Dewey, John

DEWEY, JOHN (1859-1952).

One of the most influential philosophers, educators, and social reformers in the United States, John Dewey was a member for founder of innumerable political organizations and a lifelong defender of unpopular causes. He intervened in every major social issue—from the Great Depression and the world wats to the Spanish Civil ‘War and the Moscow Trials—with a progressive viewpoint that consistently rooted social conflicts in the ‘workings of the capitalist economy.

Initially, Dewey lited with socialist ideas such as {guild socialism and nationalization of key industries.

But with the rise of totalitarianism in Germany and Russia, Deveey like so many other intellectuals, soft ened his earlier radicalism and concluded that the _most urgent task was to defend existing democratic rights, however imperfect. Yet he never went 50 f unlike his student Sidney Hook, as to enlist in the Right. As.a testament to his enduring progressivism, at the age of seventy-cight Dewey traveled to Mexico.

In 1937 to head the commission investigating the charges against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, publishing Not Guilty the same year.

‘A central figure of the philosophical school know 4 pragmatism, Dewey argued that philosophy should abandon its sterile metaphysical pursuits and apply.

Itself in a practical manner toward the amelioration ‘of socal life. While Dewey made major contributions.

In virtually every area of philosophy, he s best known for his philosophy of education, which stated that the evils of capitalism could be remedied through the proper inbuing of creativity, democratic values, and Scientific intelligence.

‘There are strong similarities between Dewey's philosophy and that of Karl Marx (whom Dewey misinterpreted as a mechanistic materialist). These include ‘common heritage in Hegel, a strong historical sense, repudiation of individualism as anathema to ‘democracy a rejection ofall dualistic categories, and 4 belief in evolution and naturalism (self-realization through interaction with nature). Such parallels have led many writers to seek a rapprochement between the two thinkers. Philosopher Sidney Hook has gone ‘So far as to argue that Deweyism is the genuine fulfillment of Marxism. But the similarities end abruptly ‘on a key point: Marx insisting on the revolutionary ‘overthrow of capitalism, and Dewey embracing prag‘matic reform and rejecting Marxism as “unscientific ‘utopianism.”

‘Trotsky, who engaged in a famous debate with Dewey on the question of means and ends in the revDlutionary process (Dewey insisting that a demoeratic result required a democratic process), saw an extreme danger in Dewey's philosophy insofar as it seduced radicals into accepting a reformist program.

At Trotsky’s urging, George Novack wrote a powerful Marxist critique of Dewey's philosophy. Novack, later to be a leading intellectual in the Socalist Workers Party, emphasized the virtues of Dewey the man and the considerable value of his philosophy over previ‘ous bourgeois philosophies, but sharply condemned pragmatism as an insidious apology for capitalism and class collaboration. It remains a contradiction of pragmatism that the experimentalism it championed ‘was not rigorously applied to the socialist experiment.

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{See also Hook, Sidney; Moscow Trials.)