Individualism Old and New (Great Books in Philosophy)

Rating:
Summary: Individualism and not the opposite?
Review: This book is mind-boggling. And all the moreso because Dewey was a totalitarian socialist who wanted government to take over all education via government schools. He called Edward Bellamy his "Great American Prophet" after Bellamy wrote the book "Looking Backward" wherein Bellamy penned his totalitarian vision. Edward Bellamy was the cousin of Francis Bellamy, another national socialist in the U.S. who, in 1892 created the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag (using a straight-armed salute) to promote government schools. They all wanted the government to takeover all schools and create an "industrial army" of totalitarian socialism as described in "Looking Backward" (an international bestseller written in 1887). Government-schools spread and they mandated racism and segregation by law and did so through WWII and beyond.

Dewey was "Johnny Socialism-Seed" as he spread Bellamy ideas at home and abroad.

Dewey was fascinated by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and between 1920 and 1928 wrote many articles praising the "new" educational system imposed by the totalitarian socialists. At the invitation of the Commissar of Education in 1928, Dewey traveled to the fledgling police state. None of the socialist "utopia" espoused in 1917 had developed. Their educational ideal of "collective liberation" was in tatters. The individual (student)-collective (society) creed of Dewey's socialist education appealed to the Soviet socialists. Dewey studied its educational system, prepared educational surveys, and wrote several articles and a book on the topic.

After the First World War, Dewey also studied education in China and lectured there from 1919 to 1921. The Chinese literary reformer Hu Shih (1891-1962), completed his Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University under John Dewey in 1917. He was greatly influenced by Dewey and became a lifelong advocate of Dewey's ideas.

Dewey and his "new" education expanded government-schools and totalitarian socialism everywhere.

The socialist Wholecaust followed shortly after the worldwide impact of Bellamy's totalitarian ideas. While the Holocaust was monstrous, it was part of the bigger Wholecaust. Under the industrial army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 62 million people were slaughtered; the People's Republic of China, 35 million; and the National Socialist German Workers' Party, 21 million (numbers from Professor R. J. Rummel's article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999))

Dewey was also interested in the socialist economic experiments in the Union of the Soviet Socialists Republics. He imported their cockamamy ideas, after exporting his own.

Dewey's ideas have also been criticized for their alleged neglect of the basic skills of literacy and numeracy.

It is a tragedy that he is considered a "great philosopher" in the U.S. He was probably also considered a "great philosopher" by the totalitarian socialists in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Peoples' Republic of China.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best philosophical socialist books
Review: You wouldn't think it, but this little baby packs a huge radical punch. Written in 1929 after the Depression set in it's Dewey's testament on what he thought society would have to do to solve that kind of systemic problem and survive. What comes out from Dewey's experiential philosophy is a radical critique of individualism that fit's into the category today of "Council Communism" or "Autonomous Marxism", meaning socialism which is concieved according to Marxist type theory but is realized according to radically democratic and workerist means. A forgotten gem, read this and then absorb the liberatory potential of the rest of Dewey's many philosophical works.