John Dewey

There is little that can be called industry and still less that constitutes a store of wealth until tools exist, and tools are the results of slow processes of transmission.

The development of tools into machines, the characteristic of the industrial age, was made possible only by taking advantage of science socially accumulated and transmitted.

The technique of employing tools and machines was equally something which had to be learned; it was no natural endowment but something acquired by observing others, by instruction and communication.

For because of the phenomenon of helpless infancy even such a primitive régime depends upon the assistance of associated action, including that most valuable form of assistance: learning from others.

What would even savage industry be without the use of fire, of weapons, of woven articles, all of which involve communication and tradition?

The industrial régime which the authors of “natural” economy contemplated presupposed wants, tools, materials, purposes, techniques and abilities in a thousand ways dependent upon associated behavior.

Thus in the sense in which the authors of the doctrine employed the word “artificial,” these things were intensely and cumulatively artificial.

The outcome of the acts of those who were engaged in forwarding the new industry and commerce was a new set of customs and institutions.

The latter were as much extensive and enduring conjoint modes of life as were those which they displaced; more so in their sweep and force.

The bearing of this fact upon political theory and practice is evident.

Not only were the wants and intentions which actually operated functions of associated life, but they re-determined the forms and temper of this life.

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.