The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular governmentFollett, Mary Parker
Science
The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular government
Follett, Mary Parker
Democracy; Political participation; Social psychology; State, The
The skilful leader then does not rely on personal force; he controls his
group not by dominating but by expressing it. He stimulates what is best
in us; he unifies and concentrates what we feel only gropingly and
scatteringly, but he never gets away from the current of which we and he
are both an integral part. He is a leader who gives form to the inchoate
energy in every man. The person who influences me most is not he who
does great deeds but he who makes me feel I can do great deeds. Many
people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but few
have made me want to do something. Who ever has struck fire out of me,
aroused me to action which I should not otherwise have taken, he has
been my leader. The community leader is he who can liberate the greatest
amount of energy in his community.
Then the neighborhood leader must be a practical politician. He must be
able to interpret a neighborhood not only to itself but to others. He
must know not only the need of every charwoman but how politics can
answer her call. He must know the great movements of the present and
their meaning, and he must know how the smallest needs and the humblest
powers of his neighborhood can be fitted into the progressive movements
of our time. His duty is to shape politics continuously. As the
satisfaction of one need, or the expression of one latent power, reveals
many more, he must be always alert and ever ready to gather up the many
threads into one strand of united endeavor. He is the patient watcher,
the active spokesman, the sincere and ardent exponent of a community
consciousness. His guiding, embracing and dominant thought is to make
that community consciousness articulate in government.
The politician is not a group but a crowd leader. The leader of a crowd
dominates because a crowd wants to be dominated. Politicians do not try
to convince but to dazzle; they do not deal with facts but with formulæ
and vague generalizations, with the flag and the country. If our
politicians and our representatives are not our most competent men, but
those who have the greatest power of suggestion and are most adroit in
using it, the proposal here is that we shall develop methods which will
produce real leaders. We are aiming now in the reorganization of our
state constitutions at responsible official leadership instead of the
irresponsible party boss system which was necessary once because we had
to have leaders of some sort. How far this new movement shall succeed,
will depend on how far it has back of it, or can be made to have back of
it, the kind of organization which will develop group not crowd leaders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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