La cohérence théorique et pratique de l’engagement de John Dewey pour le contrôle démocratique de l’économie

The reception of John Dewey's work in the field of economic research is based in part on the separatist interpretation that has been made of it. According to this interpretation, a distinction should be made between, on the one hand, the philosopher's economic thinking and his public statements on economics in the 1930s and, on the other hand, the epistemological and methodological aspects of his philosophy. This interpretation constitutes an obstacle to a full understanding of the contributions of Dewey's work to the analysis and resolution of contemporary economic and democratic problems. In this article, we seek to remove this obstacle by revisiting four arguments put forward by Kenneth Arrow (1997), Richard Posner (2004) and D. Wade Hands (2004) against the coherence of Dewey's economic thought and his defence of democratic control of the economy. We conclude by formulating some hypotheses about how our non-separatist reading of Dewey sheds light on the positions that Dewey-inspired economists might adopt today, both regarding the political measures they should advocate and their more general role in the public debate.