The New State by Mary Parker Follett — Read

From the confessedly embryonic stage of thinking in which the movement for group organization still is, two principal questions have emerged: (1) shall the groups form a pluralistic or a unifying state, (2) shall the economic group be the sole basis of representation? The first question I have tried to answer, the second offers greater difficulties with our present amount of experience. Men often discuss the occupational vs. the neighborhood group on the pivotal question -- which of these is nearest a man? Benoist's plea for the occupational group was that politics must represent la vie. But, agreed as to that, we still question whether the occupational group is the most complete embodiment of la vie.

It is not, however, necessary to balance the advantages of neighborhood and occupational group, for I am not proposing that the neighborhood group take the place of the occupational. We may perhaps come to wish for an integration of neighborhood and industrial groups -- and other groups too as their importance and usefulness demand -- as their "objective" value appears. In our neighborhood group we shall find that we can correct many partial points of view which we get from our more specialized groups. A director of a corporation will be more valuable to his state and even to his corporation if he is at the same time the member of a neighborhood group. It may be that we shall work out some machinery by which the neighborhood group can include the occupational group. All our functions must be expressed, but somewhere must come that coordination which will give them their real effectiveness. We are not yet ready to say what the machinery will be, only to recognize some of the principles which should guide us in constructing that machinery. The power of an individual is his power to live a vital group life. The more your society is diversified in group life, the higher the stage of civilization. Perhaps the destiny of the neighborhood group is to interpret and correlate, to give full significance and value to, all the spontaneous association which our increasingly fuller and more varied life is constantly creating. It may be that the neighborhood group is not so much to include the others as to make each see its relation through every other to every other.136 The possible solution, mentioned above, of the two houses of our legislatures and parliaments dividing neighborhood and occupational representation, seems a little crude now to our further analysis unless some practical integration is being worked out at the same time in the local unit. But all this must be a matter of experiment and experience, of patient trial and open-minded observation.137