Democracy and the Problem of Domination:A Deweyan Perspective

Chapters 16 and 17 of 1932 Ethics develop the idea of the “democratic method” as the most adequate way of approaching social problems. For Dewey, social problems often involve situations of structural domination, where one group is able to take advantage of current institutional arrangements at the expense of other groups. The idea that democracy represents the best method for solving social problems involving situations of economic, cultural, and political domination is not obvious for those leftist critiques of democracy which emphasize the reproductive effects of democratic institutions on relations of domination. The aim of my chapter is to explore how Dewey is able to respond to the challenges posed by such a skeptical view in a way that the ideal of democracy can be saved for an emancipatory project aiming at a just society. Dewey’s strategy is particularly productive, since it is able to acknowledge the domination-reproductive effects of existing democratic practices (1). For him, radicalizing democracy represents the most adequate political and social response to the normative goal of abolishing class or group privilege (2). Finally, Dewey’s proposal seems able to respond to the challenges posed by the inequalities generated by current neoliberal deregulation and financialization (3)