John Dewey

There is no one, I suppose, so enamored of political action as to hold that it has never been short-sighted, foolish and harmful.

There are many more who protest that some special public activity, whether prohibition, a protective tariff or the expanded meaning given the Monroe Doctrine, is baleful to society.

Indeed every serious political dispute turns upon the question whether a given political act is socially beneficial or harmful.

Just as behavior is not anti-social or non-social because privately undertaken, it is not necessarily socially valuable because carried on in the name of the public by public agents.

The argument has not carried us far, but at least it has warned us against identifying the community and its interests with the state or the politically organized community.

And the differentiation may dispose us to look with more favor upon the proposition already advanced: namely, that the line between private and public is to be drawn on the basis of the extent and scope of the consequences of acts which…

It is our thesis that in this distinction we find the key to the nature and office of the state.

It is not without significance that etymologically “private” is defined in opposition to “official,” a private person being one deprived of public position.

It is a commonplace that legal agencies for protecting the persons and properties of members of a community, and for redressing wrongs which they suffer, did not always exist.

The recognition of this extensive and lasting embroilment and the harm wrought by it to whole families brought a public into existence.

Those indirectly affected formed a public which took steps to conserve its interests by instituting composition and other means of pacification to localize the trouble.

If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between “facts” and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussion.