Pragmatism versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey’s Philosophy

by George Novack

A defense of Marxism against the pragmatism of John Dewey, chief theoretical spokesman in the 1930s of the middle-class democratic movement in the United States. Index, Further Reading/Bibliography

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

443 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1975

About the author

Leftist political activist and Marxist theoretician.

He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973.

In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.

George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.

Novack produced a number of books on various aspects of Marxism: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, America's Revolutionary Heritage, Democracy and Revolution, Empiricism and Its Evolution, Humanism and Socialism, The Origins of Materialism, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation, and Understanding History, Marxist Essays.

Reviews

[Juan Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cannot say enough about this book. It traces the history & structure of the dominant political philosophy that influences politics & liberal thought in the U.S. & it influences society whether people realize it or not. That philosophy is pragmatism which is an American offshoot of British Empiricism & its creator was John Dewey.

Novack traces the development of this philosophy & its roots & as it is an eclectic philosophy, that pulls from different modes of thought, he traces the basis & history of those as well.

The shortcomings of this philosophy are laid out, not the least of which is its rejection of materialism & dialectics.

Next Novack delves into the different aspects of Dewey’s philosophy, the logic, its conception of history & society, the conception of the role of education & Pragmatism’s method of understanding & navigating the world, society & politics. Novack lays the roots of all this in the historic & material conditions of America from its time as a colony of Britain, to the time of the rise American capitalism which are the conditions in which Pragmatism rose & then lays out the limits through its tests through the rise of monopoly capital & American imperialism.

The book concludes with where the limitations of this philosophy leave us & what the way forward is.

A great book if you want to understand the primary liberal philosophy that has influenced liberal & American politics over the last 100+ years, why liberalism seems to be such a dead end, its followers at a crossroads & the way forward.

[V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually found this book to be amazingly helpful and clear, perhaps not surprising, given that it is written by George Novack. It is a thorough Marxist critique of Dewey's philosophy, and moreover, of the theoretical basis of liberalism.

The sections where Novack distinguishes the blind trial-and-error "method" of instrumentalism from the method of scientific Marxism are very useful in terms of clarifying and defending Marxist method.

There are many good reasons to be friendly to Dewey. (His work heading the Dewey Commission is one of these good reasons.) Novack acknowledges and defends what is best in Dewey while showing the limits of liberalism and its inability to bring about the type of society that Dewey advocated for.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I doubt that Dewey is read as widely as he was when this book was first published in 1975, and no doubt those philosophers who have replaced him in college courses have even less relevance to the historical interests of the working class. Novack’s books were widely used in college courses during the period from the 1960s through the 1980s, but today rarely are. The liberals who run the colleges and teach most of the courses have convinced themselves that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes signifies that Marxism has no validity, an assertion that I consider grotesquely ignorant, but one which serves their aims quite well.

But regardless of how many people are reading Dewey today, he still had more impact than any other philosopher in the US, a country not noted for broad interest in philosophy. And, as Novack explains, pragmatism is America’s national philosophy. That certainly hasn’t changed.

But this book is of interest regardless of one’s interest or lack thereof in Dewey. In a careful examination of Dewey’s ideas, Novack presents the ideas of Marxism in opposition to them. One does not need to know much about Marxism in order to understand the book, but an understanding of history, science, and some basic knowledge of philosophy will help.

George Novack, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who settled in Boston, managed to go to Harvard. He also managed to take classes for five years without receiving a degree, which was probably fortunate for his evolution into a Marxist leader rather than an “academic Marxist--This contradicts information above, which should have been from the publisher, but isn't--it appears to be from Wikipedia! While many in his generation joined the Communist Party, Novack joined the genuine communists in 1933, who at that time called themselves “Trotskyists.” He remained a member of the Socialist Workers Party until his death in 1992.

Novack was well known for his work on civil liberties cases, and for his writings on philosophy and history. A few of his earlier books would be useful to read before starting on this: One might start with ‘Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.’ ‘An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism’ introduces the reader to dialectics, which is relevant not only for Marxism, but for Dewey, who started as a Hegelian. ‘The Origins of Materialism: The Evolution of a Scientific View of the World’ examines the birth of that philosophy, which while essential to Marxism, is not clearly embraced by pragmatism. Novack quotes a philosopher who called Dewey “a half-reformed idealist.”

‘Empiricism and Its Evolution’ takes up the philosophy that pragmatism developed from. And ‘Democracy and Revolution’ takes up the Marxist view on revolution, both bourgeois-democratic and socialist. This is useful for the latter parts of the book, where Novack explains that Dewey saw the importance of class structure in analyzing philosophy in ancient Greece, in feudal Christianity,

“But when he confronts the democratic America of his own time, Dewey suddenly leaves solid ground, soars into the clouds, and suspends the rule that occupational activities, social structure, and class outlook shape intellectual traits.”

George Novack explained in his introduction to this book that

“This book is a critical examination of a man's work, a method of thought, a profession, a social grouping, a period in American life, and a stage of capitalist society.

“The man is John Dewey, the method of thought is pragmatism or instrumentalism, the profession is academic philosophy, the social layer is the intellectual middle class, the time is from the Civil War to the aftermath of the Second World War, and the phase of capitalism is its transformation from competition into monopoly and imperialism.”

He further explained that,

“This work is the long-overdue fulfillment of a request made by Leon Trotsky in 1940 to his cothinkers in the United States. In connection with a deep-going struggle and split in the Socialist Workers Party (see ‘In Defense of Marxism’) which raised for consideration many fundamental issues of philosophic method and its relation to revolutionary politics, he stressed the urgency of undertaking a thorough critique of pragmatism from the Marxist standpoint.

“It has taken over thirty years for me to realize his recommendation. However, there may be compensations for the delay. The disenchantment with capitalist liberalism which helped produce a new generation of American radicals in the 1960s may assure greater receptivity to a Marxist appraisal of Dewey's philosophy than would have been the case during the Second World War or its cold war aftermath. This rejection of the politics of liberalism can be strengthened by reappraising the mode of thought that has best set forth its outlook and provides its most general rationale.”

The second part of this may seem to have lost its validity, with the middle class “left” increasingly involved in the Democratic Party, but that’s only one side of reality. There is very little questioning of the supposed “fact” that the election of Trump is a triumph of reaction; racism, xenophobia, and misogyny—but to me that faulty analysis by liberals, repeated over and over, shows the enormous gap between the petty bourgeoisie (middle class) and the working class, which liberals now see as the source of the reaction. Yes, Trump got the vote of hard rightists, but that vote is not significant. Many workers voted for him not because they agreed with him, but because a vote for Hillary Clinton was a vote for the status quo. People who live in areas where the life span has dropped by 20 years were not going to vote for the status quo! Middle class liberals are living in bubbles, rarely talking to members of the working class, and with the nonsense academic jargon they’ve been taught in college, they couldn’t talk to them even if they wanted to. Clinton dismissed the working class as “a basket of deplorables,” and didn’t think she needed their votes to win. She was visibly showing that the Democratic Party is now the more elitist of the two capitalist parties. But it led to her defeat at the polls.

For years the alliance between the labor bureaucracy and the Democratic Party was key to Democratic victory, but due to the fact that the bureaucracy more and more relied on the Democrats, and less and less on their members, the unions no longer have the significance they once did, and many workers voted for Trump, if they voted at all. And even those who voted for Clinton as a “lesser evil” weren’t certain that the evil they voted for was really “lesser.”

Trump told a little bit of the truth about that status quo, like what the real unemployment figure was included those who have given up looking for work. Now that he’s in power, he has reverted to the usual lies told by both Democrats and Republicans, in order to make it look like the genuine uptick in hiring is more significant than it is. But the main fact about the 2016 election is that both major political parties representing the ruling rich are in deep crisis, and the candidate that most of the bourgeoisie and its most closely aligned classes wanted people to vote for lost (see ‘The Clintons' Anti-Working-Class Record’).

And the biggest working-class resistance to the economic crisis has come from the states that voted for Trump! The unprecedented teachers’ strikes, starting in West Virginia, where the miners’ traditions turned unions into a mass social movement (see ‘In Defense of the US Working Class’).

To supplement the chapter on Dewey’s view on education, where he had excellent ideas, but couldn’t implement them under the present system, see ‘Are They Rich Because They're Smart? Class, Privilege and Learning Under Capitalism.’ To supplement the chapter on ethics, see Dewey’s critique of Trotsky, and Novack’s response to it in ‘Their Morals and Ours.’

And to understand this, start with Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.