Such a change sometimes occurs, but when it does, it is because the social conditions, in generating a new public, have prepared the way for it; the state sets a formal seal upon forces already in operation by giving them a defined channel through which to act.
Dewey discusses how social conditions must evolve before political changes can be effective.
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For the very familiarity with the phenomena conceals their significance and blinds us to their relation to immediate political problems.
The invasion of the community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life.
But it indicates where the problem resides, whatever guise it assumes.
Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations.