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
Finally, this new school contains the prophecy of the future because it
has with keenest insight seized upon the problem of identity, of
association, of federalism,[135] as the central problem of politics as
it is the central problem of life. The force of the pluralist school is
that it is not academic; it is considering a question which every
thoughtful person is asking himself. We are faced to-day with a variety
of group interests, with many objects demanding our enthusiasm and
devotion; our duty itself shines, not a single light showing a single
path, but shedding a larger radiance on a life which is most gloriously
not a path at all. Shall Boston or Washington hold me, my family, my
church, my union? With the complexity of interests increasing every day
on the outside, inside with the power of the soul to “belong” expanding
every day (the English and the French flags stir us hardly less than the
American now), with the psychologists talking of pluralism and the
political scientists of multiple sovereignty, with all this yet the soul
of man seeks unity in obedience to his essential nature. How is this to
be obtained? Social evolution is in the hands of those who can solve
this problem.
What is the law of politics that corresponds in importance to the law of
gravitation in the physical world? It is the law of interpenetration and
of multiples. I am the multiple man and the multiple man is the germ of
the unified state. If I live fully I become so enriched by the manifold
sides of life that I cannot be narrowed down to mere corporation or
church or trade-union or any other special group. The miracle of spirit
is that it can give itself utterly to all these things and yet remain
unimpaired, unexhausted, undivided. I am not a serial story to be read
only in the different instalments of my different groups. We do not give
a part to one group and a part to another, but we give our whole to each
and the whole remains for every other relation. Life escapes its
classifications and this is what some of the writers on group
organization do not seem to understand. This secret of the spirit is the
power of the federal principle. True federation multiplies each
individual. We have thought that federal government consisted of
mechanical, artificial, external forms, but really it is the spirit
which liveth and giveth life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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