Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3

1. Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3 • Dewey on the problem of private and public interests: • Dewey opens this chapter with the public/private problem and by contending with Lippmann’s claim that people can only ever represent or act in their own private interests. Dewey concedes that acting in the public interest is a challenge, but he holds to the idea that one can act more in the public interest than in her own interests. • “The best which most men [sic] attain to is domination by the public weal of their other desires” (p. 76). • This is an important argumentative strategy for Dewey. While Lippmann tends to go for all or nothing statements--either you can or you cannot get past your own private interests--Dewey opts for qualified claims--though your private interests must always be a concern, you can try to act in the public’s interest. This effort--the trying--brings about representative government and the state (p. 77).

2. Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3 Dewey on what makes a good public representative: Pp. 78-81 explain why some people--priests, military leaders, bloodline aristocrats--get selected as public officials, and why they are ill-suited to the task. Dewey sez they will not act in the public’s interest.

3. Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3 • Dewey on the origins of liberal democratic government: • Pp. 83-96 return us to Dewey’s “factual” focus on the consequences of governmental development. His argument, in these pages, is that the liberal conception of the state (the belief that government exists solely to protect individual rights; see p. 87) did not arise out of any “facts” about how people really are as some philosophers claim. Liberalism, and individualism, according to Dewey, come from specific historical circumstances, particularly: • The revolt against monarchism and its controlling efforts, its impositions on people’s religions, their economic practices, etc. • The revolt against mercantilism and its attempts in the 17th century to manage trade and commerce to the benefit, not of the individual trader, but of the state. In these arguments, Dewey is directly refuting Lippmann’s claim that people are innately individualistic and self-interested. Dewey is saying that we’re not innately so, but we have been historically so.

4. Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3 Dewey on why individualist liberalism is no longer suited to the great society: If we accept Dewey’s argument that individualism and the liberal conception of the state are historical constructions, then we are prepared for his next move: a claim that these beliefs no longer work in the great society. Dewey here picks up Lippmann’s concession in ch. 15 of PPS--the great society connects us all into intricate networks that create a public interest (see Dewey, p. 96, paragraph beginning “Both of these”). But Dewey does not stop here. He not only sez that individualism is an historical construction; he also sez that community formation has existed in human societies throughout time: “Men have always been associated together in living, and associations in conjoint behavior has affected their relations to one another as individuals” (p. 97). So Dewey has not replaced Lippmann’s fundamental human quality (individual self interest) with a fundamental social quality (community).

5. Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3 • Dewey on community in the great society: • Sadly, Dewey sez, though the great society connects us all into an interconnected mass with a public interest, it also inhibits that fundamental social drive towards community: • “The Great Society created by steam and electricity may be a society, but it is no community. The invasion of community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life” (p. 98). • Pp. 98-101 explain why an individualistic philosophy remained in the Great Society. Dewey sez many institutions did liberate the individual: manufacturing liberated people’s consumption abilities; increased suffrage increased individual rights, etc.

6. Dewey and Lippmann: A Comparison, Ch. 3 Dewey returning to an assault on individualism: Pp. 102-105 return Dewey to a critique of the philosophy of individualism. P. 106 gets us back to where this chapter began: the democratic state. Dewey sez that any community with collective wants will then behave in pursuit of those wants, which leads to customs and institutions, new associations, and unforeseen effects. These unforeseen effects create a public interest, and the public interest leads to the formation of a state (p. 106). In the great society, as Dewey sez on pp. 107-8, the communities forming are enormous (corporations, special-interest groups, churches, etc.), and they engage in complicated interactions. He also sez that treating government as one of these specially interested associations will “halt the social and humane ideals that demand the utilization of government as the genuine instrumentality of an inclusive and fraternally associated public” (p. 109). Basically, a government operating as an interested actor will get in the way of helping the great society.