THE NEW STATE
By Mary Parker Follett

Chapter I
The Group and the New Psychology

Politics must have a technique based on the understanding of the
laws of association, that is, based on a new and progressive social
psychology.  Politics alone should not escape all the modern
tendency of scientific method, of analysis, of efficiency
engineering.  The study of democracy has been based largely on the
study of institutions; it should be based on the study of how men
behave together.  We have to deal, not with institutions, or any
mechanical thing, or with abstract ideas, or "man," or anything but
just men, ordinary men.  The importance of the new psychology is
that it acknowledges man as the centre and shaper of his universe. 
In his nature all institutions are latent and perforce must be
adapted to this nature.  Man not things must be the starting point
of the future.

  But man in association, for no man lives to himself.  And we must
understand further that the laws of association are the laws of the
group.  We have long been trying to understand the relation of the
individual to society; we are only just beginning to see that there
is no "individual," that there is no "society."  It is not strange,
therefore, that our efforts have gone astray, that our thinking
yields small return for politics. The old psychology was based on
the isolated individual as the unit, on the assumption that a man
thinks, feels and judges independently. Now that we know that there
is no such thing as a separate ego, that individuals are created by
reciprocal interplay, our whole study of psychology is being
transformed.

  Likewise there is no "society" thought of vaguely as the mass of
people we see around us.  I am always in relation not to "society"
but to some concrete group.  When do we ever as a matter of fact
think of "society" ?  Are we not always thinking of our part in our
board of directors or college faculty, in the dinner party last
night [1], in our football team, our club, our political party, our
trade-union, our church?  

     1.  Probably by no means a group, but tending in some
     instances in that direction, as in the discussion or
     conference dinners now so common.

Practically "society" is for every one of us a number of groups. 
The recognition of this constitutes a new step in sociology
analogous to the contribution William James made in regard to the
individual.  James brought to popular recognition the truth that
since man is a complex of experiences there are many selves in each
one.  So society as a complex of groups includes many social minds. 
The craving we have for union is satisfied by group life, groups
and groups, groups ever widening, ever unifying, but always groups. 
We sometimes say that man is spiritually dependent upon society;
what we are referring to is his psychic relation to his groups. 
The vital relation of the individual to the world is through
groups; they are the potent factors in shaping our lives.

  Hence social psychology cannot be the application of the old
individual psychology to a number of people.  A few years ago I
went to a lecture on "Social Psychology," as the subject was
announced.  Not a word was said except on the nervous systems and
other aspects of individual psychology, but at the last moment the
lecturer told us that had there been time he would have applied
what he has said to social conditions!  It reminded me of the
mental processes of the man who, when he wanted to know something
about Chinese metaphysics, first looked up China in the
encyclopedia and then metaphysics and put them together.  The new
psychology must take people with their inheritance, their
"tendencies," their environment, and then focus its attention on
their interrelatings.  The most careful laboratory work must be
done to discover the conditions which make these interrelatings
possible, which make there interrelatings fruitful.

  Some writers make "socially minded" tendencies on the part of
individuals the subject of social psychology, but such tendencies
belong still to the field of individual psychology.  A social
action is not an individual initiative with social application [1].

     1. The old definition of the word social has been a tremendous
     drag on politics.  Social policies are not policies for the
     good of the people but policies created by the people, etc.
     etc.  We read in the work of a continental sociologist, "When
     a social will is born in the brain of a man," but a social
     will never is born in the brain of a man.

Neither is social psychology the determination of how far social
factors determine the individual consciousness.  Social psychology
must concern itself primarily with the _interaction_ of minds.

  Early psychology was based solely on the study of the individual;
early sociology was based on the study of society.  But there is no
such thing as the "individual," there is no such thing as
"society"; there is only the group and the group-unit--the social
individual.  Social psychology must begin with an intensive study
of the group, of the selective processes which go on within it, the
differentiated reactions, the likenesses and unlikenesses, and the
spiritual energy which unites them.

  The acceptance and the living of the new psychology will do away
with all the progeny of particularistic psychology: consent of the
governed, majority rule, external leadership, industrial wars,
national wars etc.  From the analysis of the group must come an
understanding of collective thought and collective feeling, of the
common will and concerted activity, of the true nature of freedom,
the illusion of self-and-others, the essential unity of men, the
real meaning of patriotism, and the whole secret of progress and of
life as a genuine interpenetration which produces true community.

  All thinking men are demanding a new state.  The question is --
What form shall that state take?  No one of us will be able to give
an answer until we have studied men in association and have
discovered the laws of association.  This has not been done yet,
but already we can see that a political science which is not based
on a knowledge of the laws of association gained by a study of the
group will soon seem the crudest kind of quackery.  Syndicalism in
reaction to the so-called "metaphysical" foundation of politics is
based on "objective rights," on function, on its conception of
modes of association which shall emphasize the object of the
associated and not the relation of the associated to one another. 
The new psychology goes a step further and sees these as one, but
how can any of these things be discussed abstractly?  Must we not
first study men in association?  Young men in the hum of actual
life, practical politicians, the members of constitutional
conventions, labor leaders -- all these must base their work on the
principles of group psychology.

  The fundamental reason for the study of group psychology is that
no one can give us democracy, we must learn democracy.  To be a
democrat is not to decide on a certain form of human association,
it is to learn how to live with other men.  The whole labor
movement is being kept back by people not knowing how to live
together much more than by any deliberate refusal to grant justice. 
The trouble with syndicalism is that its success depends on group
action and we know almost nothing of the laws of the group.

  I have used group in this book with the meaning of men
associating under the law of interpenetration as opposed to the law
of the crowd -- suggestion and imitation.  This may be considered
an arbitrary definition, but of course I do not care about names,
I only want to emphasize the fact that men meet under two different
sets of laws.  Social psychology may include both group psychology
and crowd psychology, but of these two group psychology is much the
more important.  For a good many years now we have been dominated
by the crowd school, by the school which taught that people met
together are governed by suggestion and imitation, and less notice
has been taken of all the interplay which is the real social
process that we have in a group but not in a crowd.  How men behave
in crowds, and the relation of the crowd conception of politics to
democracy, will be considered in later chapters.  While I recognize
that men are more often at present under the laws of the crowd than
of the group, I believe that progress depends on the group, and,
therefore, that the group should be the basis of a progressive
social psychology.  The group process contains the secret of
collective life, it is the key to democracy, it is the master
lesson for every individual to learn, it is our chief hope for the
political, the social, the international life of the future [1].

     1.  This is essentially the process by which sovereignty is
     created.  Therefore chapters II-VI on The Group Process are
     the basis of the conception of sovereignty given in Part III
     and of the relation of that conception to the politics of
     reconstruction.


