4010 Spring08 Questions and Discussion 20

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The Public and Its Problems diagnoses the predicament of contemporary democracy, showing how it arose and indicating a way out, providing an initial rapid sketch of a general theory of political order.

Contents

[edit] Introduction

In the book, Dewey outlines an elaborate program of truly participatory democracy, one built around face-to-face interactions in “neighborly communities.” Dewey says that "The public" exists, potentially, whenever there are serious and persistent externalities; it consists of those who are on the receiving end of others’ actions. The public organizes itself to regulate those externalities; these specialized organs and officers constitute government, or the state. The implementation of all this, and the monitoring of those officers, raises problems of collective action; but prior to this is a problem of collective cognition, of recognizing that these externalities exist and deciding intelligently, that is, with regard to concrete consequences, what to do about them. The great problem of the public is finding modes of organizing itself, and its inquiries into what should be done, which are consonant with the modern scope of externalities and interdependence brought about by industrialization. In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey writes of a public in eclipse. Born in local communities, democratic practices had expanded on a vast scale, and this vastness reconfigured societal relations on impersonal, perplexing bases. At the same time, technological developments had increased social complexity, such that citizens no longer could discern the indirect consequences of human actions nor judge confidently issues affecting them. Dewey He described a public that had become too large, too diffuse, too scattered to enact collective judgment.

[edit] Chapters

[edit] I. Search for the Public

The public’s fundamental character, Dewey says, is not irrationality, but its social existence – the product of human association of those who appreciate that the consequences of action have an impact outside of their own immediate experience. The public may lose track of its shared interests, but always has the potential to reform itself when it becomes aware of its inevitable interdependencies. He talks about the divergence of facts and theoretical interpretations concerning the nature of the state, and discusses theories in terms of causal origin and perceived consequences. “Only when the facts are allowed to free play for the suggestion of new points of view in any significant conversion of conviction as to meanings possible. (Page 3) He tries to examine the theories to look for origin of the state, and says that “To explain the origin of the state by saying that man is a political animal is to travel in a verbal circle.” (page 9) Dewey goes on to talk about the distinction of private and public substituted for that of individual and social, “The distinction between private and public is thus in no sense equivalent to the distinction between individual and social, even if we suppose that the latter distinction has a definite meaning. Many private acts are social; their consequences contribute to the welfare of the community or affect its status and prospects.” (page 13)

He talks of the plurality of minds and the conditions under which opinions are adopted - “When various opinions all spring from a common and shared error, one is as good as another, and the accidents of education, temperament, class interest and the dominant circumstances of the age decide which is adopted.” (page 20)

He talks about the influence of association “…..not in fact how human beings come to be connected, but how thy come to be connected in just those ways which give human communities traits so different from those which mark assemblies of electrons, unions of trees in forests, swarms of insects, herds of sheep and constellations of stars. (page 23-24)

He goes on to talk of some features of the state as perceived by society: “That the state should be to some a deity and to others a devil is another evidence of t defects of the premises from which discussion sets out. One theory is as indiscriminate as the other.” (page 25). From this emerges the criterion of the public and the function of the state.

“The characteristic of the public as a state springs from the fact that all modes of associated behavior may have extensive and enduring consequences which involve others beyond those directly engaged in them.” (page 27)

“Government is not the state, for that includes the public as well as the rulers charged with special duties and powers. The public, however, is organized in and through those officers who act in behalf of its interests. Thus, the state represents an important although distinctive and restricted social interest.” (page 27-28)

“Mistakes pile up and consolidate themselves into laws and methods of administration which are more harmful than the consequences which they originally intended to control. As all political history show, the power and prestige which attend command of official position render rule something to be grasped and exploited for its own sake. Power to govern is distributed by the accident of birth or by the possession of qualities which enable a person to obtain office, but which are quite irrelevant to the performance of its representative functions.” (page 30) “By its very nature, a state is ever something to be scrutinized, investigated, searched for.” (page 30) And finally about discovering the state, and his hypothesis on the same:

“Thus the problem of discovering the state is not a problem for theoretical inquirers engaged solely in surveying institutions which already exist. It is a practical problem of human beings living in association with one another, of mankind generically.” (page 32) His hypothesis: “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 of its especial interests by methods intended to regulate the conjoint actions of individuals and groups.” (page 36)

[edit] II. Discovery of the State

Dewey sees government arising directly from the public. The public forms agencies for the purpose of taking charge of the overall consequences of the activities of the public. The government is the outcome of the public’s efforts to manage its interactions. The public’s primary problem is to develop a system for the selection of official representatives and to determine their responsibilities and rights. As democracy has developed it has spawned key concepts that reflect back to the public its growing awareness of itself, concepts such as the nature of the individual and individual rights, of freedom and authority, progress, order, liberty, law etc. In this chapter, Dewey continues the political sketch, looking at the public and the state: “If we look at the wrong place for the public, we will never locate the state.” (page 37) He describes the formation of communities and states within geographical extents, “But the community as a whole involves not merely a variety of associative ties which hold persons together in diverse ways, but an organization of all elements by an integrated principle.” (page 38)

And how states were formed: “For long periods of human history, especially in the Orient, the state is hardly more than a shadow thrown upon the family and neighborhood by remote personages, swollen to gigantic form by religious beliefs.” (page 41) He talks of the plurality of states “The plurality of states is such a universal phenomenon that it is taken for granted.” (page 42) and its existence between associations of public: “Somewhere between the associations that are narrow, close and intimate and those which are so remote as to have only infrequent and causal contact lies, then, the province of a state. We do not find, and should not expect to find sharp and fast demarcations. (page 43)”

“In spite of the fact that diversity of political forms rather then uniformity is the rule, belief in the state as an archetypal entity persists in political philosophy and science.” (page 45) Dewey also talks of legalities, and the view point of law as command and law and reasonableness: “The regulations and laws of the state are misconceived when they are viewed as commands. The “command” theory of common and statue law is in reality a dialectical consequence of the theories…” (page 53)

“Rules of law are in fact the institution of conditions under which persons make their arrangements with one another.” (page 54) Reason expresses a function, not a causal origin. Law is reasonable as a man is sensible who selects and arranges conditions adapted to the ends he regards as desirable. (page 57)

Change is a constant, and the fear of the new disturbs the state, or any other organized community, for very often, it challenges existing practices which have gained a certain comfort level: “The organized community is still hesitant with reference to new ideas of a non-technical and a non-technological nature. They are felt to be disturbing to social behavior and rightly so, as far as old and established behavior is concerned.” (page 59)

With his factual and theoretical discussion, Dewey, comes to the conclusion that “On the one hand, the state has been identified with the government. On the other hand, the state, having a necessary existence of its own, per se, is said then, to proceed to form and employ certain agencies forming government, much as a man hires servants and assigns them duties. The latter view is appropriate when the causal agency theory is relied upon.” (page 66)

[edit] III. The Democratic State

The heart of the book is to save democracy. The individualistic democracy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was wrong in theory and consequently wrong in practice. Its program lifted the power of the government out of the hands of the public and laid it in the hands of great industrial organizations and at the same time blinded all eyes to what was taking place, because what was taking place was going on according to the program. In “The Democratic State” all this is pictured for us.

Dewey talks about officers representing a public, and the public acting through them. He mentions the private and representative roles of officials: “When a public is generated the same law holds [of a single person]. It arrives at decisions, makes terms and executes resolves only through the medium of individuals.” (page 75)

Discussion of the democratic state: “Viewed as a historical tendency exhibited in a chain of movements which have affected the forms of government over almost the entire globe during the last century and a half, democracy is a complex affair. (page 83) Dewey believed that democracy was a developmental process, and although he conceded that there were certainly problems with democracy in the 1920s, he did not think it should be abandoned and substituted by a system of rule by scientific experts. He believed that the public was simply in ‘eclipse’ at that time, but at various points through history, the public had come to full recognition of itself. “Political democracy has emerged as a kind of net consequence of a vast multitude of responsive adjustments to a vast number of situations, no two of which are alike, but which tended to converge in a common outcome.” (page 84)

The problems of democracy, says Dewey, are not due to the impossibility of a public, but due to the fact that new forces in society such as technology, and capitalism, have so restructured human relations that the public has lost its sense of itself. Science is not the answer, but helping the public recover itself. “ ‘The new age of human relationships’ has no political agencies worthy of it. The democratic public is still largely inchoate and unorganized.” (page 109)

[edit] IV. The Eclipse of the Public

In the second half of The Public and its Problems, Dewey describes the powerful forces that eclipse the public and keep it from addressing its needs. He asserts, “Optimism about democracy is today under a cloud . . . Politics . . . calls for adverse criticism in abundance. But the criticism is only an exhibition . . ., unless it takes cognizance of the conditions out of which popular government has issued. All intelligent political criticism is comparative. It deals not with all or none situations, but with practical alternatives; an absolutistic indiscriminate attitude, whether in praise or blame, testifies to the heat of feeling rather than the light of thought” (p. 110

But in modern society, technology, special interests, powerful corporate capital, numbing and distracting entertainment, general selfishness, and vague public communication have made effective public deliberation difficult. Dewey says, “We are held together by non-political bonds, and the political forms are stretched and legal institutions patched in an ad hoc and improvised manner to do the work they have to do” (p. 114) . . . “Our modern state unity is due to the consequences of technology employed so as to facilitate the rapid and easy circulation of opinions and information, and so as to generate constant and intricate interaction far beyond the limits of face to face communities” (p.114) which has formed “heterogonous people” and political unity which has “promoted social and intellectual uniformity, a standardization favorable to mediocrity” (p. 115). “Business is the order of the day, and the attempt to stop or deflect its course is . . . futile. For it is their firm belief that ‘prosperity’ . . . is the great need of the country, that they are its authors and guardians, and hence by right the determiners of policy” (p. 118-19). Therefore, “when the public is as uncertain and obscure as it is to-day and hence as remote from government, bosses with their political machines fill the void between government and the public” (p. 120).

Dewey states, “The machine age has so enormously expanded . . . intensified and complicated the scope of indirect consequences . . . that the resultant public cannot distinguish itself” (p. 126). It “. . . has invaded and partially disintegrated the small communities of former times without generating a Great Community” (p. 126). This, coupled with, “political apathy, which is a natural product of the discrepancies between actual practices and traditional machinery, ensues from inability to identify one’s self with definite issues” (p. 134). He cites the Great War and Prohibition as examples of issues that the public has direct relationships with, but different reactions to (which we can discuss in class). In addition to Dewey's proposition that the public cannot find itself because there, “is too much public, a public too diffused and scattered and too intricate in composition. And there are too many publics for conjoint actions which have indirect, serious and enduring consequences . . . and each one of them crosses the others and generates its own group of persons especially affected with little to hold these different publics together in an integrated whole,” (p. 137) he also blames the distractions of modern society. He points out that in the past, the public has had other concerns than politics: "Political concerns have, of course, always had strong rivals" (p. 137). Dewey explains that the “bread and circus” are far more prevalent and plentiful in today's society. He uses examples of the movie, cheap reading matter and [the] motor car as diversions from political interest (p. 139). These technologies, Dewey believes, are far more desirable topics of discussion for the everyday person than the latest political news, and may also be contributors to the disintegration of family (p. 140). “The mania for motion and speed is a symptom of the restless instability of social life, and it operates to intensify the causes from which it springs” (p. 140). He also says that “there are those who lay the blame for all the evils of our lives on steam, electricity and machinery. In reality, the trouble springs rather from the ideas and absence of ideas in connection with which technological factors operate (p.141). Dewey hopes, however, that society can someday use its technology to improve communication and public interest in politics.

He asserts that local community is where democracy must happen so that people can become active and express issues of public concern. In this way, the local community can become the “Great Community.” He writes, “Without such communication, the public will remain shadowy and formless…Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community” (p. 142).

[edit] V. Search for the Great Community

John Dewey says, “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” (p. 143). We need to return to the “moral aspirations and ideas that underlie the political forms” and clarify and deepen our “appreciation of” ideas and employ our sense of meaning “to criticize and remake . . . political manifestations” (p. 144). “The idea has influenced the concrete political movement, but it has not caused it.” (p. 144) “The doctrines served a particular pragmatic need,” (p. 145) that “call urgently for revision and replacement” (p. 146).

“Government exists to serve its community . . . but this process cannot exist unless the community itself shares in selecting its governors and determining their policies” (p. 146) and “search[es] for conditions under which the Great Society may become the Great Community” (p. 147). This means that the individual must direct the activities of the group and participate according to the needs of that group; the group acts for the common good. Since an individual is a member of many groups, the groups themselves must “interact flexibly and fully” in connection with other groups (p. 147). A good citizen “finds his conduct as a member of a political group enriching and enriched by his participation in family life, industry scientific, and artistic associations” (p. 148). The ideal community is free “from restrictive and disturbing elements, and are contemplated as having attained their limit of development. Wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated by all singular persons who take part in it . .there is in so far a community. The clear consciousness of a communal life . . . constitutes a democracy (p. 149). Identifying democracy with individualism, makes severing the community easier (p. 150). “Equality denotes the unhampered share with each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated action” (p. 150).

“But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a pre requisite (p. 152). Signs and symbols promote communication and meaning, therefore a “community of action is saturated and regulated by mutual interest in shared meanings” (p. 153). “Everything which is distinctively human is learned;” “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” (p. 154).

There are two essential constituents that can help the Public emerge from its eclipse and attain a Great Community. One, each individual is equipped with the intelligence needed to engage in political affairs, and general suffrage is “sufficient to ensure the responsibility of elected rulers and the desires and interests of the public” (p. 157), and two, the idea of the omni-competent individual, who knows all situations demanding political action and is competent enough to enforce his “idea of good and the will to effect it against contrary forces” (p. 158). Essentially, “knowledge is a function of association and communication” sanctioned by tradition, tools, and habits, which are society’s “most precious conservative influence” (p 159). “The idea that men are motivated by an intelligent a calculated regard for their own good is pure mythology,” they are set by “habits reflecting social customs” (p. 161). “Habits of opinion are the toughest of all habits,” (p. 162) and they are the instigators of careless reports and misrepresentation.

Science is one of the languages we use to communicate, but it is highly specialized and more difficult to learn than any natural language. Therefore, science, to a majority of the public, has been an “esoteric mystery until it was applied in advertising, salesmanship and personal selection and management . . . and psychiatry” (p. 164). But the public still does not know how things work. Much of the knowledge that is a prime condition of democracy does not yet exist, and until it does, knowledge is restricted to publicity that “limits and distorts public opinion and distorts thinking on public affairs” (p. 167). “But without freedom of expression not even methods of social inquiry can be developed” (p. 167). “Knowledge cooped up in a private consciousness is a myth, and knowledge of social phenomena is particularly dependent upon dissemination, for only by distribution can such knowledge be wither obtained or tested” (p. 176).

Public policy cannot be generated unless it is informed by knowledge, and this knowledge does not exist except when there is systematic, thorough and well-equipped search and record” (p. 179). But meaning depends upon its relation to what it imports, to what its social consequences are” (p. 180). We cannot discount the influence of private interests, secrecy and misrepresentation.

“Men’s conscious life of opinion and judgment often proceeds on a superficial and trivial plane. But their lives reach a deeper level. The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness. Common things, a flower, a gleam of moonlight, the song of a bird, not things rare and remote, are means with which the deeper levels of life are touched so that they spring up as desire and thought. This process is art. . . Artists have always been the real purveyors of news, for it is not the outward happening in itself which is new, but the kindling by it of emotion, perception and appreciation” (p. 183-84).

If we as a public take into consideration the consequences of associated activities, and acquire a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication, and when the “machine age’ has perfected its machinery to be a “means of life” not a “despotic master,” we will be part of a Great Community (p. 184).

[edit] VI. The Problem of Method

To fully realize the idea of a democratic republic, there must be a method to clarify and understand the outstanding problem of the Public – the identification and discovery of itself (p. 185). This can prove problematic because there are many methods of analysis, and many reasons that a methodology could reveal misrepresentations of fact. For example, 1) groups and individuals may be in opposition to one another, 2) philosophy, in general, can be absolutic (p. 194). When dealing with humans, there are no absolutes, and “it is easy to exaggerate the amount of intelligence and ability demanded to render judgments” fitted for a specific purpose (p. 209).

But ultimately, “expansion and re-enforcement of personal understanding and judgment by the cumulative and transmitted intellectual wealth of the community much may render nugatory the indictment of democracy drawn on the basis of the ignorance, bias and levity of the masses, can be fulfilled only in the relations of personal intercourse in the local community” (p. 218). “Intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken, inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium” (p. 219).

[edit] Discussion Questions

  • How does Dewey define communucations 
 The function of art has always been to break through the crust of opinion and judgement (p. 183)
 Symbols in turn depened upon and promote communication" (p. 153)
  • Do you believe that Dewey's public is strongly identical with that of the Internet, and that Dewey's interactive notion of the community foreshadowed the rise of the global telecommunications society? How?
  • Can a mass mediated public engage in a democratic process?

[edit] See Also

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