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
We see this principle operating every day in our own lives: we cannot do
one thing well by doing one thing alone. The interrelations are so
manifold that each of us does far more than he wishes, not because our
tendency is a senseless ramifying, but because we cannot do our own job
well unless we do many other things: we do not take on the extra
activities as an _ex_tension of our life, but simply as an
_in_tensification of our life at the point of our particular interest.
Ideally one should fulfil all the functions of man in order to perform
one function. No one ought to teach without being a parent! etc. etc.
Man must identify himself with humanity. The great lesson which the
pluralist school has to teach is that man cannot do this imaginatively
but only actually, through his group relations. What it leaves out is
that the task is manifold and infinite because man must identify himself
with a manifold and infinite number of groups before he has embraced
humanity.
Society, however, does not consist merely of the union of all these
various groups. There is a more subtle process going on—the interlocking
of groups. And in these interlocking groups we have not only the same
people taking up different activities, but actually representing
different interests. In some groups I may be an employer, in others an
employee. I can be a workman and a stockholder. Men have many loyalties.
It is no longer true that I belong to such a class and must always
identify myself with its interests. I may belong at the same time to the
college club and the business women’s club, to the Players’ League
(representing the actor’s point of view) and to the Drama Association
(representing the playgoer’s point of view). I not only thus get
opposite points of view, but I myself can contribute to two opposite
points of view. The importance of this has not been fully estimated. I
may have to say the collective I or we first of my basket-ball team,
next of my trade-union, then of my church club or citizens’ league or
neighborhood association, and the lines may cross and recross many
times. It is just these cross lines that are of inestimable value in the
development of society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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