ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the accusations through identifying the forces John Dewey identified as the main powers inhibiting progressive political action and reconstructing strategies that could be used to liberate citizen power and confront the forces opposed to democratic reform. Dewey begins his account of how power actually inhibits citizen autonomy in an uncharacteristic fashion for one deemed to be such an advocate of the nostrum "knowledge is power", in that he discusses the limits of intelligence. Dewey felt that public intelligence and the greater knowledge it abets could not exert power in itself—it can neither motivate individuals to act nor will it necessarily, in itself, bring about more effective political strategies. Once people have the ability to map their social geography, Dewey does believe that more traditional methods of conceptualizing power, in terms of discrete entities, and strategies, social control of the economy will come about.
