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
But who is the individual we have been seeking, who is the individual we
are to find within the group? Certainly not the particularist
individual. Every man to count as one? That was once our slogan. Now we
have relegated it to a mechanical age. To-day we see that every man must
count for infinitely more than one because he is not part of a whole, a
cog in a machine, not even an organ in an organism, but from one point
of view the whole itself. A man said to me the other day, “That is not
democracy, that is mysticism.” But why mysticism? It is our daily life
as lived from hour to hour. We join with one group of men at work, with
another at play, another in our civic committee, another in our art
club. Man’s life is one of manifold relatings. His vote at the polls
must express not his particularist self, but the whole complex of his
related life, must express as much of the whole as these multiple
relations have brought into existence for him, through him. I find my
expression of the whole-idea, the whole-will, through my group life. The
group must always dictate the modes of activity for the individual. We
must put clearly before us the true individual with his infinite
relations, expressing his infinite relations, as the centre of politics,
as the meaning of democracy. The first purpose of genuine politics is to
make the vote of every man express the All at his special coign of
outlook. In every man is the potentiality of such expression. To call it
forth is the aim of all training, the end sought by all modes of real
living.
Thus group organization releases us from the domination of mere numbers.
Thus democracy transcends time and space, it can never be understood
except as a spiritual force. Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy
rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a
collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.
Democracy is not worked out at the polling-booths; it is the bringing
forth of a genuine collective will, one to which every single being must
contribute the whole of his complex life, as one which every single
being must express the whole of at one point. Thus the essence of
democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.
Many men despise politics because they see that politics manipulate, but
make nothing. If politics are to be the highest activity of man, as they
should be, they must be clearly understood as creative.
What is there inherent in the group which gives it creative power? The
activity which produces the true individual is at the same time
interweaving him and others into a real whole. A genuine whole has
creative force. Does this seem “mystical?” The power of our corporations
depends upon this capability of men to interknit themselves into such
genuine relations that a new personality is thereby evolved. This is the
“real personality” of modern legal theory. Are our company directors and
corporation lawyers usually mystics?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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