In these ways of aggregate activity the community, in its strict sense, is not a conscious partner, and over them it has no direct control.
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.
gutenberg.org
The need of some control over them was the chief agency in making the government of these states democratic or popular in the current sense of these words.
The new conditions involved a release of human potentialities previously dormant.
Only gradually did the effect upon them become apparent; by that time they had attained enough power--were sufficiently important factors in the new economic régime--to obtain political emancipation, and thus figure in the forms of the…
Meanwhile the liberating effect was markedly conspicuous with respect to the members of the “middle-class,” the manufacturing and mercantile class.
It would be short-sighted to limit the release of powers to opportunities to procure wealth and enjoy its fruits, although the creation of material wants and ability to satisfy them are not to be lightly passed over.
Initiative, inventiveness, foresight and planning were also stimulated and confirmed.
The result was formulated as the discovery of the individual.
Individualism” was a doctrine which stated what was focal in thought and purpose.
In the release of new powers singular persons were emancipated from a mass of old habits, regulations and institutions.
We have already noted how the methods of production and exchange made possible by the new technology were hampered by the rules and customs of the prior régime.
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.