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
It is not the civic theatre which is the last word in the relation of
the drama to the people, it is a community organized theatre. Art and
civics do not meet merely by the state presenting art to its members;
the civic expression of art is illustrated by locally managed festivals,
by community singing, a local orchestra or dramatic club, community
dancing etc. Those of us who are working for civic art are working for
this: for people to express themselves in artistic forms and to organize
themselves for that purpose. The state must give the people every
opportunity for building up their own full, varied, healthful life. It
seems to be often thought that when the state provides schools, parks,
universities etc., there you have the ideal state. But we must go beyond
this and find our ideal state in that which shows its members how to
build up its own life _in_ schools, parks, universities etc.[86]
The question which the state must always be trying to answer is how it
can do more for its members at the same time that it is stimulating them
to do more for themselves. No, more than this, its doing more for them
must take the form of their doing more for themselves. Our modern
problem is not, as one would think from some of the writing on social
legislation, how much the increased activity of the state can do for the
individual, but how the increasing activity of the individual can be
state activity, how the widening of the sphere of state activity can be
a widening of our own activity. The arguments for or against government
action should not take the form of how much or how little government
action we shall have, but entirely of how government action and
self-action can coincide. Our one essential political problem is always
how to be the state, not, putting the state on one side and the
individual on the other, to work out their respective provinces. I have
said in the chapter on “Our Political Dualism” that the state and the
individual are one, yet this is pure theory until we make them one. But
they can never be made one through schemes of representation etc., only
by the intimate daily lives of all becoming the constituents of the life
of the state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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