The Public and its Problems

Background

The Public and Its Problems was Dewey's first major work concerned exclusively with political philosophy, though he had both commented and written on politics frequently for much of his career, and made forays into the subject as it related to education in Democracy and Education in 1916, and would go on to publish numerous works on the subject, including Individualism: Old and New (1930) and Liberalism and Social Action (1935) and Freedom and Culture (1939). Dewey was an ardent democrat who while still at university in 1888 had contended "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous."

Dewey was moved to write in defence of democracy in the wake of two widely read and influential works written by journalist Walter Lippmann in the 1920s which echoed a rising intellectual trend both in the United States and Europe that was critical of the potential for self-governing democratic societies. In the first, Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann contends that public opinion suffers from two major problems – that regular citizens have insufficient access to or interest in the facts of their environment, and that what information they receive is heavily distorted by cognitive biases, manipulation by the media, inadequate expertise and cultural norms. Lippmann contends that citizens construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. Subsequently, because of the near impossibility of developing an adequately informed public that a democracy requires to make effective public policy in a world of increasingly complex policy problems, Lippmann contends that a technocratic elite is better placed to work for the public interest without necessarily undermining the notion of consent of the governed. Lippmann expanded upon his critiques of democracy and the public as an illusory and often dangerous force in The Phantom Public (1925), contending famously that "the public must be put in its place...so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd." He dismisses the notion of the existence of "the public" as used in democratic theory, and advances again a notion that elites are the only force capable of effectively achieving something akin to the 'public interest' in practice.

Dewey saw Lippmann's work as "perhaps the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived ever penned" but felt compelled to come to the defence of democratic theory and to reject what he saw as argumentation on the part of Lippmann that was particularly doctrinaire and absolutist in its judgements, and saw his own philosophical pragmatism as a means by which a more accurate and realistic conception of what the public and democracy was capable of it, and its limitations.

Overview

Part I: Origins of the Public, Society, and "The State"

Dewey opens with a critique of abstract accounts of the state’s origins — be it the Aristotelian idea that man is a political animal or social contract theories – which, he argues, devolve into "mythology" and "story-telling." Instead, Dewey thinks of the state as a way to respond to human actions and their consequences: “We take our point of departure from the objective fact that human actions 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.” Certain actions merely affect the parties involved in a specific exchange, transaction, or arrangement; but others affect people with no direct involvement in the action itself. For Dewey, this distinction between direct and indirect consequences underpins the public-private distinction: “The public 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.” There, Dewey argues, lies the nature and office of the state. The res publica, or commonwealth, is the aggregation of the funds, buildings, and institutions required to manage the consequences of actions that affect the public at large.

Dewey criticizes aggregative theorists who believe that there exists a collective, impersonal “public will.” As he puts it, “when the public or state is involved in making social arrangements like passing laws, enforcing a contract, conferring a franchise, it still acts through concrete persons.” In this sense, the relevant difference is not between individual wills and what Rousseau calls the "general will," but between actions performed as private citizens, and actions performed in positions of public authority. Any viable theory of the state needs to proceed from the realization that individual actions – done in positions of authority – are required to counterbalance other individual actions – done in private, but with indirect consequences on the public. These individual actions can only be understood in their socio-cultural context. Theorists must neither forget that the state is an aggregation of concrete persons doing concrete things, nor claim that individual actions are independent from one another. As Dewey puts it, "singular things act, but they act together." In particular, political actions necessarily carry a collective dimension, for they are analysed in terms of the consequences upon the public (i.e. others). Going further, Dewey argues that the content of our thoughts and actions is shaped by our associations – political or otherwise. In a well-known passage, he writes:

Part II: Democratic Needs and the Public

For Dewey, whether elected in a democracy or not, the state’s officers claim to represent the public. But they remain individuals with their own private interests — many of which are tied to their class, family, and so on. In this sense, the only difference between a “representative” government and other types of government is that the public is organized to secure its own dominance over private interests. Most rulers in history obtained their power ipso facto, by accident or conquest, on the basis of largely arbitrary factors such as military ability, age, or lineage. In non-democratic systems, after the establishment of power-structures, “custom consolidates what accident has originated” and “established power legitimizes itself." In this sense, democracy marks an exception in the course of human events, for its distinctively political character lies in the way in which it selects its public officials, as well as the way it keeps them in check.

Dewey argues that the origins of democracy have little to do with democratic ideals and theories, and much to do with a series of “religious, scientific and economic changes” that reshaped politics. The development of science accompanied the decline of ecclesiastical authority as the rise of mercantilism externalized the power of the nobility to an ascending class of bourgeois merchants. Dewey argues that while ideals such as freedom presented themselves as ends to be attained for their own sake, early-democratic theories rationalized a strictly negative desire to do away with crumbling institutions. From these trends emerged a general distrust of authority, a fear of government and a desire to elevate individual autonomy. For Dewey, this desire to escape from deficient forms of association was manifest in all areas of life. From Descartes’s theory of knowledge to John Locke’s political philosophy, all appealed to the self as "the court of ultimate resort." This individualist ethos also served the rising world of commerce that Adam Smith defends in his Wealth of Nations, which places the individual and its desires at the centre of all economic transactions. For Dewey, where most pre-modern states made a mockery of the public-private distinction, liberal democracies fear the state and its encroachments upon the lives of individuals. Popular election of officials, short terms of office, frequent elections, all are attempts to restrict the scope and power of government. Elections align the interests of public officials as private citizens and the interests of the public at large; as for short terms, they allow the people to hold officeholders accountable on a regular basis.

Dewey argues that this individualistic ethos is neither necessary nor desirable for democracies to thrive. He recognizes that the convergence of individualism and democracy made sense in the 18th century, but argues that its premises were inaccurate then and now. First, Dewey criticizes the idea that there ever existed a pre-political state of nature, that we possess natural rights independently of human associations, and that we can ever exist without collective attachments. Second, he points to a shift that makes individualism even less appropriate now than it was in the 18th century. Then, Dewey argues, human beings had mostly "face-to-face" interactions that helped perpetuate the illusion that human associations operated between independent individuals. Now, our interactions have become more impersonal and indirect. Our economic and political lives are controlled by institutions which we cannot see, people whom we have never met, and forces beyond our control. Dewey writes that "the Great Society created by steam and electricity may be a society, but it is no community. The invasion of the community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life."

Part III: Democracy Depends on Education, Effective Communication, and Decentralized Localism

Dewey seeks to re-organize the public by linking democracy as a system of government — that is, as a way to choose leaders and organize institutions — and democracy as a way of life. As Dewey puts it, “the idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best; to be realized it must affect all modes of human association, the family, the school, industry, religion." In other words, democracy must shape the lives of people, educate them as citizens, and make them play an integral role in the political process. Rejecting conventional forms of large-scale representative democracy, Dewey advocates smaller-scale, participatory models in which citizens and communities shape every political process.

For Dewey, the main difficulty lies in the reconstitution of a public that is a meaningful community — as opposed to a scattered set of atomized individuals. To do so, he claims, democracy must become community life itself, that is, it must become a communal attachment that is as significant to people as their family or their faith. To reinstate this sense of community is to establish what Dewey calls “the clear consciousness of a communal life.” Where modern life abstracts politics away, Dewey defends the development of a real sense of fraternity, without which none of the benefits of democracy can be achieved. For him, true democracies must convert organic and disorganized forms of associative behaviour into real communities of action united by common symbols, concerns, interests, and problems.

Dewey then lists two requirements for this new form of democracy to emerge. First is the universalization of the kind of education that equips citizens with the ability to participate in political affairs. Where Walter Lippmann dismissed the idea of the “omnicompetent individual” as a fiction perpetuated by naïve theorists, Dewey argues that it is both possible and necessary to cultivate faculties of effectual observation and reflection in everyone. Such are habits, cultural norms, and values around which democratic institutions — within and beyond the state — should organize themselves. As Dewey puts it, “habit is the mainspring of human action, and habits are formed for the most part under the influence of the customs of a group.” Just as the status quo cultivates short attention-lifespans, insatiability, and depoliticization, Dewey believes that we can cultivate the necessary qualities of democratic life. Dewey does not neglect the role of expertise and science; nor does he claim that ordinary citizens will ever be able to understand complex scientific questions as well as experts. But he does claim that the public can be educated enough to understand the indirect consequences that scientists are trying to address — to an extent that is sufficient for expertise not to become a barrier to true democracy.

Reception and influence

The main innovation of The Public and Its Problems is to present a vision of democracy not merely as a tool of political legitimacy or as a way to organize political systems, but as a way of life and an ethos. By affirming that democracies ought to cultivate certain virtues and habits in the citizenry, Dewey seems to be proposing a more illiberal conception of democracy than that of classical liberal theorists – in that Dewey's conception of democracy blurs the public-private distinction by requiring the development of democratic habits. As Melvin L. Rogers puts it, "Dewey is critical of the extent to which classical liberalism, with its atomistic psychology, narrow understanding of individuality, and limited role for the state, undermines the communal dimension of democracy." Siding with the likes of L. T. Hobhouse and W. E. B. Du Bois, Dewey stands ready to combat economic deprivations and political exclusions by restricting individual autonomy. In this sense, Dewey belongs to what L. T. Hobhouse calls "new liberalism." Where classical liberals separate the individual sphere of action from the public sphere at large, new liberals try to find the right balance between the two. Like Hobhouse, Dewey retains the classical liberal aspiration to emancipate individuals and free their potential. Unlike most classical liberals, however, Dewey does not bracket the question of the good life to build political institutions. He takes the flourishing of life to require certain pre-conditions, and seeks to use the state to ensure that these pre-conditions are met. The Public and Its Problems follows this approach by defending the cultivation of a participatory, democratic ethos in all spheres of life.

Whether Dewey's communitarian bent makes his conception of democracy incompatible with liberalism is a matter of scholarly debate. On the one hand, Dewey belongs to a pluralist tradition that views the individual as the intersecting fusion of diverse social groups and overlapping associations – including the state itself. In this sense, Dewey's liberalism follows the likes of Arthur Bentley, Ernest Barker and Mary Parker Follett. On the other hand, by arguing that proper democracy requires the cultivation of certain personal qualities in all spheres of life, Dewey departs from the kind of liberal neutrality that some associate with John Rawls. Robert B. Talisse, for instance, argues that Dewey's conception of democracy as a way of life is incompatible with genuine pluralism. Talisse claims that Dewey's conception of democracy imposes a specific vision of good onto others, thereby relinquishing the pluralist aspirations of liberalism. Joshua Forstenzer has replied to Talisse's objection by holding that Deweyan democracy relies upon only a "thin" definition of the good – as opposed to a robust, comprehensive doctrine. For Forstenzer, no political system can ever be neutral vis-à-vis substantive definitions of the good; on his view, Deweyan democracy may invite the cultivation of certain democratic virtues, but it remains sufficiently broad for people of diverse backgrounds, faiths, and cultural traditions to live according to their own principles — to a large extent at least. Similarly, Shane J. Ralston argues that Deweyan democracy and pluralism are entirely compatible. More specifically, Ralston claims that Dewey offers a set of pluralist procedures that allow democracy as a way of life to include a robust respect of value-diversity, illustrating her argument with a real-life case studies.