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 _droit_ evolved by a group is the _droit_ of that group. The _droit_
evolved by a state-group (we agree that there is no state-group yet, the
state is evolving, the _droit_ is evolving, there is only an approximate
state, an approximately genuine _droit_) is the _droit_ of the state.
The contribution of the new psychology is that _le droit_ comes from
relation and is always in relation. The warning of the new psychology to
the advocates of vocational representation is that the _droit_ (either
as law or right)[113] evolved by men of one occupation only will
represent too little intermingling to express the “community” truth. We
don’t want doctors’ ethics and lawyers’ ethics, and so on through the
various groups. That is just the trouble at present. Employers and
employees meet in conference. Watch those conferences. The difference of
interest is not always the whole difficulty; there is also the
difference of standard. Capitalist ethics and workman ethics are often
opposed. We must accept _le droit_ as a social product, as a group
product, but we must have groups which will unify interests and
standards. Law and politics can be founded on nothing but vital modes of
association.
Mr. Roscoe Pound’s exposition of modern law is just here a great help to
political theory. The essential, the vital part of his teaching, is, not
his theory of law based on interests, not his emphasis upon relation,
but his bringing together of these two ideas. This takes us out of the
vague, nebulous region of much of the older legal and political theory,
and shows us the actual method of living our daily lives. All that he
says of relation implies that we must seek and bring into use those
modes of association which will reveal true interests, actual interests,
yet not particularist interests but the interests discovered through
group relations—employer and employed, master and servant, landlord and
tenant, etc. But, and this is of great importance, these groups must be
made into genuine groups. If law is to be a group-product, we must see
that our groups are real groups, we must find the true principle of
association. For this we need, as I must continually repeat, the study
of group psychology. “Life,” “man,” “society,” are coming to have little
meaning for us: it is your life and my life with which we are concerned,
not “man” but the men we see around us, not “society” but the many
societies in which we pass our lives. “Social” values? We want
individual values, but individual values discovered through group
relations.
To sum up this point: (1) law should be a group-product, (2) we should
therefore have genuine groups, (3) political method must be such that
the “law” of the group can become embodied in our legislation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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