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
Freedom then is the identifying of the individual will with the whole
will—the supreme activity of life. Free the spirit of man and then we
can trust the spirit of man, and is not the very essence of this freeing
of the spirit of man the process of taking him from the self-I to the
group-I? That we are free only through the social order, only as fast as
we identify ourselves with the whole, implies practically that to gain
our freedom we must take part in all the life around us: join groups,
enter into many social relations, and begin to win freedom for
ourselves. When we are the group in feeling, thought and will, we are
free: it does what it wishes through us—that is our liberty. In a
democracy the training of every child from the cradle—in nursery,
school, at play—must be a training in group consciousness.
Then we shall have the spontaneous activity of freedom. Let us not be
martyrs. Let us not give up bread and coal that the ends of the Great
War may be won, with the feeling of a restricted life, but with the
feeling that we have gained thereby a fuller life. Let us joyously do
the work of the world because we are the world. Such is the _élan de
vie_, the joy of high activity, which leaps forward with force, in
freedom.
We have to begin to-day to live the life which will give us our freedom.
Savants and plain men have affirmed the freedom of the will, but at the
same time most of us, even while loudly claiming our freedom, have felt
bound. While determinism has many theoretical adherents, it has many
more practical ones; we have considered ourselves bound in thousands of
ways—by tradition, by religion, by natural law, by inertia and
ignorance, etc., etc. We have said God is free but man is not free. That
we are not free has been the most deadening fallacy to which man has
ever submitted. No outside power indeed can make us free. No document of
our forefathers can “declare” us “independent.” No one can ever give us
freedom, but we can win it for ourselves.
It is often thought that when some restraint is taken away from us we
are freer than before, but this is childish. Some women-suffragists talk
of women as “enslaved” and advocate their emancipation by the method of
giving them the vote. But the vote will not make women free. Freedom is
always a thing to be attained. And we must remember too that freedom is
not a static condition. As it is not something possessed “originally,”
and as it is not something which can be given to us, so also it is not
something won once for all. It is in our power to win our freedom, but
it must be won anew at every moment, literally every moment. People
think of themselves as not free because they think of themselves as
obeying some external law, but the truth is _we_ are the law-makers. My
freedom is my share in creating, my part in the creative responsibility.
The heart of our freedom is the impelling power of the will of the
whole.
Who then are free? Those who _win_ their freedom through fellowship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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