The New State

The New State

By Mary Parker Follett.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Introduction
4. The New State
   1. Part I: The Group Principle
      1. I: The Group and the New Psychology
      2. II: The Group Process: The Collective Idea
      3. III: The Group Process: The Collective Idea (Continued)
      4. IV: The Group Process: The Collective Feeling
      5. V: The Group Process: The Collective Will
      6. VI: The Unity of the Social Process
      7. VII: The Individual
      8. VIII: Who Is the Free Man?
      9. IX: The New Individualism
      10. X: Society
      11. XI: The Self-and-Others Illusion
      12. XII: The Crowd Fallacy
      13. XIII: The Secret of Progress
      14. XIV: The Group Principle at Work
      15. XV: From Contract to Community
   2. Part II: The Traditional Democracy
      1. XVI: Democracy Not “Liberty” and “Equality”: Our Political Dualism
      2. XVII: Democracy Not the Majority: Our Political Fallacy
      3. XVIII: Democracy Not the Crowd: Our Popular Delusion
      4. XIX: The True Democracy
      5. XX: The Growth of Democracy in America
      6. XXI: After Direct Government—What?
   3. Part III: Group Organization Democracy’s Method
      1. I: The Neighborhood Group
         1. XXII: Neighborhood Needs the Basis of Politics
         2. XXIII: An Integrated Neighborhood
         3. XXIV: Neighborhood Organization vs. Party Organization I
         4. XXV: Neighborhood Organization vs. Party Organization II
         5. XXVI: Neighborhood Organization vs. Party Organization III
         6. XXVII: From Neighborhood to Nation: The Unifying State
      2. II: The Occupational Group
         1. XXVIII: Political Pluralism
         2. XXIX: Political Pluralism and Sovereignty
         3. XXX: Political Pluralism and Functionalism
         4. XXXI: Political Pluralism and the True Federal State
         5. XXXII: Political Pluralism (Concluded)
         6. XXXIII: Increasing Recognition of the Occupational Group
   4. Part III: The Dual Aspect of the Group
      1. XXXIV: The Moral State and Creative Citizenship
      2. XXXV: The World State
   5. Appendix
5. Endnotes
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Introduction

Our political life is stagnating, capital and labor are virtually at war, the nations of Europe are at one another’s throats⁠—because we have not yet learned how to live together. The twentieth century must find a new principle of association. Crowd philosophy, crowd government, crowd patriotism must go. The herd is no longer sufficient to enfold us.

Group organization is to be the new method in politics, the basis of our future industrial system, the foundation of international order. Group organization will create the new world we are now blindly feeling after, for creative force comes from the group, creative power is evolved through the activity of the group life.

We talk about the evils of democracy. We have not yet tried democracy. Party or “interests” govern us with some fiction of the “consent of the governed” which we say means democracy. We have not even a conception of what democracy means. That conception is yet to be forged out of the crude ore of life.

We talk about the tragedy of individualism. The individual we do not yet know, for we have no methods to release the powers of the individual. Our particularism⁠—our laissez-faire, our everyman-for-his-own-interests⁠—has little to do with true individualism, that is, with the individual as consciously responsible for the life from which he draws his breath and to which he contributes his all.

Politics do not need to be “purified.” This thought is leading us astray. Politics must be vitalized by a new method. “Representative government,” party organization, majority rule, with all their excrescences, are deadwood. In their stead must appear the organization of nonpartisan groups for the begetting, the bringing into being, of common ideas, a common purpose and a collective will.

Government by the people must be more than the phrase. We are told⁠—The people should do this, the people should do that, the people must be given control of foreign policy, etc. etc. But all this is wholly useless unless we provide the procedure within which the people can do this or that. What does the “sovereign will” of the people amount to unless it has some way of operating? Or have we any “sovereign will?” There is little yet that is practical in “practical politics.”

But method must not connote mechanics to any mind. Many of us are more interested in the mechanism of life than in anything else. We keep on putting pennies in the slot from sheer delight in seeing something come out at the other end. All this must change. Machines, forms, images, moulds⁠—all must be broken up and the way prepared for our plastic life to find plastic expression. The principle of democracy may be the underlying unity of men, the method of democracy must be that which allows the quickest response of our daily life to the common faith of men.

Are we capable of a new method? Can the inventive faculty