Liberalism & Social Action Revisited: The Relevance of John Dewey

The only sin, Emerson wrote in 1841, is limitation. It was in this spirit (and
influence) that John Dewey wrote some years later in How We Think that growth is the only
moral end. Growth as a theme runs like a golden thread through all of Deweys work. But
what is growth and how do we go about growing? What does it mean to say its the only moral
end? Imagination and its role in the process of growth, both personal and political, was
important for Dewey. He took literally the idea that failure, in any and all of its forms, was
most often due to a failure of imagination, a failure to think through problems in all their
intricacy and particularity. It was a failure to imaginatively draw out the consequences of a given
view, opinion, or clash of values that frustrated Dewey and informed his philosophy.
He would have agreed with John Stuart Mill that sometimes values just clash and theres
not much we can do about itfor example, free speech and a law against blasphemy. But, he
would have argued, we wont come anywhere close to this clash of ultimate and
incommensurable values if we continue to think of every minor confrontation, every instance
of friction, as a symptom of some greater, irresolvable conflict. In other words, Dewey thought
that most, though certainly not all, conflicts between people and groups could be mediated,
talked through, accommodated, and resolved with a bit of honesty and imagination. Dewey
believed that whether or not it was true that values and views can be mediated and mutually
accommodated, we ought to believe they can be. This is nothing more than the idea that hope
is preferable to despair: to believe opposing views can be accommodated is a good place to
start.
As the American critic and essayist Louis Menand writes in his wonderful history of
the pragmatists, Dewey believed that whether or not it was true that values and views can be
mediated and mutually accommodated, we ought to believe they can be. This is nothing more
than the idea that hope is preferable to despair: to believe opposing views can be
accommodated is a good place to start. This contrasts with our current state of affairs in which
we throw our hands up in resignation and frustration every time there is even the slightest
societal friction or disagreementwhich is essentially all the time. The Civil War, it should be
noted, loomed large in Deweys thinking: he thought the conflict came to blows due to the
absoluteness in which people framed every issue. Slavery versus anti-slavery; end of story. It was
a failure of nerve, imagination, and hope that ultimately led to the war that pitted brother
against brother and neighbor against neighbor, and he came away thinking that moral crusades,
no matter their rightness, always have an air of absoluteness about them and thus almost
always do more harm than good.
Wherever Dewey laid pen to paper, he condemned uncompromising and outdated
ways of thinking. He believed that our attitude, especially in the age of advanced industry and
machines, lagged well behind the material circumstances in which we found ourselvesour
American philosophy wasnt, and still isnt, equipped to deal with the situation. In Liberalism
& and Social Action Dewey turned his relentless reforming efforts on liberalism itself. And he
offered a way forward that still resonates with us some seventy years later.
To ensure survival and continuity within the constantly changing scenery, liberalism
would require flexibility and adaptability.

* * *

Liberalism and Social Action was Deweys attempt to sketch a brief history of liberalism,
its current crisis, and possible resolution. For Dewey, liberalism stood for individualism, a
healthy fear of governmental overreach, and a belief in natural lawin essence, it was the
liberalism of the United States from its founding to about the mid-19th century; it was the
philosophy of our founding fathers.
At some point, though, liberalism came to mean little more than a belief in
governmental action for aid to those at economic disadvantage and for alleviation of their
conditions. [p.37]i Putting it in the modern context with broad strokes, Old Liberalism with
its emphasis on individualism and fear of government is the professed philosophy of those on
the Right. New Liberalism manifests itself as the Left and with almost no concern for those
traditional tenets of individualism, fear of government, natural law, or a belief in the
marketplace of ideas. New Liberals focus on improving the lot of the economically
disadvantaged, though they have added to this an anxiety over things like the patriarchy,
cultural appropriation, transgender pronoun usage, and the politics of race.
In any case, the crisis for Dewey was located in the fact that Old Liberalism had failed
to update itself in the face of the behemoth of industrialization. New Liberalism, on the other
hand, seemingly severed all ties from its older manifestations as well as with its economic
concerns. Thus we are left with, on both sides, ill-quipped philosophies. But the crisis,
Dewey goes on, follows naturally from the contradictions within liberalism itself. Liberalisms
radical disregard for established custom and tradition with a taste for liberty, the free-play of
intelligence, and a no-holds barred pursuit of wealth and success came, in the mid-19th
century, to be the status quo, thus making immovable what was at one time the subversive
and liberating philosophy of our forefathers.
LAnd so, Dewey goes on, liberty and freedom came to stand for little more than
economic liberty and freedom in the coming ages of industrialization, limiting change and
progress to a single channel which found support in Smiths invisible hand theory of
economics. This association (and simplification of Smiths philosophy for that matter) was
unfortunate, and Dewey spent much of his career putting forth and expanding
upondeveloping the rather unoriginal idea that the free market and the unrestrained pursuit of
wealth (as well as hoarding and inheriting) couldnt possibly solve every social problemthing.
Nor can they possibly solve all the problems we have nowAnd they still cannot. AWe have
gotten to the point where, as pragmatist race scholar and pragmatist Cornel West says, we
must recover [the] flow of non-market values and non-market activityii [i] since free-market
thinking has in many ways outlived its original purpose. The social scene that the Old
Liberalism was meant to serve was one of material scarcity, in variety as well as quantity. It
was meant to, in short, increase abundance and varietythings we have no shortage of today.
Moving ahead into the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century we see an abrupt
change. When it became evident that disparity, not equality, was the actual consequence of
laissez faire liberalism, defenders of the latter developed a double system of justifying
apologetics. [p.37]iii Apologetics we see put forth most often by those on the Right today.

Upon one front, they [defenders of the old liberalism] fell back upon the natural
inequalities of individuals in psychological and moral make-up, asserting that
inequality of fortune and economic status is the natural and justifiable
consequence of the free play of these inherent differences I fancy that today
there are but few who are hardy enough, even admitting the principle of natural
inequalities, to assert that the disparities of property and income bear any
commensurate ratio to inequalities in the native constitution of individuals. If
we suppose that there is in fact such a ratio, the consequences are so intolerable
that the practical inference to be drawn is that organized social effort should
intervene to prevent the alleged natural law from taking full effect. [p.37]iv

This is a moral lesson that we moderns less than a hundred years later have failed to grasp.
Deweys point was that far too much mental effort continues to be wasted trying to
figure out the appropriate ratio of wealth inequality to natural inequality. Is it proportionate?
How much is nature? And nurture? Is someone elses upbringing and environment my
responsibility? How can you justify that claim? And eEven if we managed to successfully justify
the ratio or find right proportionwhich no one can, let alone determine a metric for
love and love of freedom would fill in the rest, preventing us from drawing a reluctant ought
from an undesirable and natural is. Thus we find ourselves face-to-face with one of Deweys
finest pragmatic evasions: even if it were true that the inequalities of circumstance and wealth
we see today were due to the inequalities of the individual, it neither matters nor follows that
we ought to let this natural law run its course.
If liberalism is to remain true to its commitment to freedom in all its forms, what we
ought to regret is the damming up of individual expression as well as the limiting of rugged
individualism to mere exercise in the economic area.v Such is how Dewey mounts his ironic
attack against those who consider themselves inheritors of a tradition of rugged individualism
b. By saying, essentially, yourpointing out that their kind of individualism killsis killing your
individuality. Dewey thought there was more to life than doing well economically or climbing
the financial ladder and even went as far to say that the latter pursuits would eventually wind
upfixating on such pursuits can even suppresssing a good amount of freedom in both the
individual and the larger population. One neednt look any further than the current state of
the workplace: rigid hours,; a panopticon-like monitoring by supervisors who try to squeeze
every penny out of employees,; through-the-roof stress levels,; bare-minimum healthcare
coverage,; and a forty-hour work week. that is beyond the choice of most people when we
considerAdd to this the rising cost of living, wagethe stagnation of wages, and diminishing the
displacement of jobs due to advances in technology.vi Dewey would no doubt agree with West
that our cultural and spiritual lives are in such disrepair beause we are bombarded by a market
culture that evolves around buying and selling, promoting and advertising. The market tries to
convince us that we are really alive when we are addicted to stimulation and titillation.vii.[ii]
Dewey thus helped separate those who thought, rightly, that ones economic situation
largely determines political stability and moral fortitude, from the rigid economic determinism
of the Marxists. There is a significant distance between saying with Dewey that social and
political progress comes about through increased security and sympathy, and saying that we
only need to increase economic security. The Right, in contrast,, in contrast to these two views,
has held steadfastly to the idea that what we need most is a revolution in values, virtue, and
education is whats needed most. People need to learn their lessons through hard work and
adversity. Both of these extremes are a good example of people holding fast to a certain set of
meansvalues or moneybecause it makes them feel good, while refusing to see their
disconnect with the ends they profess. Successfully or not, Dewey tries to have his cake and
eat it too when he says, the problem is not merely one of extending to all individuals the traits
of economic initiative, opportunity, and enterprise it is one of forming a new psychological
and moral type. [p.62]viii
Ever aware of the fact that the liberalism he espoused sometimes looked middle of
the road in practice, Dewey nonetheless tried to carve out a path between those who think
economics has very little to do with a persons choices and character, and those who think
economics is the only thing that determines them. Thought, desire, and purpose, Dewey says,
exist in a constant give and take of interactions with environing conditions. [p.62]ix Those
on the Left today might be a good example of why economic security and a relatively
comfortable situation doesnt necessarily lead one to develop a philosophy of tolerance and
pluralism. The Deweyan liberal, in contrast, neither excludes the economic from conversations Commented [CP1]: I think here's a good place to take aim
at the excesses of the modern left (identity politics, etc).
about morals and virtuous behavior (as the Right does) nor elevates it to a deterministic faith
(as the Left so often does).

* * *
 The liberalism of the pastthat of the free market and narrowthe individualismis
for Dewey a plane that has run out of runway; it has outlived both its context and its original
purpose for coming into existence. Yet this hangover from the rugged individualism of the
past that Dewey rightly chides for being, well, not individualism at alllimiting individuality,
prevents us from offering even the most minimal and morally neutralnonjudgmental help to
those worst off in our society. Part of the failure of social programsor as we derogatorily
call them handoutsis the fact that they never quite find a sure enough footing. Even if
some group of people find it necessary to extend to some people greater economic freedom
through the handing out of wealth or other forms of capital, still some larger portion of
people, under the spell of individualism, stigmatize them as undeserving or morally weak. That
somehow these people who are being handed thingsapparently, most people were never
handed something nor had parentsare the symptom of a deformity, moral or otherwise. It
breeds antagonism in the recipient as much as those who are supposedly the Peters being
robbed to pay Paul.
In locating the crisis as, essentially, an ill-fit way of thinking about the world given
the our present circumstances we now find ourselves in, Dewey gives us the pragmatic
treatment of liberty. Liberty is the release from the impact of particular oppressive forces,
and it has taken about as many concrete forms over the years as the times the word liberty
itself has been invoked: at one time it meant liberation from chattel slavery; another release
from class serfdom; yet another from despotic dynastic rule.x Todaynow as much as in
1935it means liberation from material insecurity and from coercions and repressions that
prevent multitudes from participation in the vast cultural resources that are at hand. [p.48]xi
Liberation, contrary to popular sentiment, doesnt always suggest some grandiose display of
violence or dramatic breaking of all the chains. The kind of liberty a free and tolerant society
secures is, in fact, quite the opposite.
Its interesting to note, however, thatBut Dewey says nothing here about a sense of
proportion or prioritynothing about how, or perhaps even whether, the fight against material
insecurity is any better or worse than the fight against chattel slavery. Whether one fight is
indicative of a movement in the right direction or whether our harsh old chains have merely
been replaced with slightly more comfortable ones,. to use Richard Rorty's phrase.[iii]xii Even
the analogy of comfortable chains breaks downsurely more comfortable chains would be
better than less comfortable ones, no?
Dewey would have been wise to advise liberals to not only prioritize but to have a sense
of proportion, if for no other reason thanonly to send another broadside into those practicing
the worst forms of identity politics but nonetheless regarding themselves as inheritors of the
tradition of Mill. By identity politics I refer to the fashionable idea that we should not speak
about matters if we have no standing or legitimacythat if I am not a homosexual myself,
silence is the only appropriate response to the needs of homosexuals, like those who would
police expression according to complicated hierarchies of privilege and standpoint.
But if liberty is nothing more than liberation from some particular generations idea of
suffering, then perhaps todays liberals are, in fact, of the same tradition. One wonders, though,
whether the master value of freedom of expression must necessarily be vigilantly policed
(or ejected)get thrown out with the Old Liberalism in an effort to relieve the suffering of some
group of oppressed people. I imagine both Dewey and Mill would offer answer a reluctant
but nonetheless resounding no. to that curiosity.

* * *

Dewey ends, in the last of the three lectures ends by sketching a picturewith a sketch
of what he calls renascent liberalismthe solution to liberalisms crisis. Echoing Mill,
Dewey argues that liberalism is committed to the liberation of individuals so that realization
of their capacities may be the law of their life. [p.56] xiii Its interesting to note Deweys reading
of Mills journey from a Benthamite utilitarian to romantic liberal. It is a movement that Dewey
saw more clearly than others, and a few authors have also recently recounted this turn of
Millssome even going as far as to say that Mill flirted with some form of socialism, though
he wouldnt have thought about it that way.
I mentioned earlier that Dewey believed the old liberalism to be a plane thats run out
of runwayif at one time it was a useful political ideology, it has now been beaten to death
and signs of its disrepair are all around. That Old Liberalisms defenders begin to look like
reactionaries desperately hanging on to the idea that people never change and neither do our
situations.
But arguing from the corner of commonsense, Dewey says argues again that times have
changed. Habits of desire and effort that were bred in an age of scarcity do not readily
subordinate themselveswhen machines and impersonal power have the capacity to liberate
man from bondage to the strivings that were once needed to make secure his physical basis.xiv
He goes on: The system that goes by the name of capitalism is a systemic manifestation of
desires and purposes built up in an age of ever threatening want and now carried over into a
time of ever increasing potential plenty.xv And finally, the patterns of belief and purpose
that still dominate economic institutions were formed when individuals produced with their
hands It demands no great power of intelligence to see that under present conditions the
isolated individual is well-nigh helpless. [p.59]xvi
These factors, Dewey says, all contribute to the idea that liberals must not only
continuously reform their methods and means but nowhe was writing in 1935they ought
to rethink them more than ever. If one could take a line from these lectures which sums up
Deweys animating feeling its this: The economic-material phase of life, which belongs in the
basal ganglia of society, has usurped for more than a century the cortex of the social body.
[p.59] xvii Liberalism ought to divorce itself from the suffocating grasp of the free market to
embrace a more widespread and prosperous freedom.
In typical Deweyan fashion, Dewey advances education becomeass the great spark for
change. Not education in the limited, formal schooling sense, but here Dewey is talking about
all social forces that contribute to the development of mind and habit. The gap between what
our current situation permits and how we continue to think about it is a gap that must be
traversed by education.
In an unfortunate use of the term, Dewey ends by calling for liberalism to once again
become radical. It is precisely thisDewey would close the gap between what the actual
situation makes possible and the actual state itself that makes piecemeal policies
undertaken ad hoc an impossibility. [p.62]xviii But it is here, Dewey says, that the radical who
believes violence to be the most effective means in creating social change parts ways with the
liberal who believeds in the power of collective social intelligencea Millian faith in the ability,
over time, to transform thought and institution alike. And what should this collective
intelligence work on? In an eerily prescient passage, Dewey dispenses withabuses the citizen
of the idea that the political state is the only agency now endowed with coercive power,
and that it should be the only object of our attention. Indeed, this power [of the state] is pale
in contrast with that exercised by concentrated and organized property interests. [p.64]xix In
a word: corporations.
Corporations, not the government, stunt our ability to get together with our fellow
human beings for social, creative, or even leisurely pursuits. As Edward Luce laments in his
recent book The Retreat of Western Liberalism:

In survey after survey, the biggest employee complaint is being treated with a
lack of respect they feel diminished by how they are treated. People must
request permission for bathroom breaks from supervisors who are clocking
every minute of their time companies are shedding obligations to as much
as their workforce as they can. Their goal is to lift revenue per employee. [p.xx]xx Commented [CP2]: Can you include the page number?

In other words, we ought to be much more worried about how corporations and big business
are encroaching upon our liberties than the government. And it is only a collective
intelligencegetting together with our fellow human beingsthat can steer the ship in a
better direction. If Dewey had a gloomy forecast about industry and big business in 1935,
Luces book picks up the narrative seamlessly, adding statistical salvos.
Dewey dispels the delusion that intelligence is a singular affair, pointing to the collective
efforts involved in various technological innovations. [A] survey of [these] facts brings home
the actual social character of intelligence as it actually develops and makes its way. [p.68] xxi
Intelligence is necessarily social, and we are swimming upstream every time we conjure up ghosts
of The Individual.
It is through this discussion of social intelligence that Dewey makes his famous move
to science. For Dewey, the defining characteristic of the scientific method is experimentalism.
And a commitment to experimentalismand one might add curiosity to thisis a stand
against what Dewey calls sees as a belief in inevitability. The question, Dewey says,

is whether force or intelligence is to be the method upon which we consistently

reply and to whose promotion we devote our energies. Insistence that the use
of violent force is inevitable limits the use of available intelligence, for wherever
the inevitable reigns intelligence cannot be used. Commitment to inevitability is
always the fruit of dogma; intelligence does not pretend to know save as a result
of experimentation, the opposite of preconceived dogma. [p.78]xxii

Returning to the theme of outdated philosophies, Dewey tells us that large scale
oppression and coercion are the product of the perpetuation of old institutions and
patterns untouched by scientific method, that is, untouched by a commitment to social
intelligence, the experimental mind, and free and open discussion unrestrained by dogmatism
and party politics. [p.82]xxiii

* * * Formatted: Left

Dewey was motivated in these lectures by his frustration with the fact that so much
human intelligence, so much human potential, goes wasted and an even larger amount gets
funneled into the narrow pursuit of wealth and property. Creativity and genius, our current
age seems to tell us, are nothing if they dont result in some sort of reimbursement.
And Deweys frustration is felt by anyone whos thought that people can be slow to
change and that old habits die hard. But the question remains about how these old habits
of an outdated liberalism are the representation of anything legitimate anymorehow, in other
words, lip service to the free market by certain groups is anything but a defense of the the
absurd and obscene wealth-hoarding of those at the top. It of course meant more than this at
one point, but it rarely does anymore. One need only look to the struggles of startups trying to
find seed and grant money to see the delusion that mere entrance into the free market with a
good idea will either assure success or at least assure that the judging will be fair. Its ironic
that those whove retained so much of the old liberalisms fear of authority defer so much to
the authority of the market.
Dewey summarizes toward the end of his lecture:
 Earlier liberalism regarded the separate and competing economic action of
individuals as the means to social well-being as the end. We must reverse the
perspective and see that socialized economy is the means of free individual
development as the end. [p.90]xxiv

Whatever else one thinks about socialism, the observations by Dewey about the good
society and liberalisms belatednessliberalisms failure to understand the problemremain
strong even in the early part of our own century. The takeaway is not this or that program,;
socialism or capitalism or some mixed version of the two. Rather, the takeaway is that little in
life is more important than the freeing and fostering of peoples native and learned capacities,
their joys and pleasures, and a society that fails to secure the appropriate environment for that
is one that could not in any sense be labeled free. We cannot, Dewey seems to suggest, always
be falling back on Mills rather minimal liberalism of merely avoiding harm to others. If
anything can be viciously rippedgleaned from Deweys outdated lectures its that it doesnt
much matter what market structure or political framework gets us to freer, more relaxed, more
open society; what matters is we get there at all. This is liberalisms constant struggle.

[i] Cornel West, The Moral Obligation of Living in a Democratic Society

[ii] ibid. Formatted: Font: Italic
[iii]Richard Rorty, American National Pride in Achieving Our Country

i Liberalism and Social Action, 37

ii Cornel West, The Moral Obligation of Living in a Democratic Society, 126
iii Liberalism and Social Action, 37
iv ibid.
v ibid., 38
vi For more on Deweys thought on the relationship between individuality, freedom, and

technological innovation in the workplace, see Individualism Old and New.

vii
West, The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society, 126
viii Individualism Old and New,
ix Liberalism and Social Action, 62
x ibid., 48
xi ibid.
xii Richard Rorty, American National Pride in Achieving Our Country
xiii Liberalism and Social Action, 56
xiv ibid., 59
xv ibid., 60
xvi ibid.
xvii ibid., 59
xviii ibid., 62
xix ibid., 64
xx Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism
xxi Liberalism and Social Action, 68
xxii ibid., 78
xxiii ibid., 82
xxiv ibid., 90