That was a hugely impressive exposition. I was not aware of Dewey’s analysis of Liberal society that you have expounded.

It seems to me that he joins others in a stream of thought that has existed in Liberalism that can be summed up as absently gazing upon mutual respect as the ethic of justice. It runs from Rousseau to Kant to Hegel to utilitarianism to John Rawls to all contemporary versions of ‘discourse ethics’ (Jurgen Habermas, Bruce Ackerman, etc.). I can now include Dewey.

Indeed, since it follows from a belief in equality, mutual respect is as intrinsic to Liberalism as liberty is. In fact, mutual respect as the ethic of justice would maximize liberty as a practical matter. Liberty would thus be the product of justice, not its supposed predicate, source, foundation, etc.

As you noted, however, Locke’s notion of liberty as the predicate of justice has carried the day in Liberalism from then till now. That is the source of the “possessive liberty’”, egoistic liberty, that has prevailed especially in the U.S. Everyone who has gazed upon mutual respect has yet endorsed liberty as the predicate of justice.

Ironically, Locke was standing right in front of mutual respect as the predicate of justice but was facing the wrong way: if injustice is being “subject to the arbitrary will” of another person, then the most immediate inference for justice is that everyone must refrain from subordinating any other person to one’s own arbitrary will. That is mutual respect. Instead, Locke reasoned that the opposite of injustice is justice and the opposite of being subject to the arbitrary will of another person in liberty, so liberty must be the predicate of justice (probably the most significant case in history of confirmation bias).