Deliberative
Democracy as a Matter of Public Spirit:
Reconstructing
the Dewey-Lippmann Debate
In the 1920’s, a debate took place
between several American thinkers concerned about the proper role of citizens
in a democracy. Walter Lippman authored
two books, Public Opinion and The Phantom Public, and John Dewey
penned two reviews of the aforementioned books as well as his own, The Public and Its Problems.[1]
Commentators have seen these works as pitting Dewey against Lippmann, and some
have argued that Lippmann got the better of it and some that Dewey did.[2] I, however, contend that they have grossly
misunderstood the exchange; that in fact Lippmann had another target in mind,
and Dewey stepped in to mediate.
Two theses about
this debate punctuate the two major sections of this paper. In the first, the negative or historical
thesis states that the commentators have misinterpreted the debate’s
construction and dynamic. In the second
section, the positive or analytic thesis is that Dewey employs a concept called
public-spiritedness to mediate the
two conflicting positions taken in the debate.
Not only does this concept help to reach a resolution, but as suggested
in section three, it also anticipates the contemporary notion of deliberative democracy.
1.
Commentators on
the Dewey-Lippmann debate have split over who deserved the victory laurel. Dewey’s biographer, Robert Westbrook, sides
with Lippmann. He reluctantly admits "that
Lippmann had the better of Dewey in their debate in the 1920s on the implications
of the eclipse of citizenship and the collapse of public life in the United
States."[3] The most ardent defenders of the view that
Dewey triumphed in the debate are Michael Eldridge and Raymond Boisvert.[4]
However, the
commentators have misconstrued the debate’s construction and dynamic. Construction-wise, the debate took place not
between Lippmann and Dewey, but instead between Lippmann and American
Progressives committed to the majoritarian creed. According to this creed, democracy demands vigilance against the
concentrated power of elites and deference to the decisions of majorities. To translate public opinion into government
policy, patrons of the creed favour majoritarian methods—such as polls, votes,
and elected representation—because these methods arouse the least suspicion of
elitism.[5] Besides questioning non-majoritarian
methods, proponents of the creed also doubt the average citizen’s capacity for
sound judgment, and thus whether majoritarian methods translate anything other
than collective irrationality.
Therefore, almost paradoxically, the sceptical bent of the majoritarian
creed risks undermining its own presumptive faith in majoritarian
decision-making.[6]
Dynamic-wise, the
debate occurred amidst a unique set of historical circumstances, in the mid to
late 1920s, when the rise of America’s third political party had already
reached its zenith and had since begun a spiralling decline.[7] Progressive optimism about achieving the
"public good" or "common interest" ebbed, and many members either left the
Party or teetered on the brink of defection.[8] It was therefore a propitious time for
change in their philosophy, and Lippmann—an erstwhile Party member
himself—stood ready to persuade the disillusioned Progressives to adopt his
own.[9]
In order to convert them, Lippmann aims in Public Opinion to exploit the most
apparent weakness in their majoritarian creed: their scepticism about the
average citizen’s capacity to make sound judgments.[10] Citizens of existing democracies lack the
time, interest and knowledge to make informed political decisions.[11] Since popular
opinion is generated by the free association of words, images and ideas,
majoritarian methods merely register these dominant, and often irrational,
associations—what Lippmann calls "stereotypes" or "pictures in our heads."[12] Following the dictum that
bad-input-makes-bad-output, these stereotypes distort the citizen’s
understanding of the real political environment and, as a result, disappoint
their efforts to impartially judge its features. Therefore, citizens of actual democracies live in what Lippmann
calls a "pseudo-environment"—their judgment influenced by arbitrarily acquired
stereotypes, not purposeful intelligence, about the world-at-large.
To
achieve accuracy and intelligence in surveying the political landscape, the
public requires at least two kinds of elites.
The first, experts, record information and coordinate research about the
environment, thereby "making the invisible visible." [13] The second, leaders, make and execute public
policy decisions based on the findings of experts. In this scheme, little
opportunity is left for deliberation by the average citizen.[14] Moreover, to preserve popular support for
government policies and leadership, elites must also "manufacture consent," or
produce propaganda that manipulates the dominant stereotypes in the minds of
citizens.[15] Thus, Lippmann contends, the elites, rather
than the average citizens, of a democracy administer the government’s affairs.[16]
In The Phantom Public, Lippmann arrives at
even more pessimistic conclusions than in Public
Opinion. Not only is the "public" in
traditional democratic theory ultimately a fiction or "phantom," citizens of
real democracies also have a negligible role to play in practical politics, one
circumscribed heavily by the authority of elites.[17] Since, for Lippmann, elections represent
sublimated or mock battles, the ritualistic trip to the voting booths functions
to reduce the conflict between elites, but never to uplift or edify the
citizen-voter.[18] In the end, Lippmann hoped that Progressive
democrats would acknowledge this dismal reality, abandon their majoritarian
creed and, in their final act of conversion, substitute for it a newfound faith
in the sagacity of elites—or what would later become known as the theory of
"democratic elitism."[19]
Particularly
prominent among the old guard Progressives who embraced the majoritarian creed
was the American jurist Learned Hand, to whom Lippmann dedicated his book The Phantom Public. The dedication was itself symbolic of
Lippmann’s desire to sway Hand’s intellectual sympathies to his elitist
position. In a strikingly similar event sixteen years prior, Graham Wallas
dedicated his book, The Great Society,
to Lippmann, his former student at Harvard. [20] Wallas intended to convince Lippmann of the
soundness of his view that the environment of modern life was so complicated as
to be inscrutable to all but the very few.
As might be expected, Wallas’ efforts to convert Lippmann were not made
in vain. Lippmann’s mature elitist views and especially his notion of a
pseudo-environment bear the stamp of Wallas’ influence. To persuade Hand and his Progressive ilk, as Wallas had done to
Lippmann years earlier, Lippmann had to do more than simply dedicate a
book. He had to attack and exploit the
vulnerable underbelly in their majoritarian creed.
However, if the
case of Learned Hand is representative, then Lippmann’s efforts to convert
Progressives en masse failed. It is easy to overlook Hand’s resistance to
Lippmann’s brand of elitism, and conclude that the American jurist was, on all
accounts, an easy convert. For one,
Hand accepted the dedication and, two, if his silence is interpreted as assent,
he implicitly agreed with The Phantom
Public’s conclusions.[21] Yet Hand’s biographer, Gerald Gunther,
infers the opposite conclusion, namely that, "Hand must have read the book with
very mixed, often disappointed emotions.
He never wrote to Lippmann about it; unlike Public Opinion, it elicited no superlatives from him."[22] So, according to Gunther, Lippmann’s
arguments in The Phantom Public were
not only unpersuasive to Hand, but even worse, they frustrated the jurist’s
expectations for a sequel with a positive and compelling thesis. Despite Lippmann’s efforts, Hand’s faith that
citizens should direct the affairs of state through majoritarian political
processes remained undaunted.
Gunther’s
conclusion that the American jurist rejected Lippmann’s arguments proves more
persuasive in light of Hand’s conviction, shared with other Progressives, that
some powers integral to self-government cannot be delegated to leaders and
experts. For instance, in the Masses decision, Judge Hand affirmed the
right of citizens to freely discuss and decide what government policies and
practices should be tolerated, on the ground that "public opinion . . . is the
final source of government in a democratic state."[23] Years later in the Holmes Lectures at
Harvard, Hand would declare that,
For myself it would be irksome to be ruled
by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I
assuredly do not. If they were in
charge I should miss the stimulus of living in a society where I have, at least
theoretically, some part in public affairs.[24]
Among the Progressives who embraced the majoritarian
creed, Hand could not have made a firmer denunciation of Lippmann’s elitism,
and a more resounding battle cry in favour of the majoritarian creed. In the end, despite his effort to exploit
the critical weakness in their majoritarian creed, Lippmann did not achieve the
widespread conversion of American Progressives that he had originally
planned.
2.
Dewey’s role in
the debate between Lippmann and the Progressives was not in the capacity of a
disputant. [25] Instead, and apropos of the positive or analytic thesis of this paper, Dewey
navigates a safe course between two flawed alternatives: on the one hand, the
Progressive or majoritarian way, which defends majoritarian procedures as the
sole method for gauging the public’s preferences and, on the other, the
Lippmann or elitist way, which disregards public preferences and entrusts
policy decisions to the judgment of elites.
Dewey accomplishes this feat by proposing a third way in the form of a
mediating concept known as public-spiritedness.
One of Dewey’s
biographers, Alan Ryan, laments that the "difficulty for readers of The Public and Its Problems . . . is
that Dewey accepted most of Lippmann’s complaints against the existing order of
things."[26] While Ryan’s observation is astute, it only
poses a challenge to readers if the debate is understood as between Lippmann
and Dewey. Appreciated as it should be,
that is, as between Lippmann and American Progressives committed to the
majoritarian creed, the reader comprehends the rationale for his early
concessions to Lippmann. Dewey’s role in the debate is that of a mediator,
rather than that of a disputant.[27]
As all proficient
mediators do, he must first acknowledge the strengths of both disputants’
positions. First, to Lippmann, Dewey
echoes his criticism that the theory and practice of democracy admit of
increasing disparity.[28] Likewise, Dewey acknowledges the
multifarious complexities of modern, industrialized society.[29] Also, in a similar vein as Lippmann, he
recognizes the power of propagandists to manipulate public opinion by
"enlisting upon their side the inertia, prejudices and emotional partisanship
of the masses."[30] But, most revealing of all, Dewey concludes,
"the democratic public is still largely inchoate and unorganized."[31]
Switching to the
Progressives, Dewey stresses the importance of elected representation and
social experimentation. Given Dewey’s
definition of the "public," that is, as "all those affected by the indirect
consequences of transactions," those publics qua publics must be empowered to select "representatives of . . .
[their] interests, created by these perceived consequences and to define the
functions which they shall possess and employ."[32] In addition, given Dewey’s definition of the
"state," that is, as "the organization of the public effected through
officials," representatives become the caretakers for their constituent
publics, as well as initiators of state-sponsored social experiments.[33] Therefore, Dewey affirms the value of the
majoritarian method of elected representation and the experimental process of
social reform, two conventions prized by Progressives committed to the
majoritarian creed.
Besides citing
the strengths, Dewey also critically examines the weakness of their respective
positions. In Public Opinion, Lippmann reveals his epistemological assumptions
from the outset with an extensive passage quoted from Book VII of Plato’s Republic, the well-known allegory of the
cave. From this passage and his notion
of a pseudo-environment, it is easy to adduce that Lippmann assumes the bipolar
"spectator-object" framework of classical epistemology.[34] According to this framework, knowledge is
analogous to sight, and the spectator—in Lippmann’s case, the citizen—views the
illusory appearances of the world, "the pictures in our heads," but cannot
access its real or "really real" objects—which, in Lippmann’s estimation,
demands "intelligence work." Almost
identical to Plato’s solution in the Republic,
Lippmann grants access only to the sagacious few, the experts, in what Dewey
characterizes as "the revival of the Platonic notion that philosophers should
be kings . . . [wherein] the idea of experts is substituted for that of
philosophers."[35] If only the privileged few have access to
the eternally fixed forms, true Being
or confirmed knowledge, then these same few will be granted the exclusive
rights to the instrumentalities or means to govern; the citizens then become
subjects, and the Greek ideal of demo-kratia or rule of the people
becomes a utopian fantasy. Epistemology defeats democracy.
Not only does
Dewey disagree that the masses would willingly bequeath the ruling power to
experts, he also rejects the classical epistemological framework that Lippmann
uncritically inherits from Plato.[36] Organisms do not passively intellectualize
the appearances of their environment for the sake of discovering hidden
objects; instead, they actively interact with it.[37] As dynamic inquirers and problem-solvers,
Dewey’s citizens are more faithfully compared with scientists or artists than
with spectators.[38] If the root conditions of problems in a
democratic society, such as poverty and ignorance, are disregarded, and only
their symptoms dealt with, then Lippmann’s elitist solution becomes a natural
choice; for the expert qua decision-maker is always an
improvement over the average citizen, impoverished and obtuse, qua
decision-maker. However, if problematic
conditions become subject matter for inquiry and elites treat citizens as
having the capacity to develop intelligent habits for inquiry, then the reality
of a self-governing public is, at least potentially, an achievable goal. Rather than bend to deceptive stereotypes, a
community of educated inquirers—leaders, experts and average citizens working
together—can transform their environment in the expectation that it will, in
time, come nearer to fulfilling a communally shared ideal.[39]
Lippmann’s opponents in the debate
also receive critical treatment from Dewey.
Dewey indirectly criticizes the Progressives for failing to appreciate
the significance of non-majoritarian methods, such as debate and discussion.[40]
Despite the Progressives’ push for legislative experimentation, they ignored
the educative and community-building effects of the activity that precedes
majority decision-making: namely, deliberation.[41] If reformers remove barriers to free
inquiry, discussion and debate, Dewey suggests that they will foster more than
an increase in the quantity of citizen deliberation; he also foresees a
corresponding increase in the quality of deliberation.[42] Practice at deliberating about public
issues educates average citizens; more deliberation improves their capacities
for clear judgment and intelligent inquiry; it allows them to express
enlightened voting preferences; and, most importantly, it empowers them to take
part in political debates and contests as informed participants.[43] In other words, more deliberation engenders
better deliberation. Once the
Progressive reformer realizes this, he can then substitute a more optimistic
vision for Lippmann’s: elections conceived, not as sublimated battles, but as
opportunities to improve civic judgment and to build a stronger deliberative
community. In sum, acknowledging the
value of deliberation rewards the Progressive democrat two-fold: one, it
ameliorates his scepticism about the citizen’s capacity to make sound
judgments; and, two, it reinforces his faith in majoritarian methods.
To resolve the
conflict between the elitist position, defended by Lippmann, and the
majoritarian position, held by Progressives such as Hand, Dewey does more than
simply cite their respective advantages and disadvantages.[44] Dewey proposes a hybrid concept that helps
the disputants on either side of the debate imagine their respective ideals
realized in practice and harmony with each other. In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey introduces the concept of public-spiritedness with the shoe
analogy:
The man who wears
the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the
expert shoemaker
is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied. Popular
government has at
least created public spirit even if its success in informing that spirit has
not been great.[45]
According to this
analogy, not only does self-government begin with citizens, who know the
problems of their environment best, but it also extends to leaders and experts.[46] Thus, citizens consult experts and experts
consult citizens, thereby avoiding the tyranny of either and promoting the
associated activity of both.[47] This reciprocal relationship between
citizens and experts fits with our lived experience of democratic
transformation. For instance, social
reforms that make the government more representative and stimulate citizen
deliberation tend to generate the instrumentalities to manage this change; that
is, they result in the growth of expert bureaucracies that, in the spirit of
public service, should, and in the best scenarios do, consult with citizens.[48] Therefore, Dewey’s concept of public-spiritedness harmonizes the
majoritarian commitment to populist change and the elitist commitment to
intelligently institutionalize the mechanisms of change.[49]
Dewey’s arguments
in favour of public-spiritedness as a
mediating concept between majoritarianism and elitism do not constitute what
Lippmann derisively calls the "sophistry that the public and all its
individuals composing it are of one mind, one soul, one purpose."[50] Nor does public-spiritedness
represent any single entity or set of institutions. Instead, like democracy itself, it is a
lived experience, one guided by a regulative ideal, but for which all concrete
manifestations—the voting booth, the public meeting hall, the state or national
legislature—are only temporary means for the satisfaction of intermediate ends.[51] In The
Public and Its Problems, Dewey effectively harmonizes two conflicting
positions, the elitism of Walter Lippmann and the majoritarianism of American
Progressives, for the sake of showing that, in practice, the ideal of open and
fluid deliberation in a democracy can motivate intelligent inquiry and empower
citizens to restructure their institutions as they see fit.[52]
3.
The
reinterpretation of the Dewey-Lippmann debate that I have urged here is also
consistent with this ideal. It aims to
demonstrate that by reconsidering accepted interpretations and reconstructing
new ones—both as individuals and as a community—we might engender a better
understanding and use of "methods and conditions of debate, discussion and
persuasion."[53] In The
Public and Its Problems, Dewey stresses the intimate connection between
human spirit and community; in the book’s closing remarks, he declares that,
"the human spirit will return to seek calm and order within itself. This, we repeat, can be found only in the
vital, steady, and deep relationships which are present only in an immediate
community."[54]
As a melange of
majoritarianism and elitism, public-spiritedness
is a hybrid concept that begs for its own development and application in a
concrete conception—that is, in a model of how public-spirited deliberation
ought to manifest itself in an actual democratic community. Members of such a community discuss,
debate and collectively decide how to interpret the notions of democracy,
community and public-spiritedness in
their best possible light, that is, as best suits their community’s values and
interests. [55] Hence, when they seek to restructure their
shared institutions, they do so in accordance with these interpretive
conceptions. Rather than a one-time
event, deliberation about the best conceptions of democracy, community and public-spiritedness is an on-going
process; in other words, one conception, or set of conceptions, replaces
another as the ideals and projects of the community change.
As part of that
process, theorists of deliberative democracy continue to make critical and
constructive contributions, arguing for and against models of public-spirited
deliberation in a democratic community.[56] Yet the final test of all these
contributions is both a practical and a pragmatic one, particularly, how well
they play out in the social experiments of deliberative communities and in the
lived experience of actual democratic citizens. Therefore, in addition to
successfully mediating the debate between Lippmann and American Progressives committed
to the majoritarian creed, Dewey’s concept of public-spiritedness anticipates the contemporary notion of
deliberative democracy.
[2] Robert
Westbrook, for instance, thinks that Lippmann won the debate. See "Doing Dewey:
An Autobiographical Fragment," Transactions
of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol.
29, no. 4 (Fall 1993): 493-511, 505-6. Id, John
Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1991), pp. 306-318. Michael Eldridge favours Dewey as the
debate’s victor. See "Dewey’s Faith in
Democracy as Shared Experience," Transactions
of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 32, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 11-30,
16-17. Raymond Boisvert joins him. See Rethinking
Our Time (New York: State University of New York, 1998), pp. 75-77.
[3] R. Westbrook, "Doing
Dewey: An Autobiographical Fragment," p. 505.
[4] M. Eldridge,
"Dewey’s Faith in Democracy as Shared Experience," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 32, no. 1
(Winter 1996): 11-30, 16-17. R.
Boisvert, Rethinking Our Time, pp.
75-77.
[5] They do not
favour majoritarian decision procedures because majorities are morally right in
virtue of their numerical might.
[6] However,
claiming that the democrat’s scepticism is a prima facie reason in favour of discarding his faith in
majoritarian methods would commit the fallacy of composition, that is, since
the democrat doubts every citizen’s capacity for sound judgment, then he must
doubt the collective capacity of the electorate to express informed political
preferences. This is not necessarily the case. Therefore, the democrat’s doubt
only risks undermining his faith.
[7] The halcyon days
of American Progressivism took place from 1912 to the mid-20s. The Party had
been graced with an inspired leadership—including Teddy Roosevelt and Robert
LaFollette—but as enthusiasm for their causes dried up, so did their election
victories. Moreover, Progressive
political candidates pushed innovative domestic reforms—such as child-labour,
minimum wage and eight-hour workday legislation—but, due to a turn of historical
events, their platform met with an increasingly dour reception. Unfortunately,
with the advent of the First World War, public interest had shifted from
domestic to foreign affairs. John Chamberlain, Farewell to Reform: The Rise, Life and Decay of the Progressive Mind in
America, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Quandrangle Books, 1965), pp. 32-35.
[8] Ibid., pp.
45-51. Peter Levine states that, "practically all self-described progressives
shared at least one commitment. They
believed that there was a "national interest" or "public good," superior to
special interests and market outcomes. The
New Progressive Era: Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy (New York and
Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. 18.
[9] An obvious line
of objection to my reconstruction of the debate is that Dewey, too, retained
card-carrying status in the Party, shared many Progressive political views and
could therefore be situated among the class of Lippmann’s opponents, as I have
defined it. However, this objection
overlooks the specificity of the class that I have identified. Although Dewey belonged to the Progressive
Party and fought for several of its causes, he definitely did not count himself
among the subset of Progressives—particularly, those committed to the
majoritarian creed—that I have pinpointed as disputants in the debate. This point will become clearer in section
two. See pp. 13-14.
[10] Whereas
traditional democratic theory, inspired by Aristotle, assumes that citizens are
"omnicompetent," and thus equipped by "natural endowment" for self-government,
the actual practice of democracy, Lippmann argues, proves otherwise. The amount
of accurate knowledge that any one person can accumulate about the modern world
is, in point of fact, extremely limited.
So, while majoritarian methods might prove effective at measuring
citizens’ preferences, those preferences, left to develop on their own, reflect
a coloured, and even unintelligible, record of the political landscape. Ibid., p. 379.
[11] In a revealing
passage, he critically assesses the average voter’s time and capacity for
informed judgement: "Of those who can both read and understand, a good
three-quarters we may assume have some part of half an hour a day to spare for
the subject. To them the words so acquired [by listening to the rhetoric of
their leaders] are the cue for a whole train of ideas on which ultimately a
vote of untold consequences may be based.
Necessarily the ideas which we allow the words we read to evoke form the
biggest part of the original data of our opinions." W. Lippmann, Public Opinion, p. 68.
[12] Ibid., p. 79.
[13] Overcoming these
limiting environmental factors demands what Lippmann calls "intelligence work."
To provide the factual knowledge necessary for leaders to make informed
decisions, a working democracy requires an enormous bureaucracy of intelligence
divisions, supporting the various agencies of government and staffed by social
scientists. Ibid., p. 383.
[14] He is always the
outsider and spectator because he "has neither time, nor attention, nor interest,
nor the equipment for specific judgment." Id., Public Opinion, p. 400.
[15] While the
expression "manufacture of consent" has since become popularized by Naom
Chomsky, it was originally coined by Lippmann in his essay, "Journalism and the
Higher Law," (1919) re-printed in Liberty
and the News (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1995), p. 8. W. Lippmann, Public Opinion, pp. 132-3.
[16] Thus, in Public Opinion, Lippmann concludes, "it
is on the men inside, working under conditions that are sound, that the daily
administrations of society must rest." Ibid.
[17] Moreover, its
claimed members lack a privileged epistemology—such as the scientific method or
a common will—with which to liberate themselves from the chains of their
pseudo-environment. Id., The Phantom
Public, pp. 162-163. At regular intervals, citizens of a democracy
intervene to select the Outs, or elites outside of political office, who should
be the Ins, or elites in power, to reconfirm the Ins and, in rare cases, sound
the alarm when elites break the rules and seek to advance their own interests.
Ibid., pp. 126-129.
[18] Ibid., p. 59.
Implied in Lippmann’s analysis is the claim that the less conflict and the more
consensus among elites, the safer the public interest. In other words, the consolidation of elite
power is a favourable outcome.
Lippmann’s position is opposite of what contemporary political
scientists call "social pluralism." According to this theory, conflict among
elites is necessary to prevent the centralization of elite power that would
otherwise lead to state corruption, abuses of official authority and harm to
the public interest. For example, the
pluralist might ask the question: with the arrival of a high degree of
consensus among elites, what force, besides the opinion of the impotent masses
(which can be easily manipulated by propaganda), ensures the accountability of
the consolidated elite to the public interest?
Karl Mannheim, for instance, thought that a ‘free-floating’ intellectual
class was necessary to check the excesses of powerful elites. Ideology
and Utopia, trans. by L. Wirth
and E. Shils (New York: Harcourt, 1954), pp. 140-144. Lippmann, however, supplies no answer.
[19] Lippmann is
often referred to as the forefather of
"democratic elitism," namely, the theory that the masses are incompetent
and either easily controlled or dangerous if left to their own devices, such
that elites are necessary to safeguard the public interest. See Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Washington DC: University
Press of America, 1980).
[20] Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1980), pp. 26-28.
[21] In their
correspondence, Hand sympathized with Lippmann’s concern in Public Opinion that environmental and
psychological demands placed on the public severely undermine the process of
popular deliberation. Gerald Gunther, Learned
Hand: The Man and the Judge (New York: Knopf, 1994), pp. 383-384.
[22] Ibid., p. 385.
[23] Hand states, "
Words are not only the keys of persuasion, but the triggers of action, and
those which have no purport but to counsel the violation of law cannot by any
latitude of interpretation be a part of the public opinion which is the final
source of government in a democratic state." Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten, 244 Fed. 535 (S.D.N.Y.1917). See Vincent Blasi, "Learned Hand and
the Self-government Theory of the First Amendment: Masses Publishing Co. v.
Patten," University of Colorado Law
Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (1989): 1-37.
[24] Learned Hand, The Bill of Rights (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1958), p. 73.
[25] In a footnote,
Dewey tells of his debt to Lippmann, stating that "To this [The Phantom Public] as well as his Public Opinion, I acknowledge my
indebtedness, not only to this particular point, but for ideas involved in my
entire discussion even when it reaches conclusions diverging from his." J.
Dewey, PI P, pp. 116-117, ftn 1. It would clearly be mistaken to characterize
Dewey’s reviews of Lippmann’s two books as the first engagement and Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems as the final
battle in their debate over the role of citizens in a democracy. Upon reading the two reviews, one is
immediately struck not only with the level of civility—which was typical of
Dewey in evaluating other authors’ work—but with the high praise that the
reviewer lavishes on both of Lippmann’s works.
Calling Public Opinion "the
most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived ever penned" and The Phantom Public a "contribution
[that] is constructive" fails to suggest a real controversy between Dewey and
Lippmann.[25] In The
Public and Its Problems, it is likewise the case that Dewey does not
immediately militate against Lippmann’s position, but agrees with many of his
assessments.
[26] A. Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American
Liberalism (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1995), p. 217.
[27] William Caspary
also understands Dewey, generally, as acting in the role of mediator in the
inevitable conflicts that arise in political theory and practice. See Dewey
on Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).
[28] J. Dewey, PIP, pp. 94-95, 157-158.
[29] Indeed, Dewey’s
prognosis that the "public is in eclipse" stems from observations, not far from
Lippmann’s, that officials "employ their panoply [of power] to advance private
and class interests" and citizens eschew sound judgment and gravitate easily
towards charismatic leaders. Ibid., pp. 61, 79, 81.
[30] Ibid., p. 169.
[31] Ibid., p. 108.
[32] Ibid, p. 32.
[33] Ibid., pp.
15-16, 33, 82. In their groundbreaking work on deliberative democracy, Amy
Gutman and Dennis Thompson define majoritarianism as the "most straightforward
form of popular rule [in which] . . . members of a sovereign society agree to
be governed by the will of the majority or their accountable
representatives. The decision of a
majority at any particular time is provisional, since it may always be revised
by subsequent majorities." Democracy and
Disagreement (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press, 1996), p. 27.
[34] R. Boisvert, Rethinking Our Time, pp. 35-36.
[35] J. Dewey, PIP, p. 205.
[36] Ibid., p. 206.
[37] First, they
inquire in response to some doubt or uncertainty, thereby uncovering what Dewey
describes as a "problematic situation"; second, they develop hypotheses and
experiment on the situation’s subject, not object, matter; and, third, they
resolve the problem and effectively transform the situation. Id., Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York:
Henry Holt, 1939), p. 55-65. Boisvert summarizes the characteristics of inquiry
as follows:
"1. Doubt,
uncertainty and puzzlement are not merely "subjective." It is situations
themselves that are problematic, or questionable.
2. Inquiries
involve a somatic intelligence in operation, that is to say, manipulation, some
form of doing on the part of inquirers.
3. The procedures
of inquiry are anti-reductionistic.
4. Responsibility
is a human accompaniment of inquiry."
Rethinking Our Time, p.
39.
[38] Id., PIP, pp. 183-184, 217-218. Id.,
"Practical Democracy: The Phantom Public
by Walter Lippmann," LW, vol. 2, p.
219-220.
[40] Although Dewey
does not explicitly refer to "Progressives" or "Progressives embracing the
majoritarian creed" in the passages I cite to support my position, the
reference is implicit and would be understood by most mature Americans who had
lived through the halcyon years of American Progressivism and witnessed its
recent decline. According to
Dewey, "counting of heads compels prior
recourse to methods of discussion, consultation and persuasion . . . Majority rule, just as majority rule, is as
foolish as its critics charge it with being.
But it never is merely majority rule . . . [it is also] antecedent
debates, modification of views to meet the opinions of minorities, the relative
satisfaction given the latter by the fact that it has had a chance and that
next time it may be successful in becoming a majority." Ibid., pp. 207-208.
[41]As Dewey reminds
them, "associated or joint activity is a condition of the creation of a
community," and the members of that community "demand communication as a
prerequisite." Ibid., pp. 151-152.
[42]With
communication impeded by censorship, bias and distorting propaganda, reformers
"have no way of telling how apt for judgment of social policies the existing
intelligence of the masses will be." Ibid., p. 209.
[43] Recognizing
itself as a public is the "primary problem of the public" and success in doing
so will end what Dewey calls the present "eclipse of the public." Ibid., p. 77, 217-218. Ronald Dworkin likewise recognizes the
citizen’s "two main roles in a mature democracy" as "judges of political
contests" and "participants in the political contests they judge." "Free
Speech, Politics, and the Dimensions of Democracy" in Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 358.
[44] Treating
majoritarianism and elitism as pure and antithetical concepts has the
undesirable effect of perpetuating, rather than resolving, their differences,
like so many other dualisms rife in philosophy. On Dewey’s opposition to the
traditional philosophical dualisms, see Experience
and Nature (New York: Dover, 1958), pp. 56-58, 241-244, 393.
[45] Ibid., p. 207.
[46] Together they
share in the common enterprise of intelligent inquiry, "consultation and
discussion which uncover social needs and troubles." Otherwise, if the
enterprise is entirely sequestered by bureaus of social scientists, the
"specialized class" of experts that results will become insulated from the
public interest and thus "shut off from knowledge of the needs which they are
supposed to serve." Ibid., p. 206.
[47] As Dewey clearly
affirms, the average citizen does not require the "knowledge and skill to carry
on the needed investigation." Ibid., 209.
Instead, he must, at the very least, possess "the ability to judge of
the bearing of the knowledge supplied by others upon common concerns." Ibid.
[48] Peter Levine
uses the example of Governor Francis E. McGovern’s election victory in
Wisconsin, which led to an administration that pushed widespread social reform
and, as Teddy Roosevelt described it, "wise experimental legislation aiming to
secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole." However, in the end, the executive
bureaucracy became so complex and unwieldy that it became the impetus for
trenchant criticism by the conservative Republican candidate, and eventual
victor, Emanuel Phillipp, running against McGovern in the 1914 gubernatorial election.
The New Progressive Era, p. 25.
[49] For a critique
of the ability of Dewey’s notion of inquiry-driven democracy or "epistemic
democracy" to bridge to the actual conditions of democracy, including the
limitations of human nature and the complexity of institutions, or "political
democracy," see Richard Posner’s Law, Pragmatism and Democracy (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2003).
[50] W. Lippmann, The Phantom Public, p. 160. J. Dewey, PI P, p. 71. What public-spiritedness is not is a
transcendent, a’priori or religious
concept. Although the term "spirit"
carries its own sectarian baggage, Dewey made every effort to divest it of that
burden. J. Dewey, Experience and Nature, p. 415. Dewey naturalizes it when he states that, "Spirit quickens; it is
not only alive but spirit gives life.
Animals are spirited, but man is a living spirit." Ibid., p. 294. In the same passage, Dewey expressed some doubt that "spirit" can
be entirely saved from its religious or supernatural baggage.
[51] By joining
"spirit" with "public," the new symbol, "public spirit," signifies a whole new
set of meanings. Since "man is living
spirit," these meanings are naturalized, that is, their sense is disclosed
through lived experience. Ibid.
Therefore, the concept of public-spiritedness
is not understood, nor does it exist, prior to experience. A
posteriori, it attaches to a whole range of human experiences, from
engaging in "face-to-face intercourse" with one’s fellow citizens to
criticizing existing institutions, from learning the rights and duties of
citizenship to fully participating in communal life. Id., PI P, pp. 211, 213. For Dewey, democracy is not a discrete set of
institutions, but is instead a kind of communally lived experience, what Dewey
later in his career calls "democracy as a way of life." Id. "Creative
Democracy—The Task Before Us." In J.A. Boydston and K.E. Paulos (eds.) LW, vol. 14, pp. 224-230. Originally
appeared in John Dewey and the Promise of
America, Progressive Education Booklet, no. 14 (Columbus, OH: American Education Press,
1939): 12-17.
[52] "Reconstruction
is a periodic need of life. It
represents, in history, the conflict between ideas and the institutions that
embody those ideas." J. Dewey, The Study
of Ethics: Early Essays In J.A. Boydston and K.E. Paulos (eds.) Early Works of John Dewey, vol. 4
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1963), p. 97.
[53] J. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, p. 28. "In the question of methods concerned with
reconstruction of special situation rather than in any refinements in the
general concepts of institutions . . . lies the true impact of philosophical
reconstruction." Reconstruction in
Philosophy In MW, vol. 12, p.
190.
[54] PIP, p. 214.
[55] Dewey eloquently
declared that, "Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a
life of free and enriching communion.
It had its seer in Walt Whitman.
It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly
wedded to the art of full and moving communication." Ibid., p. 184. Dewey was also aware of the limitations
immanent in such an ideal, stating that "there is no magic in democracy to
confer immediately the power of critical discrimination upon the masses . . ." LW, vol. 5, p. 54.
[56] See P. Levine, The
New Progressive Era: Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy. Amy Gutmann
and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement. Judith M. Green, Deep Democracy:
Community, Diversity and Transformation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1999). Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, W. Rehg,
trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).