Why Dewey now? In this sophisticated presentation, Jeff Jackson provides a robust answer. Dewey is often viewed, with some reason, as a historical progenitor of deliberative conceptions of democracy. This is a very limited interpretation, however: for Jackson, Dewey is a proponent of a form of participatory democracy that takes societal inequalities far more seriously than deliberative theory has been able to. This is important because “structural inequality is our most pressing obstacle to democracy, and Dewey’s theory shows us how it is democratically necessary to overcome that inequality and how an overemphasis on political debate can distract us from this urgent democratic work” (p. 4).

There is, of course, a massive supporting empirical literature on the distortions that wealth and inequality impose on capitalist democracies, and the example Jackson draws on several times is the conspicuous intervention of the Koch brothers in the political struggle over collective bargaining rights (and the gubernatorial election) in Wisconsin in 2011. Dewey provides a theory of specifically participatory democracy that sees social inequality as the most pressing and central problem, pushing to the margins more recent procedurally oriented conceptions of democracy that focus on deliberation or agonism. Rather, democracy is nonprocedural and involves more than taking sides in procedural disputes; some sides in an argument are oligarchic and others democratic, but democracy is not merely the procedure that decides between them, perhaps through compromise. We must associate democracy with outcomes that benefit the disadvantaged, rather than with deliberative discussion or agon: “Dewey’s theory,” Jackson acidly observes, “does not hold to the assumption that a particular type of political debate is sufficient to achieve democracy” (p. 212). He argues, “When deliberative and agonistic thinkers attempt to simply say that society should be equal and keep their focus on proper political debate, they are failing to theorize the most essential work involved in achieving democracy. . . . A pragmatic account of democracy can have no tolerance for this kind of wishing away of our most pressing problem, and it instead forces us to theorize the process of overcoming this problem” (pp. 2, 196). Further, following recent interpreters such as Marc Stears and John Medearis, he sees Dewey as committed to nondeliberative and potentially coercive forms of political action in circumstances of deep structural inequality. Indeed, some sorts of coercive practice such as strikes—when the disadvantaged take direct action toward overcoming inequality—should be understood as democratic even if they do not fit the template for ideal deliberative debate. The protesters near the homes of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Republican legislators were not acting according to the canons of deliberative democracy, but nevertheless, Jackson argues, their actions should be understood as democratic.

This comprehensive, nuanced, and systematic interpretation of Dewey as a radical who transformed democratic theory takes us beyond intramural debates in scholarship on Dewey and political theory and in theorizing deliberative democracy. This is a rich and engaging text for Dewey aficionados and an excellent jumping-off point for the tentatively Dewey-curious political theorist. Jackson’s first chapter provides a distinctive and original account of Dewey’s conception of democratic individuality, which persuasively uses the apparently unlikely figure of Plato as a foil for the discussion: Jackson calls for a “Back to Plato” movement and sees in The Republic a very Deweyan project of constructing a form of individuality consonant with the objective conditions of its era. Of course, the form of individuality consonant with modern industrial societies is radically unplatonic, pluralistic, mutable, and egalitarian. Chapter 2 is also framed in relation to a superficially more plausible but also sharply distinct interlocutor, Hegel. (Although Jackson mentions the significance of T. H. Green in Dewey’s intellectual formation, the pairing of Plato and Hegel is strikingly idealist, which is not explored.) Jackson uses this comparison as a springboard to discuss the problem of undemocratic work and to clarify some important differences between Dewey and Richard Rorty. Jackson builds on this Hegelian reading to defend Dewey as a radical institutional and political thinker, against political theorists like Sheldon Wolin for whom radical democracy is inherently opposed to institutionalization. He makes a helpful and detailed case for the contribution of Dewey’s political theory to recent cosmopolitan accounts of democracy. And he provides a lucid and persuasive set of arguments for the place of Dewey’s educational theory in his political philosophy, often a difficult area for clear analysis.

Dewey provides a compelling alternative to the deliberative paradigm because he sees “structural social inequalities [as] undemocratic in themselves due to the way they prevent individuals from controlling their lives. . . . For Dewey, democracy is principally defined by individuals participating in the governance of their lives, or, exercising control over their lives” (pp. 13, 12). Dewey’s view of democracy as a social idea, beyond its political manifestation, “provides a multifaceted, continuously developing conception of democracy, one that is constituted by individual, social, and political elements that are each developing interrelatedly with all the other elements” (p. 265). Multiple, interrelated strands combine to make up democracy, including democratic workplace relations and education. Jackson argues that deliberative theorists ignore or subordinate these relationships.

This claim is likely to provoke a response from some deliberative and agonistic theorists in particular, who may feel that Jackson has not taken seriously enough what they say about the necessary conditions for democratic politics. But this review is not a presentation designed to appease skeptics about the very expansive conception of democratic individuality that Jackson elaborates on Dewey’s behalf. Here I want only to suggest another type of question. In one way, Jackson’s treatment of his theme is muted by the caution with which he approaches two features of Dewey’s thought—his liberalism and his socialism—about which Dewey himself was not at all reticent. Dewey is loudly committed to a liberal conception of individual freedom and, in particular, to positive liberty. Perhaps because he feels that this is an excessively contentious or just exhausted seam, Jackson does not explore it. But it is important that Dewey’s commitment to democratic individualism and his scathing analysis of liberalism as a bankrupt ideology of capitalist exploitation were made in the name of an improved liberalism.

Further, Dewey’s critique of “pecuniary domination” is married to a desire to move beyond market forms of organization, which he explores through forms of pluralism and of socialism. He famously contrasts a democratic planning economy and an undemocratic merely planned one, but his point is that a planning economy is planned. Dewey was vague about institutions but, as Jackson emphasizes, emphatic that institutions were important. What he was principally vague about was how state power should be won and used (and he was not always vague about this): his recognition of unions was part of this account of power. What Dewey sees as the radical nisus of his work is less the accommodation of direct action, civil disobedience, and coercion as a means than the authority of democratic social and economic planning. Although Dewey’s own statements about direct action are ambivalent and contextual, the dominant note seems to be the well-known one: “the means to which [democracy] is devoted are the voluntary activities of individuals in opposition to coercion; they are assent and consent in opposition to violence; they are the force of intelligence organization versus the force of organization opposed from above” (“Democracy Is Radical,” 1937). The tension between this and the position Jackson ascribes to Dewey still seems live and in need of further exploration. Jackson’s impressive book makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of Dewey’s importance for democracy in unequal capitalist societies, but does not quite put its subject matter beyond debate.