Optimism about democracy is today under a cloud.
Dewey composed the essays which comprise this volume in the wake of social and political upheaval of the 1920’s. Although often considered a relatively controversy-free era in the wake of unparalleled economic growth for most of the decade, the twenties actually were roaring with political intrigue. Anarchists, communists and socialists threats were seen everywhere by conservatives wishing to hold onto the advantage of the economic boom. Behind the flappers and the bootleggers and the rise of silent film and the stock market climb, America was perhaps never more politically diverse. In 1920, not only did Eugene V. Debs win 3.4% of the popular vote as a member of the Socialist Party, but he did so while running for President from inside jail. The decade truly was casting some the first serious doubt about the long-term viability of democracy in America for the first time ever. It was this issue which prompted Dewey to write the book.
There is a social pathology which works powerfully against effective inquiry into social institutions and conditions. It manifests itself in a thousand ways; in querulousness, in impotent drifting, in uneasy snatching at distractions, in idealization of the long established, in a facile optimism assumed as a cloak, in riotous glorification of things “as they are,” in intimidation of all dissenters—ways which depress and dissipate thought all the more effectually because they operate with subtle and unconscious pervasiveness.
Any reader coming across this quote out of context today might well assume it was written in response to the much less diverse and much more divisive political climate of the latter half of the second decade of the 21st century. A time that seems to bear almost no resemblance to the era which formulated Dewey organizing principles at the time of composition. This is actually the case throughout the text; on many occasions it is almost as if Dewey is writing to an audience far out of time.
The organized community is still hesitant with reference to new ideas of a non-technical and non-technological nature. They are felt to be disturbing to social behavior; and rightly so, as far as old and established behavior is concerned. Most persons object to having their habits unsettled, their habits of belief no less than habits of overt action.
One of the central foundations of Dewey’s vision of political engagement is that change and resistance to change is for most less relevant to specific political ideologies than it is just plain human nature to easily lapse into habit. It is habitual exercise of thought that is harder to change or alter, not committed belief in political philosophies. Those who embrace with great passion political philosophy are intellectually committed and open to change; those who act simply upon habitual impulse present an entirely different case. The underlying message is that the broader context of social organization is more difficult to change not in spite of apathy or indifference but precisely because of it.
Whatever the future may have in store, one thing is certain. Unless local communal life can be restored, the public cannot adequately resolve its most urgent problem: to find and identify itself.
Of all the prescience which Dewey exhibits throughout the text, perhaps the most chillingly on target is persistent drumbeat that a great deal of the social discourse which serves to define the public as a political state revolves around the philosophical search for identity and meaning. On its most basic level, this means something like the decision to register with a political party; the decision represents an assertion of one’s individual identity within a collective context. This search for identity grows more and more complex with the introduction of more sophisticated communication technologies: until the invention of the phone, one would more likely to identify with their immediate neighbors simply as a result of proximity of shared concerns. Dewey explores the connection between communication, technology and identity in detail and he was only speaking in reference to recent innovations like electricity and steam power. His arguments take on greater resonance today in light of the unforeseeable explosion of communications technology which has paradoxically made it easier to discover information relevant to oneself while making it more difficult to arrive at self-identity.
