Customer Reviews

Public & Its Problems

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Derived from a series of lectures Dewey gave in 1927, The Public and Its Problems touches on virtually all the major political philosophy questions of our day. One marvels at its continued relevance into the 21st Century. Dewey, arguably the United States' greatest thinker, does an amazing job in sifting through the problems contemporary society faces when forming a polity.

The point Public and Its Problems brings up on more than one occasion is the need for political and social policy to incorporate the scientific method of testing and retesting to generate better results. Dewey refers to this as an experimental social method and surely felt corporate capitalism had used up its testing time and that a new socio-economic system should be tried. Public and Its Problems talks about how policies and theories need to be constantly in flux and not rigidly adhered. The social sciences would then work to investigate and interpret the results of the testing process.

One portion of the book gives a fascinating look at a puzzling quandary Dewey proffers: that being the contradiction of the French and American revolutions having a philosophy of individualism while being massive collective efforts. This section makes for some complicated reading but it's enthralling nonetheless because it touches on a fundamental political and philosophical question. It's in this chapter of the book where he goes on to pose one of the more audacious and profound points of political thought: the essential fallacy of the democratic creed being that it assumes free human beings can rule themselves. (He obviously does say democracy is a good thing given that it threw off a restrictive cloak.) Dewey goes on to elaborate on the point indicating that what's critically necessary is an improvement to the methods and conditions of debate and discussion. Public and Its Problems goes on to ostensibly say it's the corporate capitalist press that controls policy conduct by controlling public opinion. A most astute observation. Of course this opinion is of a public that hasn't found itself, Dewey asserts. He writes "the modern economic regime control present politics much as dynastic interests controlled those of two centuries ago. They effect thinking and desire." Here he touches on false consciousness and monopolistic control over our culture and institutions and the insidious way they thwart the public from finding itself and rallying for its concerns.

Most importantly, Public and Its Problems contends that the majority populace can indeed make wise decisions regarding our present day technocratic culture; the key is that they must have access to unbiased sources without a vested interest (commercial profit) in the issue. Only with a relatively independent conduit of information can the masses make informed decisions on complex subjects. Clearly Dewey would be quite dismayed to see the state of the mass media today, being wholly owned and controlled by big corporate conglomerates. He would no doubt find it nearly impossible for a public to make intelligent decisions when pseudo-fascists like Michael Savage, Joe Scarborough, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Robertson, Laura Ingram, Rusty Humphries, Michael Reagan, G. Gordon Liddy, Ann Coulter (the proud daughter of a union buster), Mike Gallagher, Bob Grant and William Kristol; along with myriad centrist status quo apologists, set the agenda. In one paragraph of the book Dewey showed incredible foresight by remarking that society "seems to be approaching a state of government by hired promoters of opinion called publicity agents." With current political discourse being dictated by PR firms it's obvious he was right on the mark eighty years ago when he made the prediction.

Dewey comes back to an important question routinely throughout, that being what are the conditions that make the transformation possible for the "Great Society" to change into the "Great Community"? The Public and Its Problems does much to stimulate thought on this vital issue that still plagues contemporary society, especially in the United States when the state was able to wage a war on Iraq when virtually ninety percent of the world was against it!

Dewey's book serves as a tremendous introduction to history's greatest pragmatic philosopher.

Dewey's work here is hard to place: it is certainly not liberal, it is not quite progressive nor is it really socialist, it is something entirely different. This is a book that might take many readings to unearth its meaning, but is entirely worth it for everyone from historians to political scientists to citizens alike. Dewey's argument focuses most closely on where to locate the public, how to create communication, and in turn, community, and how to reinvigorate democracy through true reform. This book is so enjoyable because Dewey is addressing many of the same problems we face today.

His prose is thick, and it might seem slightly ambiguous and vague until the second reading (it surely did for me). Ultimately I thought it was well worth the time I put into it.

Dewey, in response to Lippmann (phantom public), gives a diagnosis of what is wrong with today's fading public participation and incentive to act in politics. I do not rate this book five stars only because he gives a vague description of exactly how these conditions to upturn public voice can be met. Overall it is an excellent book for those interested in modern public issues.

Reading this book reminded me why I'm not a poli-sci or sociology major. It's not that there was anything awful about the book, it's just not my 'cup o tea' as it were.

The book is actually a collection of thoughtful and insightful lectures-turned-essays contemplating the form of democracy and what truly constitutes a "public", a "society", a "community" and what government's involvement should be in all these.

For me, the writing had some great nuggets scattered throughout but unfortunately I found myself bogged down by writing that felt otherwise tedious. Dewey is obviously very smart and full of great ideas. Too often for my taste, this resulted in (what I felt) lengthy passages where he took a ton of effort to try and expound on a single thought without getting to a clear point until wandering around the subject for 5 or 6 pages.

Again, my distaste is mainly due to not having any real deep interest in the subject (which is part of what he exposes as one of the problems of a public...that there are far too many things out there such that a person can't truly be educated or even interested in everything). I found my eyes growing heavy many times and had to put the book down at risk of falling asleep.

Still, as I persevered an applied heavy concentration, I found myself enjoying and agreeing with many of his premises.

I really appreciated his assertion on the importance of consequences and how it is the consequences of a thing that brings people together. Where a lot of the problems come about is that there are far too many distractions out there such that an individual, or even a collective "public" can't focus on all of the necessary consequences. As a result, even in a "democracy", there are only a handful of individuals sufficiently knowledgeable to properly react to the stimuli around us and predict the consequences to the extent that they can ensure a promising future.

Along with the 'uneducated' implication of having all these stimuli, we also have a problem in that everyone is being pulled in so many disparate directions that we've lost any real sense of community. There are "too many publics" out there. We can't have a solid national or global community because everything is truly a microcosm of each of our individual interests, needs and desires. Any "community" we have is generally very small based on a handful of common interests with others and a single person may be a member of multiple "publics" or "communities", sometimes even at odds with one another.

Until society can find some way to use its collective knowledge and advances in technology and communication, we can never truly have a "Great Community" in the sense of a solid national or global community all united and on the same page.

What was very intriguing to me is that this book was written 80 years ago and many of the anecdotes he uses could be used today without changing any of the language. If anything, in the past 80 years, I would suggest that the world has gained even more "publics" and an even more disparate society that continues to lack in a great sense of "community." At the same time, some technologies such as the various social networking sites, tweeting, and the blogosphere are helping to create a sense of community. But this isn't the type of community Dewey would have preferred as he was a proponent of truly getting to know the individual...and when we're veiled behind the mask of the Internet and technology, we lose something.

***
2.5 stars (though I can definitely recommend this higher to a follower of poli-sci or sociology)

It was a good treatise yet after reading this, I wonder what it was that i just read. The book will be remembered for its isolated ingenius points rather than a book as a whole. I read this for a class.

It was a good treatise yet after reading this, I wonder what it was that i just read. The book will be remembered for its isolated ingenius points rather than a book as a whole. I read this for a class.