merely constrain freedom—but more significantly, it makes freedom possible by giving citizens control over the forces that govern and enable their lives.
To be sure, Dewey argues that the early rise of modern democracy emanated from a concern over governmental intrusions on freedom. But this worry, he maintains, was mistakenly interpreted as a “natural antagonism between ruler and ruled,” subject and government, when in fact the true target was abuse of political power.72 “Freedom,” he writes, “presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition. . . . The revolt against old and limiting associations was converted, intellectually, into the doctrine of independence of any and all associations” (124). Dewey seeks to refocus practical and intellectual energies on the correct target. The result is that authority, insofar as it is bound up with institutional structures that track the concerns of citizens, is not necessarily inimical to freedom. Political power in The Public and Its Problems thus refers to both the role individuals play in “forming and directing the activities” of the community to which they belong and also the possibility that is open to them for “participating according to need in the values” that their community sustains (175).
Dewey’s defense of democracy is important for redefining the meaning of political participation, signaled by the last bit of quoted text. Democracy, as he describes it, defines members not simply by virtue of their actual participation in determining social possibilities, but also by the potential participation that remains open to them if need so arises. For him, to the extent that power functions to determine social possibilities, those possibilities cannot be of such a nature that they preclude the future contestability and development of how power functions. Hence the following remark: “The strongest point to be made in behalf of even such rudimentary political forms as democracy has already attained, popular voting, majority rule and so on, is that to some extent they involve a consultation and discussion which uncover social needs and troubles” (223). To be attentive to such needs and troubles means that “policies and proposals for social action [should] be treated as working hypotheses, not as programs to be rigidly adhered to and executed” (220). As he had argued much earlier, to say that we hold in reserve the power to contest indicates that the legitimacy of decision making hinges on the extent to which citizens do not feel permanently bound by those decisions in the face of new and different political changes.
The view of democracy that Dewey defends and that informs The Public and Its Problems is fundamentally linked to how he understands the function of the public and its relationship to the state. He envisions the public as the permanent space of contingency in the sense that there can be no a priori delimitation, except as it emerges from individuals and groups that coalesce in the service of problem solving. He envisions publics as standing in a supportive relationship to the state and its representative and administrative institutions. But insofar as the state is resistant to transformation because it is defined by a set of fixed interests, publics then function in a more oppositional role that builds their power external to the state. Democracy, then, entails a kind of openness in which its substantive meaning—that is, what concerns it addresses and what ends it pursues—is always in the process of being determined.
Dewey’s understanding of the public is described in chapter 1, “Search for the Public.” “The public,” he says, “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” (69). Dewey’s language of “indirect” is deceptive because he appears to also mean harmful or unwanted consequences, indirect or not. Notwithstanding, the emergence of the public is prompted by a set of transactions within society whose impact on a group of individuals is of such a nature that it requires focused action that cannot otherwise be provided by them. This need not imply that the association of individuals that comes to constitute the public was in existence prior to the problem; it will often be the case that the consequences of transactions now perceived as problematic determine the members that comprise the public.
We need to be clear at this point. For Dewey, society is an arrangement of individuals who simultaneously belong to distinct and overlapping associations, what we often refer to as civil society. Dewey thus belongs to the tradition of pluralism that includes thinkers such as Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), Arthur Bentley (1870–1957), Ernest Barker (1874–1960), and Harold Laski (1893–1950), in which individuals are viewed as emerging from the nexus of multiple and sometimes conflicting social groupings, among which is the state itself (110–11). In civil society, information and pressures are communicated across those associations. In such pluralistic conditions, problems and conflicts are bound to emerge; some of these may very well come from the functioning of governmental regulation or activities of the market economy. The result of such problems is that groups within civil society are politicized and so become a public. To say they become politicized only means that indirect consequences have affected individuals to such an extent that a distinct apparatus is needed to address their concerns. The associated groups that emerge may already be in existence, albeit in a nonpolitical mode (e.g., religious organizations, professional associations, or cultural organizations), in civil society. Or it may be the case that the public comprises multiple associations that were already in existence, having no discernible relationship to each other until the problem emerged. The problem helps focus what is shared and provides the point of departure for collective problem solving, even as its members debate and argue over how best to address the problem.
A concern should emerge at this point regarding Dewey’s account of the public. On the one hand, he speaks of “the public.” Yet he seems quite clear in chapter 2, “Discovery of the State,” that multiple groups and associations of individuals advance claims requiring systematic care. This is why he cautions those theorists in the previous chapter who make use of the definite article, saying that “the concept of the state, like most concepts which are introduced by ‘The,’ is both too rigid and too tied up with controversies to be of ready use” (63). The use of the when used in conjunction with public suggests a homogenous domain in which the whole of society is directed through a deliberative mechanism, while the absence of the definite article points to a space that is internally plural, in which deliberation is context specific. How does Dewey address this ambiguity?
Dewey’s answer seems to be that the public denotes a space of pluralism in which the indirect consequences of various and distinct groups require systematic care. In other words, it is a space not quite reducible to civil society, but not yet identifiable with governmental institutions, a space in which claims regarding the need for systematic care are acknowledged by citizens and around which they consolidate their political identity. Citizens seek to translate their power of voice as a specific public into state power. State power becomes the administrative component that can effect change. So the public refers to a space internally differentiated between specific publics.
In explaining the meaning of systematic care, Dewey invokes the image of the state precisely to institutionalize political claims built up from the public that consolidate into a public. He writes that “the state is the organization of the public effected through officials for the protection of the interests shared by its members” (82). So the translation of political claims and grievances into state power requires officers and administrators who are charged as trustees of a public, holding fiduciary power: “Officials are those who look out for and take care of the interests thus affected” (69). For Dewey, this means that publics, whether on the local or national level, not only supervise how power functions, but in many respects determine and influence the ends to which it will be put: “A public articulated and operating through representative officers is the state; there is no state without a government, but also there is none without the public” (109). Hence, the state, although important for Dewey, is nonetheless a “secondary form of association” (112). In other words, although the activity of political institutions—that is, the formation of laws, statutes, and binding regulations,
