In trying to extend the discussion of the difference between Progressive and Liberal world hypotheses (using Pepper's general term if not his specific definitions) I would like to concentrate on two conflicts. The first conflict is between John Dewey and Walter Lippman which was actually an ongoing argument between those who believe in participatory democracy and those who believe in representative democracy. The second conflict was between Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr and the part that secular humanism would play in the Progressive movement. Addams and Starr were best friends who started the Settlement House movement together in the United States with Hull House and how the decisions that were made during that time continue to resonate today in the relationship between Progressivism and religion and Progressivism and the Labor movement. I am in the process of doing some research on the relationship between these two women so any information anybody has about the two of them would be greatly appreciated. .
Participatory democracy vs. representative democracy
John Dewey believed the key to a Progressive, Pragmatic society where inquiry was king was a society where people were educated in the style of participatory democracy (as a matter of fact Dewey used the very advent of participatory democracy as one of the pieces of evidence that human society was indeed progressing). Dewey believed this education can and should be done by the government, because it was the role of the government to improve society. (There is a very interesting diary up right now on libertarianism, although it will probably we long gone by the time I write this. Gilas Girl talks about how the extreme individualism of libertarianism gives her the willies. In one of the comments Jay Elias states that libertarians do not believe government is necessary to take care of problems and lists a number of organizations. One of the points Dewey was trying to stress, and this becomes much more apparent in his arguments with Lippman, is that governments do not take care of people, people form and take care of governments to serve their needs. Governments are a collective problem solving body that people create because it is easier for humans to meet challenges together rather than as individuals. Any organization can become a government in terms of the particular problem. There is true danger when people forget this and believe that government exists as some separate, ongoing entity that is invested by the people to take action as that separate entity based on what it believes (or claims) is for the good of the people. Libertarians accept the second part of the equation, that there is danger in government as a separate entity that comes in and makes decisions for people, but they have more trouble with the first part of the equation, which is that governments are collective problem solving organizations to meet help people deal with issues as a cooperative.)
Anyway, Dewey believed that the advent of public education, which was quite new at the time, was the perfect vehicle for this type of participatory democracy. Now Dewey has sometimes been referred to as somebody who celebrated the individual over the collective (it infuriates me when conservative like Diane Ravitch attempt to appropriate Dewey). Dewey believed in the importance of the individual, but in a very particular context. He felt that states that existed without any individual impetus quickly grew static. Individual ideas leading to collective inquiry is the mechanism of change for human beings. This is one of the reasons that Dewey's later students such as Sidney Hook became so anti-Soviet (no anti-Marx though. Dewey claimed never to have read Marx, even though Hook urged him to). But in participatory democracy to glorify the state is to loose the mechanisms of progress. What are the mechanisms of progress specifically? Dewey saw each problem human beings faced as unique. This is very much from Darwin's theory of adaptation. Because each problem is unique you don't know which person, (based on their life experience - and the concept of experience is very important here) will be best equipped to solve this problem. This means you need to set up society so that every person is more or less equal in the face of a problem, every person is willing to speak, and every person is willing to listen to any thoughtful idea. Based on the earlier discussion it is important to understand the difference between an issue and a problem. An issue is when people in a society know something is not going well. So an issue might be too many people without healthcare. A problem on the other hand is a real world, concrete way of dealing with the issue that is based on serious inquiry and can be measured in concrete terms as to its success. In a future diary I may want to discuss the role of experts which is important - suffice it to say at this point that experts are only experts on problems that came before (and only if their solutions have had concrete success), but there is no way they can be experts on the next problem we face. Therefore true experts can tell you where you are going wrong, but they cannot tell you what is the correct activity in facing this problem. That can only be done through open, democratic problem solving and experimentation.
Dewey wanted to initially establish this type of participatory/scientific approach to social problems in the classroom and then have the students take it out in to society, which is why he was so involved in educational theory at one point in his career. Later Dewey felt that society would never allow this type of education system unless society itself was educated and progressed, so he turned his attention to larger political issues (never abandoning his ideas on education). Okay, many of you are saying what does this have to do with the difference between liberalism and progressivism. Okay, here it comes, and as foreshadowed it can be seen in the conflict between Dewey and Lippman.
Lippman started The New Republic along with Herbert Croly. TNR was started as a liberal bastion. As I stated in my previous diary one of the tenets of liberalism is the idea that there is a specific road map for a better society. If there is a specific road map what you need to do, in terms of a government, is find people who are experts in reading this road map and put them in charge of society. I think it's an important tidbit that Croly came from a wealthy family (that financially backed TNR) and Lippman came from a moderately wealthy family. Progressives such as Dewey and Randolph Bourne did publish in the New Republic, for some of the same reasons liberals and progressives can be allies now. But as soon as any progressive attempted to challenge some of the core liberal ideas of TNR they were exiled. Anyway, back to Lippman. The best way to understand the difference between Lippman's liberal perspective and Dewey's progressive perspective is two books that they published. In 1925 Lippman published the book "The Phantom Public." In this book he made the argument for a representative democracy and limited information for the public. Representative democracy because there are smart individuals who can be trained in the mechanisms of government and come to understand the implications of policy - who make decisions outside of the heat of general public opinion (what de Toqueville called the tyranny of the majority). Limited information because the average citizen did not have time to really consider governing issues, and if they did they would be too emotional about it and/or too easily swayed by rhetoric. Besides, regular citizens had too much to worry about keeping food on the table and simply staying afloat. Lippman, when he moved to the Times, became sort of the dean of the Washington press corps and in many ways this became their ethos I think. It is true that the Washington press corps is liberal in the very large sense, but they are also in many ways anti-progressive. The fact that they don't report real news about government doesn't mean they're not doing their job - at least as far as their concerned. Their job is not informing the public, but making sure that the "right" people have the reins of government. Like Lippman, they see themselves as the guardians of democracy because they are the gatekeepers of the ruling elite. I don't think you can understand the Washington press corps, and their reaction to the blogs, unless you understand this mindset. And many people have this mindset in our country (and it is one of the reasons the whole cult of experts is so dangerous). It's one of the reasons incompetent incumbents are elected over and over again. The destruction of the incumbent protection racket is the destruction of the entire liberal-elite world hypothesis.
Dewey felt he needed to respond to Lippman and he did with a series of essays that became "The Public and its Problems." In this book he argued this same thesis that a glorified state, separate from the people, leads to a static society. He tried to make the argument that people understand their own issues far better than an expert in Washington. Plus, by maintaining a more or less permanent government you were severely narrowing your ability to solve problems. Also, because people thought they are natural problem solvers, inquiry would go out the window. Experts would simply make statements about issues and not only would problems never be solved, they would never be identified. While it is true that people can be swayed by rhetoric, the best way to combat this is to give people as much information as possible. People will make good decisions (not decisions that go against the best interests of their community) if they have enough information. The key is getting them that information, and getting people to listen to each other respectfully. Notice the important difference in bipartisanship. From a liberal perspective it is experts coming together and working together to read the road map better. It doesn't matter what they come up with - it must be good because these are the experts - it is them coming together and showing the country that they are united as the governing elites that is important. From a progressive perspective bipartisanship is more about process, the ability to throw everything out and start from scratch by really listening to each other in order to find the best solution. Dewey worried that a governing elite necessarily becomes insular and goes from not being to find solutions, to not being able to tell the difference between issues and problems, to not even being able to recognize issues.
Secular Humanism
The second issue to discuss in this post in the reason that secular humanism is so important to the progressive agenda, and one of the reasons that the progressive agenda does not have better strategies for the labor movement. When Jane Addams and Ellen Starr came back to the mid-West (Chicago) in the early 1890s they were determined to establish a Settlement House movement in the United States. They had, on their travels through Europe they had spent a good deal of time at Toynbee Hall in London and had impressed with the way it not only dealt with the impoverished, but brought the different strands of society together in this endeavor making society as a whole better. The middle class and the upper middle class came to Toynbee Hall to work with the poor in ways that qualitatively made their lives better. Most important this was not charity. The word Settlement has a very different meaning in England that here in the United States. In England it means helping the paupers within your community as a matter of what is expected of different members of a community. That is why Settlement Houses are supposed to be located within the community itself. When you help a person from outside of the community it can be looked at as charity that takes away the humanity of the recipient. When you help a person within your community it is looked at as a social service, providing humanity for the provider. But Settlement Houses in England and the United States were rarely government funded. That created a question of funding. Toynbee Hall had religious funding, I believe from the Church of England (I am not positive about this, if anybody else knows.)
When Jane Addams and Ellen Starr were looking to start Hull House they needed to determine a source of funding. Ellen Starr had connections within the Catholic Church (though she did not actually convert to Catholicism until later) and she believed that this was a natural funding source. Jane Addams was wary of a religious funding source. This goes back to the philosophy of Lincoln I described in the earlier diary that you provide the raw materials for, the platform for the good life, but you allow people to choose how they engage in that good life. Jane Addams seemed to believe that religious funding would put overt or covert pressure on those who came to Hull House and how they lived their lives - it was going beyond simply building a channel for progress. There was a down side to this, and some of it is speculation. Ellen Starr was also deeply involved in labor organizing and became one of the most important labor organizers in New York City later in her life. Now the only other place Jane Addams could go for support was to philanthropists, most of whom were liberals - that is they believed when they gave money it was noblisse oblige because they understood what was best for society. Understand this is not what Jane Addams felt, but she was more than willing to take their money. And this became the model for other Settlement Houses like Henry Street Settlement. Now here is the speculation. When Jane Addams took money from these philanthropists she did not have to agree with them, but she could not overtly go against them either. One of the things many of these philanthropists feared was labor organizing. The one aspect of the human condition that the Settlement House never became involved in to any great degree was labor organizing. Now don't get me wrong, people like John Dewey and Charles Beard and the muckrakers like Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair - but I have always felt that the Progressive movement has had a more ambiguous relationship with labor than the liberal movement (and that this has been detrimental for both). Anyway, one of the reasons I think this is because Jane Addams and Ellen Starr split after this, leaving the Settlement House movement and becoming, as I said, one of the most important labor organizers of the early 20th century.
Well, that's all for now. I hope this isn't too soon after the last diary to get any response.