progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
simply did not exist before the deregulated services were offered, just as the person who
took up ballet to improve posture could not know beforehand that the pleasure of ballet
would become an end in itself."
4.3.2 Socialist, Communist and Anarchist
What were Dewey's political views and how did they influence his writings? There is a
great deal of room here to seek the true man. At one end he involved himself in many
Progressive movements, he was a man involved and one who put himself on the front
lines. On the other hand when he came to specifics such as socialism, he was at times
vague and despite his volumes of words he leaves room for speculation. As for his
communist side, Columbia was the hub for American Communism through most of the
20th century and it would have been near impossible to avoid it. His participation in the
Stalin ordered trial of Trotsky is but one example of the nexus. However he was never a
public member of the Party. We examine here some of his politic bents.
Westbrook writes:
"By the end of the twenties John Dewey would admit, if pressed, that he was a socialist,
for he was convinced that democracy required an end to private control of the
commanding heights of the means of production. But he remained cool to much of the
theory and practice that laid claim to the ideological label, even in the midst of the Great
Depression. He avoided the word "socialism" if he could and when he could not he was
careful to discriminate between his own peculiar socialist vision and the one identified
with the common usage…" 71
Thus it is fair to state that at heart Dewey was a socialist, a socialist if we use the term as
one who sees the means of production controlled in some strong manner by the state. At
one extreme we have the Progressives who view that control via laws and regulation and
the Debsian socialists via direct state ownership and control. Dewey had gone beyond the
extreme of the Progressives as Westbrook states.
4.3.3 Anti Catholic Position
Dewey was a rabid anti-Catholic. It is not at all clear why, he was an atheist but that did
not make him an anti Semite, or one vehemently opposed to other religions. Yet he had
what appears to be a lifelong anti Catholic bent which while at Columbia became
intensified into an almost outright war. It can be argued that this was also one of the
seminal reasons for the evolving anti Catholicism that permeated Columbia through the
20th century. The university had an almost universal revulsion to Catholics and went out
of its way to deny them entrance.
71 Westbrook p. 429.
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