But this recognition cannot be legitimately converted into the monopolistic absorption of all associations into The State, nor of all social values into political value.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
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A beneficent law, like a condition of general economic prosperity, may favorably affect all interests in a particular region, but it cannot be called a whole of which the elements influenced are parts.
For state activity is often injurious to the latter.
One of the chief occupations of states has been the waging of war and the suppression of dissentient minorities.
Moreover, their action, even when benign, presupposes values due to non-political forms of living together which are but extended and reënforced by the public through its agents.
Our doctrine of plural forms is a statement of a fact: that there exist a plurality of social groupings, good, bad and indifferent.
It is not a doctrine which prescribes inherent limits to state action.
At times, the consequences of the conjoint behavior of some persons may be such that a large public interest is generated which can be fulfilled only by laying down conditions which involve a large measure of reconstruction within that…
There is no more an inherent sanctity in a church, trade-union, business corporation, or family institution than there is in the state.
The consequences vary with concrete conditions; hence at one time and place a large measure of state activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence and laissez-faire.
Just as publics and states vary with conditions of time and place, so do the concrete functions which should be carried on by states.
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.