Explore "The New State" by Mary Parker Follett on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the last two chapters I have taken up the two fundamental laws of life -- the law of interpenetration and the law of multiples. (1) Sovereignty, we have seen, is the power generated within the group -- dependent on the principle of interpenetration. (2) Man joins many groups -- in order to express his multiple nature. These two principles give us federalism.
Let us, before considering the conception of federalism in detail, sum up in a few sentences what has already been said of these two principles. The fundamental truth of life we have seen is self-perpetuating activity -- activity so regnant, so omnipresent, so all-embracing, that it banishes even the conception of anything static from the world of being. Conscious evolution means that we must discover the essential principle of this activity and see that it is at work in the humblest of its modes, the smallest group or meeting of even two or three. The new psychology has brought to political science the recognition of interpenetration and the "compounding of consciousness" as the very condition of all life. Our political methods must conform to life's methods. We must understand and follow the laws of association that the state may appear, that our own little purposes may be fulfilled. Little purposes? Is there any great and small? The humblest man and the price of his daily loaf -- is this a small matter -- it hangs upon the whole world situation today. In order that the needs of the humblest shall be satisfied, or in order that world purposes shall be fulfilled -- it matters not which -- this principle of "compounding" must be fully recognized and embodied in our political methods. It is this vital intermingling which creates the real individual and knits men into the myriad relations of life. We win through life our individuality, it is not presented to us at the beginning to be exploited as we will. We win a multiple individuality through our manifold relations. In the workings of this dual law are rooted all of social and political progress, all the hope and the potency of human evolution.