Democratic and Revolutionary Pedagogy

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel deals with the question of how democratic societies can produce the political education necessary for the task of responsible self-government. That central question ties to this year’s conference theme of pluralism, for pluralist institutions play a critical role in preparing citizens for the work of democracy. Civil society institutions are necessary in both checking certain despotic dangers and in fostering healthy programs of democratic governance. To that end, the papers on this panel deal with three important sites of formative pedagogic pluralism: The political party, the trade union, and the university.

From Plato to contemporary epistemic democratic skeptics, the oldest charge against democracy is that democratic regimes are incapable of effective, morally acceptable political rule. A tradition running from Aristotle and Polybius to Montesquieu and John Adams took the mixed constitution to be an indispensable means of tempering democracy’s excesses. That approach formally empowered the one and the few to check the vices of the many. In the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill famously proposed plural voting to engineer a more educated electorate. Yet such proposals run afoul of contemporary egalitarian commitments, and so liberal and democratic theorists have sought alternative forms of democratic mediation in civil society, individual rights, or powerful non-political branches of government. Today, an influential strand of liberal and democratic theory insists that democracy requires much more than procedural majority rule: it requires a bevy of moral and political constraints on the majority’s potential abuse of power.

The aim of this panel is to explore how a variety of political theorists have sought to locate forms of democratic education within democratic practice and society. In that sense, it may be seen as working within the challenge posed by James Madison in Federalist 10: To find a “republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” What resources do democratic societies have within themselves to prepare their citizens and leaders for the work of self-rule?

Luke Foster’s paper deals with the question of democratic education by turning to the debate between Irving Babbitt and John Dewey over the kind of university learning most appropriate and necessary in a democratic society. Dimitrios Halikias’ paper turns to a very different kind of democratic or revolutionary pedagogy. It reconstructs Karl Marx’s argument that the formation of and even failure of trade union organization can be an indispensable education in proletariat political power. Finally, Soren Dudley raises the possibility of reading Max Weber’s charismatic theory of political leadership in a democratic vein. She emphasizes the important role Weber gives the political parties in cultivating and preparing democratic leaders for responsibly wielding power.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Individual Presentations

• Karl Marx on the Pedagogic Power of Trade Union Failure - Dimitrios Ioannis Halikias, Harvard University

• Socratic Remnant or Creative Democracy: Irving Babbitt’s Critique of John Dewey - Luke Foster, University of Chicago

• The Education of Charisma in Max Weber - Soren Dudley, Harvard University

Chair

• Matthew Landauer University of Chicago

Discussant

• Evelyn M. Behling University of Notre Dame