They represent an effort in the first place to counteract the forces that have so largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and irrelevant factors, and in the second place an effort to counteract the tendency to employ political power to serve private instead of public ends.
Dewey describes efforts to ensure political power serves public interests.
Share
More from John Dewey
Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations.
But it indicates where the problem resides, whatever guise it assumes.
There are those who speak as if ability to choose between two tickets were a high exercise of individual freedom.
In short, private acts may be socially valuable both by indirect consequences and by direct intention.