The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses.
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
And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs.
No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few.
The important consideration is that opportunity be given that idea to spread and to become the possession of the multitude.
It is true that all valuable as well as new ideas begin with minorities, perhaps a minority of one.
Think of the meaning of the “problem of minorities” in certain European states, and compare it with the status of minorities in countries having popular government.
But what is more significant is that counting of heads compels prior recourse to methods of discussion, consultation and persuasion, while the essence of appeal to force is to cut short resort to such methods.
The ballot is, as often said, a substitute for bullets.
A class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in social matters is not knowledge at all.
Popular government has at least created public spirit even if its success in informing that spirit has not been great.
The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied.
It forces a recognition that there are common interests, even though the recognition of what they are is confused; and the need it enforces of discussion and publicity brings about some clarification of what they are.