The New State by Mary Parker Follett — Read

The purpose of this book is to indicate certain changes which must be made in our political methods in order that the group principle, the most fruitful principle of association we have yet found, shall have free play in our political life. In part III we shall devote ourselves specifically to that purpose. Here let us examine some of our past notions of democracy and then trace the growth of true democracy in America.

Democracy has meant to many "natural" rights, "liberty" and "equality. " The acceptance of the group principle defines for us in truer fashion those watchwords of the past. If my true self is the group-self, then my only rights are those which membership in a group gives me. The old idea of natural rights postulated the particularist individual; we know now that no such person exists. The group and the individual come into existence simultaneously: with this group-man appear group-rights. Thus man can have no rights apart from society or independent of society or against society. Particularist rights are ruled out as everything particularist is ruled out. When we accept fully the principle of rights involved in the group theory of association, it will change the decisions of our courts, our state constitutions, and all the concrete machinery of government. The truth of the whole matter is that our only concern with "rights" is not to protect them but to create them. Our efforts are to be bent not upon guarding the rights which Heaven has showered upon us, but in creating all the rights we shall ever have.63