Explore "The New State" by Mary Parker Follett on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Democracy is the rule of an interacting, interpermeating whole. The present advocates of democracy have, therefore, little kinship with those ardent writers of the past who when they said they believed in the people were thinking of workingmen only. A man said to me once, "I am very democratic, I thoroughly enjoy a good talk with a workingman. " What in the world has that to do with democracy? Democracy is faith in humanity, not faith in "poor" people or "ignorant" people, but faith in every living soul. Democracy does not enthrone the workingman, it has nothing to do with sympathy for the "lower classes"; the champions of democracy are not looking down to raise anyone up, they recognize that all men must face each other squarely with the knowledge that the give-and-take between them is to be equal.
The enthusiasts of democracy today are those who have caught sight of a great spiritual unity which is supported by the most vital trend in philosophical thought and by the latest biologists and social psychologists. It is, above all, what we have learnt of the psychical processes of association which makes us believe in democracy. Democracy is everyone building the single life, not my life and others, not the individual and the state, but my life bound up with others, the individual which is the state, the state which is the individual. "When a man's eye shall be single" -- do we quite know yet what that means? Democracy is the fullest possible acceptance of the single life.