ultimately resists easy classification.
  
  In the first part of the book, Dewey claims that most philosophical attempts to account for the cause or the nature of the state use an a priori method that discounts empirical realities and erroneously posits as a causal force the effects that need to be accounted for. For example, Aristotle asserts that humans are social animals in order to explain why humans form political communities, but why humans are social (i.e. form political communities) is exactly what is in question. Dewey therefore aims to deploy a different, a posteriori method that starts with the facts of human activity in order to identify the marks of political behavior. This method leads to the observation that “human acts have consequences upon others, that some of these consequences are perceived, and that their perception leads to subsequent effort to control action so as to secure some consequences and avoid others” (12). The distinction between the private and public domains, the latter of which implicates the state, lies in the fact that some consequences affect those directly involved in a transaction, while others affect persons beyond those immediately concerned. The “public,” then, “consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for,” and the state is the coordination of the public into a political body by officials “who look out for and take care of the interests thus affected” (15-16). It is the function of the state, in short, to administer over and channel indirect consequences of social interaction for the sake of the public interest.
  
  Dewey’s conception of the state entails that there is no one form of state constitution that is best. He insists that “the formation of states must be an experimental process” attuned to the character of the public whose interests the state is meant to promote and protect (33). The public, moreover, is not a static entity; publics rise and fall, form and reform, based on which indirect consequences need to be controlled and channeled. And this means, in turn, that states are fluid, or at least should be fluid, lest the constitution of a new public with new needs results in revolution. Put differently, there is no absolute conception of the state as an archetypal entity with a certain “essence or intrinsic nature in virtue of which any particular association is entitled to have applied to it the concept of statehood” (45). The concept of the state is relative to the public which its officials coordinate into a political body. At the same time, simply because there is no one form of state constitution that is best, this does not mean that there are not better and worse states. Dewey offers two criteria in view of which to evaluate political communities: first, the extent to which state officials have formed the public into an effective and efficient political body capable of collective action; and second, the extent to which state officials administer public affairs in accordance with the common interests of the public.
  
  Government, for Dewey, is identified with the officials who form a public into a state. Whether or not these officials are elected democratically, their responsibility is to represent the public and serve its interests. As Dewey explains, “since those who are . . . affected [by indirect consequences of transactions between parties] are not direct participants in the transactions in question [over which the state administers], it is necessary that certain persons be set apart to represent them, and to see to it that their interests are conserved and protected” (16). It seems that Dewey thinks this a descriptive, not a normative claim; insofar as the state serves a necessary function in every political community (66), its officers necessarily represent the public, no matter how well or to what extent they act in accordance with this role. And that such officials may not serve the public interest, since they, like everyone else, have their own private interests, is precisely what sets up one of the principal problems of the public: what measures can the public adopt to ensure that the conflict between private and public interests faced by officials is minimized? Democratic political institutions, Dewey observes, serve this function: “They represent an effort in the first place to counteract the forces that have . . . determined the possession of rule by accidental and irrelevant factors, and in the second place an effort to counteract the tendency to employ political power to serve the private instead of public ends” (83).
  
  Herein lies the unique value of what Dewey calls “political democracy,” understood as a form of political constitution in which citizens wield political authority and elect representatives to serve the public interest on their behalf (82). Yet while political democracy offers an ostensibly effective solution to the primary problem of the public, the particular history of its ascent in Western Europe and the United States, which Dewey traces in the second part of the book, underscores why political democracy by itself does not and cannot resolve the tension between private and public interests. Dewey claims that the popular narrative that a certain set of philosophical ideas account for the establishment of democratic institutions is a myth; while theoretical notions of the pre-political individual in the state of nature, endowed with inalienable entitlements to life, liberty, and property, certainly reflected and subsequently influenced the democratic movement, the real drivers of democracy in concrete political contexts were dramatic social, scientific, and economic transformations. In particular, Dewey explains that political democracy was born out of the desires of a nascent middle-class to cast off established forms of political constitution that threatened their economic interests. And “since established political forms were tied up with other institutions, especially ecclesiastical, and with a solid body of tradition and inherited belief, the revolt also extended to the latter” (86). Hence the early democratic movement aimed at freedom as an end in itself, where freedom really meant liberation from oppression and tradition, and promoted an individualistic ethos in accordance with freedom thus understood. Concomitant with and inextricably bound up with the rise of democracy was economic liberalism, which reinforced the individualistic ethos with its emphasis on the individual and her desires as the basis for all economic transactions. Individualism, then, was a core component of the democratic movement, buttressed by philosophical and economic theories that invented fictions like the state of nature and “natural” economic laws that in turn influenced the particular forms that democracy would take. Government, on the view that prevailed, was a threat to individual autonomy whenever it unduly meddled in free-market economic transactions which, left to themselves, would inexorably result in the maximum possible social prosperity (91).
  
  Yet just as the cult of individualism reached its apex in the minds of democratic theorists, many of the same social, scientific, and economic forces that propelled the rise of democracy led to the industrial revolution and, ironically, the demotion and belittlement of the individual worker. These same forces also eviscerated local communities and replaced face-to-face interactions between fellow community members with “impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior” (98). Put differently, nineteenth-century moderns extolled individualism while social and economic structures premised on individual autonomy deprived citizens of local communal bonds. Importantly, for Dewey, this did not mean that individuals actually existed as the disassociated atoms classical liberal theory envisioned them as; impersonal and mostly invisible structural forces continued to shape their desires and unite them, however distantly, into a society, even if “the Great Society created by steam and electricity . . . is no community” (98). Yet, for Dewey, perhaps the most lamentable fact of the modern democratic state is that economic powers have captured and appropriated it for their own ends. He compares the modern economic establishment to the monarchical dynasties that political democracy either overthrew or rendered impotent: neither has or had the public interest at heart (108). In short, political democracy, when coupled with the philosophical and economic fictions of individualism, did not successfully resolve the first and most important problem of the public: the democratic movement as it developed in most industrial nations could not counteract the tendency to employ political power for the sake of private ends.
  
  Related to this failure is, for Dewey, an even deeper and more profound problem in modern democratic societies, one which he terms the “eclipse” of the public. The eclipse, or disappearance, of the public is closely tied to the history of political democracy, economic liberalism, and the industrial revolution described above: the public cannot identify itself because, due to the erosion of local communities replaced by abstract forms of institutional attachment and the enormous complexity of economic structures, citizens can neither perceive the indirect consequences of transactions nor identify the causes of those transactions in the first place. As Dewey explains further, the industrial era “has so enormously expanded, multiplied, intensified and complicated the scope of indirect consequences, [has] formed such immense and consolidated unions in action, on an impersonal rather than a community basis, that the resultant public cannot identify . . . itself” and so cannot be formed into a real political body (126). Somewhat paradoxically, concomitant with the eclipse of the public is that “there is too much public, a public too diffused and scattered and too intricate in composition.” And there are also “too many publics,” since the indirect consequences of modern collective action produce various associations of citizens especially affected with little to unite them that would render perceptible what those consequences actually are (137). While, to be sure, the eclipse of the public is attributable to a deficiency in citizens’ comprehension of complex social, economic, and institutional structures, Dewey nevertheless rejects a technocratic solution to the problem: we have no reason to believe that an intellectual aristocracy of policy experts would necessarily serve the public interest over and above their private interests, and in any case, to the extent that such experts become a specialized class, they soon become out of touch with the needs of the people whom they are supposed to serve (206).
  
  If technocracy is not the solution to the eclipse of the public, then what is? While Dewey previously explained why political democracy is not, in and of itself, sufficient to ensure that state officials serve the public interest, he is nevertheless deeply committed to the idea of democracy in its fullest sense, both as a form of political constitution and, more importantly, as a “social idea” or way of life. Democracy in this latter sense is the key to the re-formation of the public as an identifiable and coordinated political body. This is because, for Dewey, democracy “is the idea of community life itself. . . . The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy” (148-49). If the eclipse of the public is due in part to the erasure of authentic forms of community, then democracy, insofar as it denotes the emotional, intellectual, and conscious maintenance of communal life, is essential for the reconstitution of the public.
  
  More specifically, Dewey names two necessary, if not necessarily sufficient, conditions for the social idea of democracy to flourish and the public to reappear from its eclipse. He refers to the first condition as free social inquiry: not only must there be an absence of overt coercive forces that prohibit social and scientific study and experimentation, but also citizens must be liberated from “emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes” that inculcate a kind of reverence for and idolization of established institutions (169). Dewey recommends “an experimental method in physical and technical matters”: both intellectual experts and ordinary citizens should cultivate an open-mindedness to social and political experimentation—not even the Constitution, or private property, is sacrosanct and inviolable (170). The second condition is the widespread communication of the results of social inquiry, disseminated in a manner conducive to public comprehension. Dewey is confident that ordinary citizens can understand complex scientific, economic, and political phenomena when experts in these fields publicly communicate their ideas in an artful, non-technical vocabulary and medium (183). Ultimately, the aim of both conditions is a more well-informed, better-educated citizenry capable of the sort of observation and critical analysis needed to ascertain the effects of complex social-structural processes so as to form a self-aware political body. As he puts it, “the essential need . . . is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public” (208). It is no wonder, then, that Dewey placed such stress on the importance of education to democracy.
  
  Lastly, Dewey thinks that local community life must be restored in order for the public to “find and identify itself” (216). While, to be sure, the vast size of the United States in terms of both territory and population presents a whole host of obstacles to the reconstitution of the public as a political body (114), Dewey does not endorse the breakup of the United States or other similar nation-states. He does, however, underscore the centrality of face-to-face interactions in which citizens can communicate ideas and discuss pertinent political issues (218). “There is no substitute,” he insists, “for the vitality and depth of close and direct intercourse and attachment” (213). Thus, for the modern “Great Society” to become a “Great Community,” democracy must start at home—i.e. citizens must practice democracy as a way of life between themselves at the local, face-to-face level before it can be realized at the national (or even international) level. In fact, Dewey hopes that the impersonal and abstract forms of “trans-local” association will ultimately enrich local community life just as the cultivation of democratic virtues at home will help sustain the public (212). In this way, the complex social and economic forces of the industrial revolution and the forms of association they have created need not inhibit or undermine local community life (215). Modernity, in short, is compatible with democracy as a way of life, even if we have yet to achieve this harmony.
• 
  Michael

  One of my committee members suggested I re-read John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems because my dissertation is dealing with issues of privacy, publicity, and the social. It was a delight to return to early 20th century pragmatism, since I haven't read much (except for Josiah Royce) since my master's program. Here's a few (disjointed) notes and quotations from Dewey.
  
  Dewey argues that the public/private distinction is not simply an individual/social distinction, because private acts can be social: "their consequences contribute to the welfare of the community or affect its status and prospects" (13). For Dewey, "any transaction deliberatively carried on between two or more persons is social in quality. It is a form of associated behavior and its consequences may influence further associations" (13). Thus, private acts between individuals can be social. Dewey seems to define social as something that is largely good for society, and thus some public acts are not "socially useful" (14).
  
  Dewey's ontology of humanity is one of becoming: unlike other things that associate, a human "becomes a social animal in the make-up of his ideas, sentiments and deliberate behavior" (25). Becoming human: "To learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values. But this translation is never finished" (154).
  
  The same is true for democracy: it is an ideal, a becoming, rather than a fact: "the tendency and movement of some thing which exists carried to its final limit, viewed as completed, perfected. Since things do not attain such fulfillment but are in actuality distracted and interfered with, democracy in this sense is not a fact and never will be" (148).
  
  The Public occurs when "association adds to itself political organization" (35). For Dewey, the Public is intricately tied to the state, involving organization and representation (35). The problem of the Public is that it cannot recognize itself. Dewey writes that "'The new age of human relationships' has no political agencies worthy of it. The democratic public is still largely inchoate and unorganized" (109).
  
  Method: He is also less interested in causes of events and phenomenon, which can lead to wild "interpretation" (19) and tautological arguments (I'm reminded here a bit of Eve Sedgwick's critique of hermeneutics of suspicion). Instead, he is more interested in an "empirical and historical treatment of the changes in political forms and arrangements, free from any overriding domination such as is inevitable when a 'true' state is postulated" (46). Thus, Dewey proposes that in order to create a more vital democratic public, we need to turn to a scientific method, one that attends to consequences and criteria. "Intelligence" itself is not enough, for we are stuck in habits that are conservative (157-159). His proposal is ultimately a "logic of method" like the experimentation in laboratories (202).
  
  On technology: "Industry and inventions in technology, for example, create means which alter the modes of associated behavior and which radically change the quantity, character and place of impact of their indirect consequences" (30). Technology create means that affect how we associate.
  
  Finally, "the first and last problem" that we must address "is the relation of the individual to the social" (186). "The individual" is hard to define because it is a matter of perspective: something can appear to be individual, until you either break it up more or look at the connections that it depends upon (187). Dewey defines individual as "A distinctive way of behaving in conjunction and connection with other distinctive ways of acting, not as self-enclosed way of acting, independent of everything else" (188). For individuals to be "social" together, instead of just "associative" there must be common interest and joint action (188). Dewey is suspicious of "evolutionary" claims about sociality (that we are moving to or from collectivism) because there is a "continuous re-distribution of social integrations on the one hand and of capacities and energies of individuals on the other" (193).
  
  Reading this was useful in getting a discussion of the social, public, and individual/collectivism. I was mostly familiar with some of Dewey's arguments already, but it was nice returning to him. A few concerns: Dewey privileges the local community as necessary for improved democracy (216). What to do with this in today's social climate, where local communities seem fragmented and associations seem to be transnational or distributed over space and time? He also privileges face-to-face over print (218), which is understandable, but also limiting.
• 
  Dave

  A little obtuse in its wording, Dewey still manages to make some cutting critiques of the public's role in governance. Being a bit of a newcomer to the political scene, some of it was a bit confusing to me, but it was definitely an interesting read.
• 
  Canon

  The Dewey-Lippmann Debate
  
  To me, the best starting point for unraveling the famous Dewey-Lippmann debate is the footnote on page 116 of this book, where Dewey — having surveyed technological developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in communications and infrastructure that, he argues, created a surprisingly integrated but desultory public (indeed, not a true, i.e. self-consciously directed, public at all) — says: “See Walter Lippmann’s ‘
  The Phantom Public.’ To this as well as to his ‘
  Public Opinion,’ I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness, not only as to this particular point [about the eclipse of the public in modern forms of technological integration], but for ideas involved in my entire discussion even when it reaches conclusions diverging from his.”
  
  Dewey and Lippmann agree on a lot — for example, that there is no metaphysical group mind or spirit of history or what have you guiding public opinion and its development; that the expectation, assumed in traditional individualist democratic theories, that citizens should have informed views on all political matters is absurd given the utter complexity of the modern world; indeed, that the “omnicompetent” democratic citizen is a myth; that individuals’ opinions, fragmentary as they are, do not inhere in a rational nature, but are shaped through communication and information, which is frequently dominated by wily plutocrats and politicians. In other words, Dewey and Lippmann agree on the criticisms of democracy as it is. Where they diverge, and their debate arises, is in the conclusions they draw as to the solution or way forward from the predicament.
  
  Lippmann, surveying the scene, abandons democracy to the hoi polloi, retreating to a technocratic utopian ideal sliding towards oligarchy where brilliant people like him will exercise political power. Lippmann and his coterie of epistarchs would be engaged politically while the masses would be relegated to the status of spectators — which is good, since most people can’t understand the issues anyways and are happy with bread and circuses and so on. Dewey is not ready to abandon democracy. Far from it. To put it roughly, his proffered solution is to fix democracy with more democracy. Dewey agrees that the existing "eclipsed public," in order to become a public aware of itself and able to pursue its interests, needs education and empowerment.
  
  Lippmann dogmatically forecloses the opportunity of improving democracy by concluding it can’t work because of how complex society is and the way people are (namely, stupid, rapt by shadows on the cave wall, i.e. Facebook, etc.) Dewey thinks that improving democracy or better achieving the democratic ideal by educating and empowering the public is not impossible or foreclosed by current conditions. Because knowledge, political action, securing one’s interests, etc. is not just given antecedently, but is rather the consequence of social processes of communication, education, and empowerment, there exists the possibility to bring about through such processes a better public. Dewey is committed to this project. We are nearly a hundred years out from Dewey and Lippmann’s works and democracy, such as it is, has endured until now. To me, this favors Dewey’s commitment to democracy. At any rate, I am on the Dewey side of this debate, and likewise committed. That being said, given what Dewey and Lippmann agree on, i.e. the problem confronting democracy, the deluge of disinformation and propaganda being unleashed on America by the authoritarian right and its widespread acceptance is very troubling. Indeed, the problematic of the Dewey-Lippmann debate makes me think that this is one of the severest threats to current American democracy, and I have no clue how the situation will be improved. Taking Dewey and Lippmann as representing opposite moods of relative optimism and pessimism about American democracy, I vacillate between them. Some days when I read the news, I am hopeful and energetic; others, I am full of cynicism, bitterness, and ridicule of the American public.
• 
  Garrettburt

  I'm giving this three stars not because it didn't contain interesting ideas and insights but only because I had a hard time getting into it. It became a bit of a chore to read at times but that is to some degree tied to my attention span.
  
  What I found most engaging was Dewey's critique of Individualism as a functional component of the political thought which broke some chunk of humanity out of the feudal order. He does not deny the existence of the individual but wants to always remind us that the individual is in every case developed, nurtured and constituted by various and sundry group associations or relationships. There is no free-floating "individual" who can be severed from the social groupings that molded them. If the individual feels oppressed by current conditions, then it is because those social conditions are inadequate for their full development. Thus, we need to study and understand the current social conditions, how and whom they oppress, and decide in some democratic manner how they might be changed.
  
  In the final chapter, Dewey surmises that this must begin at the local level. We must find democratic ways of being within the groupings in which we are most intimately involved (family, neighborhood, religious institution, civic organization, etc.). In this way we may become aware of ourselves as parts of a Public and we can then make determinations about how we fit in with other groups to which we are not so closely bound. This is important because, in an increasingly complex and technological society, we ARE more closely bound and dependent than we realize. The ways of democratic engagement must begin in our most intimate relations and radiate outward to larger and larger assemblages of human beings.
  
  The fact that capitalistic economic organization and technocratic political organization tend to hamper many individuals in their own flourishing should show us that these institutions need amendment. That these institutions are made to serve only a miniscule elite in flourishing should show their inherent inadequacy. We need a way of engaging democratically which will allow our institutions to keep up with the dizzying pace by which technological change upends old ways of human culture and organization. If this is not done then we are only generating a new type of feudalism- which has an anchor in social institutions which still retain some kernel of feudalism such as law and economic arrangements- that may be much uglier and more stultifying than the one it replaced.
• 
  Phillip

  Dewey makes a systematic inquiry into the makeup of the public (or, perhaps more accurately, publics) and its connection with democracy. On the most basic level, Dewey asserts that publics are fundamentally about social relations and that democracy is a particular mode of social relations oriented toward the good of the community, rather than about the particular mechanics like voting.
  
  He makes the case that a public is oriented toward itself through the ways in which its members interact. This fundamentally involves a challenge to the very notion of "individualism," which Dewey suggests has been immensely destructive of the fabric of social life because it has encouraged the manifestly false notion that human beings (or any entity) can lead a self-contained existence. The problem with this notion (apart from it being demonstrably false, as Dewey shows) is that it weakens the interconnections between people, upon which the consciousness of a public depends. When a public doesn't recognize itself as such (i.e., when the individuals within the public don't recognize their shared relations which give them a common interest), then self-government becomes impossible because no individual is invested in the collective good.
  
  Under these conditions, democracy becomes impossible--the public doesn't recognize itself as a public, and individuals don't acknowledge any responsibility to the greater good of society as such, only their private interests. Obviously this does affect the goings on of elections and voting and things like this, but Dewey argues that this is just the machinery of political democracy and fails to get to the truth of what democracy as such is. For Dewey, democracy is a mindset, a habit, and a way of looking at the world and at social relations. It is rooted in communities (local communities especially, where face to face interactions happen) which combine to form what he calls the Great Community--a kind of network of communities all with a consciousness of their responsibility to one another and to the good of the Great Community as a whole. This whole process--democracy as a social mode--depends on individuals to perceive themselves not as "individuals" but as interdependent members of communities, as being responsible to other beings in the world. This, for Dewey, is the true meaning of democracy.
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  Zachary

  This is maybe the clearest, simplest, and most important of Dewey's works that I've read (so far). In his discussion of the public, the state, and individuals he finds a way to articulate the core problems of logic that plague typical discussions of government and policy, while also providing fairly clear ideals for how this conversation can be moved productively forward. His recommendations are, he notes, ideals, and not necessarily prescribed courses of action, but they seem (to me, at least) eminently practical anyways, and are at the very least articulated in an inspiring enough way to spur thinking and desire for action in the direction fo their accomplishment. The one element that is explored some here but could use further teasing out is the role that technology and technique play in the constitution of publics, the state, and governance. There are hints throughout the book at the new and important mass role that technology plays, but Dewey never fully follows those thoughts to their conclusion in a major way. The principles he articulates are nonetheless applicable to our contemporary mediated, technological, networked situation, and the ideals he asks us to aspire to are beautifully elaborated on here.
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  Moud Barthez

  it is a hard book to warp your head around, it's tiny but delicate book, it's mainly about hypothesis between The Public as a whole and it's role in the society and the societies role as individuals in constructing a Governmental rule, and the role of democracy and communication on the Public.
  it is kinda of a book that gives you headache, i don't recommend it to anyone, it a bit academical advanced and not using examples to simplify the theories just the cheer hypotheses by itself to justify and epitomizing the ideas.
  
  i read that book twice, one of which in a fortnight, the second in a whole day.
  and i cannot say i fully grasped all the ideas that Dewey wanted to discuss
  but i understood the objective in the end.
  
  it is a good and important political book but i didn't enjoy it though.
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  C. Scott

  Finished at last! This was supposed to be a quicker read mixed in amongst longer stuff. Sigh. Oh well. The abstract ideas bogged me down and I totally lost my flow. This brief volume turned into an endless slog. There were moments of genius, however, that made this worth my time. I was especially fond of his examination of the cult of individualism versus the public at large, which I think is crucial to understanding how capitalism undermines democracy.
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  Devon

  Fairly good introduction into the epistemics of democracy. We discussed Dewey's theory and I like his framework. There are some points of criticism though, which mostly have to do with the vagueness of certain definitions.
  
  Dewey does not come with many concrete examples of what he is talking about, and the level of abstraction stays a bit too high in the sky.
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  Alex Johnston

  John Dewey: *punches me* talk to your neighbours
  me: fuck you ass hole
  John Dewey: *throws a chair at wall* the great society can only become the great community through the development of local communal life
  me: got o hell
• 
  Derek

  I have kept trying to find some Dewey that makes sense to me. I’ll keep trying.
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  Leonora Shiell

  Had to read it for class.
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  Yapaag

  I like it.
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  John Carter McKnight

  My copy is a forest of sticky tabs. For the most part, it's absolutely astonishing that this book was written in 1927: its analysis of our political ills and their technological/economic roots is sharp and accurate today.
  
  Dewey argues that mass technologies - industrialism and mass communications - pretty much necessitate the death of citizenship in favor of consumerism, by weakening strong ties and empowering weak ones, while not being blind to the many advantages of the mass age.
  
  He's scathing on the subject of Constitution- and Founding Fathers-worship: for him, a constitution is a tool kit for solving a particular set of problems in a particular time and place, and it's just foolish to think those tools can be used in other contexts without adaptation.
  
  In discussing the relationship between persons and organizations, he's a little weak: focusing on individual moral responsibility is excellent from the bottom up, but if the 20th Century taught us anything (besides how ghastly bad individuals are at taking moral responsibility), it's that the actions of our tools and institutions don't necessarily link with *anyone's* intentionality, and that that's a necessary aspect of complexity.
  
  All in all, brilliant, an engaging read, and blissfully short. A real winner.
• 
  Jasmine

  Okay this book is not the most interesting book in the world until about the fourth chapter. The writing is a little repetitive. But the idea are very interesting. Also it tends to jive well with both cynicism and optimism that America had the exact same problems almost a hundred years ago. Sure it hasn't gotten any better, but at least it isn't getting worse. The book also assumes a lot about the capacity of people which is as always endearing.
• 
  Andrew

  John Dewey rocks the house. He puts his finger on problems that (sadly, perhaps) we still have not managed to resolve, without caving in to pessimism or cynicism. For instance, He is thinking about prospects for "glocalization" well before Roland Robertson coined the term.
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  Natalie

  This book has so much to offer!!! Dewey is so so optimistic about the public, but I got behind it tbh. If you're uncomfortable with seeing the world through an ideological lens, read up! It may be impossible for his propositions to ever become a reality but a girl can dream ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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  Neeta

  My head is spinnnnnnnninggggggggg
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  Brock

  Decent. There are others I'd recommend first.