M. P. Follett

“ Life is the true revealer: I can never understand the whole by reason, only when the heart-beat of the whole throbs through me as the pulse of my own being.
If we in our neighborhood group live James’ philosophy of the compounding of consciousness, if we obey the true doctrine, that each individual is not only himself but the state—for the fulness of life overflows—then will the perfect form of federalism appear and express itself, for then we have the spirit of federalism creating its own form. Political philosophers talk of the state, but there is no state until we make it. ”

“ A more complete representation is the aim of much of our political reform, but our first requirement is surely to have something to represent. It isn’t that we need one kind of government more than another, as the image-breakers tell us, it isn’t that we need honest intentions, as the preachers tell us, our essential and vital need is a people creating a will of its own. In all the sentimental talk of democracy the will of the people is spoken of tenderly as if it were there in all its wisdom and all its completeness and we had only to put it into operation. ”

“ We want a state which will transmute the instincts of men into the energies of the nation. You cannot dam the stream entirely, you can only see that it flows so as to irrigate and fructify. It all comes down to our fear of men. If we could believe in men, if we could see that circle which unites human passion and divine achievement as a halo round the head of each human being, then social and political reorganization would no longer be a hope but a fact. The old individualism feared men; the corner-stone of the new individualism is faith in men. ”

“ We need the intermingling of all in the social process. We need our imperfections as well as our perfections. So we offer what we have—our unwisdom, our imperfections—on the altar of the social process, and it is only by this social process that the wonderful transmutation can take place which makes of them the very stuff of which the Perfect Society is to be made. Imperfection meets imperfection, or imperfection meets perfection; it is the process which purifies, not the “influence” of the perfect on the imperfect. This is what faith in democracy means. ”

“ Then do we find reality, only in union, never in isolation.
But it must be a significant union, never a mere coming together. How we waste immeasurable force in much of our social life in a mere tossing of the ball, on the merest externality and travesty of a common life which we do not penetrate for the secret at its heart. The quest of life and the meaning of life is reality. We may flit on the surface as gnats in the sunlight, but in each of us, however overlaid, is the hunger and thirst for realness, for substance. We must plunge down to find our treasure. ”

“ Democracy is not a spreading out: it is not the extension of the suffrage—its merely external aspect—it is a drawing together; it is the imperative call for the lacking parts of self. It is the finding of the one will to which the will of every single man and woman must contribute. We want women to vote not that the suffrage may be extended to women but that women may be included in the suffrage: we want what they may have to add to the whole. Democracy is an infinitely including spirit. We have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness ”

“ What is the law of politics that corresponds in importance to the law of gravitation in the physical world? It is the law of interpenetration and of multiples. I am the multiple man and the multiple man is the germ of the unified state. If I live fully I become so enriched by the manifold sides of life that I cannot be narrowed down to mere corporation or church or trade-union or any other special group. The miracle of spirit is that it can give itself utterly to all these things and yet remain unimpaired, unexhausted, undivided. ”

“ Every affirmation of the ego establishes my relation with all the rest of the universe. It is one and the same act which establishes my individuality and gives me my place in society. Thus an individual is one who is being created by society, whose daily breath is drawn from society, whose life is spent for society. When we recognize society as self-unfolding, self-unifying activity, we shall hold ourselves open to its influence, letting the Light stream into us, not from an outside source, but from the whole of which we are a living part. ”

“ We rejoice that we are alive at this moment, but the keenness of my joy is not because I can serve America but because I am America. I save food in my home not in order that my family income can meet the strain of the higher prices, not because I can thereby help to send more food to the Allies, but because I, saving the food of America for the Allies and the world, am performing America’s task, am therefore America. This is the deeper thought of neighborhood organization: that through performing my humblest duties I am creating the soul of this great democracy. ”

“ I can work for my nation through local machinery of city or neighborhood. My work at office or factory enriches my family life; my duty to my family is my most pressing incentive to do my best work. There is no competing here, but an infinite number of filaments cross and recross and connect all my various allegiances. We should not be obliged to choose between our different groups. Competition is not the soul of true federalism but the interlocking of all interests and all activities.
The true state must gather up every interest within itself. ”

“ The modern teacher is like the modern curator who thinks the group significance of a particular classification more important than the significance of each isolated piece. The modern teacher does not wish his pupils’ minds to be like an old-fashioned museum—a hodge-podge of isolated facts—but a useful workshop.
Again, to learn genuine discussion should be considered an essential part of our education. Every child must be trained to meet the clash of difference—difference of opinion, difference of interest—which life brings. ”

“ Democracy is not worked out at the polling-booths; it is the bringing forth of a genuine collective will, one to which every single being must contribute the whole of his complex life, as one which every single being must express the whole of at one point. Thus the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization. Many men despise politics because they see that politics manipulate, but make nothing. If politics are to be the highest activity of man, as they should be, they must be clearly understood as creative. ”

“ The fulness, bigness of my life is not measured by the amount I do, nor the number of people I meet, but how far the whole is expressed through me. This is the reason why unifying gives me a sense of life and more unifying gives me a sense of more life—there is more of the whole and of me. My worth to society is not how valuable a part I am. I am not unique in the world because I am different from any one else, but because I am a whole seen from a special point of view. ”

“ Freedom then is the identifying of the individual will with the whole will—the supreme activity of life. Free the spirit of man and then we can trust the spirit of man, and is not the very essence of this freeing of the spirit of man the process of taking him from the self-I to the group-I? That we are free only through the social order, only as fast as we identify ourselves with the whole, implies practically that to gain our freedom we must take part in all the life around us: join groups, enter into many social relations, and begin to win freedom for ourselves. ”

“ Our relation to society is so close that there is no room for either rights or duties. This means a new ethics and a new politics. Citizenship is not a right nor a privilege nor a duty, but an activity to be exercised every moment of the time. Democracy does not exist unless each man is doing his part fully every minute, unless every one is taking his share in building the state-to-be. This is the trumpet call to men to-day. A creative citizenship must be made the force of American political life, a trained, responsible citizenship always in control creating always its own life. ”

“ Loyalty to a collective will which we have not created and of which we are, therefore, not an integral part, is slavery. We belong to our community just in so far as we are helping to make that community; then loyalty follows, then love follows. Loyalty means the consciousness of oneness, the full realization that we succeed or fail, live or die, are saved or damned together. The only unity or community is one we have made of ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves. [20]
Thus the social process is one all-inclusive, Self-sufficing process. ”

“ Whether we can have a lasting peace or not depends upon whether we have advanced far enough to be capable of loyalty to a higher unit, not as a substitute for our old patriotism to our country, but in addition to it. Peace will come by the group consciousness rising from the national to the international unit. This cannot be done through the imagination alone but needs actual experiments in world union, or rather experiments first in the union of two or more nations. Men go round lecturing to kind-hearted audiences and say, “Can you not be loyal to something bigger than a nation?” ”

“ What a futile and childish idea which leaves out of account the whole body of citizenship! It is only through this main body of citizenship that we can have a decent government and a sound social life. That is, in other words, it is only by a genuine appreciation of the individual, of every single individual, that there can be any reform movement with strength and constructive power. The wide-spread fallacy that good officials make a good city is one which lies at the root of much of our thinking and insidiously works to ruin our best plans, our most serious efforts. ”

“ Noblesse oblige has had a splendid use in the world, but it is somewhat worn out now simply because we are rapidly getting away from the selfish point of view. I don’t do things now because my position or my standing or my religion or my anything else demands it, nor because others need it, but because it is a whole-imperative, that is, a social imperative. We cannot transcend self by means of others, but only through the synthesis of self and others. Wholeness is an irresistible force compelling every member. The consciousness of this is the wellspring of our power. ”

“ There is no alchemy by which the poornesses and weaknesses of the individual get transmuted in the group; there is no trick by which we can lose them in the whole. The truth is that all that the individual has or is enhances society, all that the individual lacks, detracts from society. The state will become a splendid thing when each one of us becomes a splendid individual. Democracy does not mean being lost in the mass, it means the contribution of every power I possess to social uses. The individual is not lost in the whole, he makes the whole. ”

“ The law of the group is not arbitrary but intrinsic. Nothing is more practical for our daily lives than an understanding of this. The group-spirit is the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night—it is our infallible guide—it is the Spirit of democracy. ”

“ What our political life needs to-day is to get at the will of the people and to incorporate it in our government, to substitute a man-governed country for a machine-governed country. If politics are to be no longer mysterious and remote, but the warp and woof of our lives, if they are to be neither a game nor a business, far different methods must be adopted from any we have hitherto known. ”

“ We have long thought of politics as entirely outside our daily life manipulated by those set apart for the purpose. The methods by which the party platform is constructed are not those which put into it the real issues before the public; the tendency is to put in what will elect candidates or to cover up the real issues by generalities. But just so long as we separate politics and our daily life, just so long shall we have all our present evils. Politics can no longer be an extra-activity of the American people, they must be a means of satisfying our actual wants. ”

“ Then we shall have the spontaneous activity of freedom. Let us not be martyrs. Let us not give up bread and coal that the ends of the Great War may be won, with the feeling of a restricted life, but with the feeling that we have gained thereby a fuller life. Let us joyously do the work of the world because we are the world. Such is the élan de vie, the joy of high activity, which leaps forward with force, in freedom. ”