THE NEW STATE
By Mary Parker Follett

Chapter XX
The Growth of Democracy in America

The two problems of democracy to-day are: (1) how to make the
individual politically effective, and (2) how to give practical
force to social policies.  Both of these mean that the individual
is at last recognized in political life.  The history of democracy
has been the history of the steady growth towards individualism. 
The hope of democracy rests on the individual.  It is all one
whether we say that democracy is the development of social
consciousness, or that democracy is the development of
individualism; until we have become in some degree socially
conscious we shall not realize the value of the individual.  It is
not insignificant that a marked increase in the appreciation of
social values has gone hand in hand with a growing recognition of
the individual.

  From the Middle Ages the appreciation of the individual has
steadily grown.  The Reformation in the sixteenth century was an
individualistic movement.  The apotheosis of the individual,
however, soon led us astray, involving as it did an entirely
erroneous notion of the relation of the individual to society, and
gave us the false political philosophy of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.  Men thought of individuals as separate and
then had to invent fictions to join them, hence the social contract
fiction.  The social contract theory was based on the idea of the
state as an aggregate of units; it therefore followed that the
rights of those units must be maintained.  Thus individual rights
became a kind of contractual rights.  And during the nineteenth
century, fostered by Bentham's ideas of individual happiness, by
the _laissez-faire_ of the Manchester school and the new industrial
order, by Herbert Spencer's interpretation of the recent additions
to biological knowledge, by Mill, etc., the doctrine of "individual
rights" became more firmly entrenched.  Government interference was
strenuously resisted, "individual" freedom was the goal of our
desire, "individual" competition and the survival of the fittest
the accredited method of progress.  The title of Herbert Spencer's
book, "The Man versus the State," implies the whole of this false
political philosophy built on an unrelated individual.

  But during the latter part of the nineteenth century there began
to grow up, largely through the influence of T.H. Green, influenced
in his turn by Kant and Hegel, an entirely different theory of the
state.  The state was now not to be subordinate to the individual,
but it was to be the fulfillment of the individual.  Man was to get
his rights and his liberty from membership in society.  Green had
at once a large influence on the political thought of England and
America, and gradually, with other influences, upon practical
politics.  The growing recognition of the right and duty of the
state to foster the life of its members, so clearly and
unequivocally expressed in the social legislation of Lloyd George,
we see as early as the Education Act of 1870, the Factory Act of
1878 (which systematized and extended previous Factory Acts), and
the various mines and collieries acts from 1872.

  I do not mean to imply that the growing activity of the state was
due entirely or mainly to the change of theory in regard to the
individual and the state; when the disastrous results of _laissez-
faire_ were seen, then people demanded state regulation of
industry.  Theory and practice have acted and reacted on each
other.  Some one must trace for us, step by step, the interaction
of theory and practice in regard to the individual and his relation
to society, from the Middle Ages down to the present day [1].

     1.  Also the development of the relation of individualistic
     theories to the rise and decline of the doctrines regarding
     the national state.

  What has been the trend of our development in America? 
Particularism was at its zenith when our government was founded. 
Our growth has been away from particularism and towards a true
individualism [2].

     2.  I do not wish, however, to minimize the truly democratic
     nature of our local institutions.

  It is usual to say that the framers of our constitution were
individualists and gave to our government an individualistic turn. 
We must examine this.  They did safeguard and protect the
individual in his life and property, they did make the bills of
rights an authoritative part of our constitutions, they did make it
possible for individuals to aggrandize themselves at the expense of
society, their ideal of justice was indeed of individual not of
social justice.  And yet all this was negative.  The individual was
given no large positive function.  The individual was feared and
suspected.  Our early constitutions showed no faith in men: the
Massachusetts constitution expressly stated that it was not a
government of men.  The law of the land was embodied in written
documents with great difficulty of amendment just because the
people were not trusted.  As we look at the crudities of the
Declaration of Independence, as we examine our aristocratic state
constitutions, as we study our restricted federal constitution, as
we read the borrowed philosophy of our early statesmen, we see very
little indication of modern democracy with its splendid faith in
man, but a tendency towards aristocracy and a real lack of
individualism on every side.

  To be sure it was at the same time true that the government was
given no positive power.  Every one was thoroughly frightened of
governments which were founded on status and resulted in arbitrary
authority.  The executive power was feared, therefore it was so
equipped as to be unequal to its task; the legislative power was
feared, so the courts were given power over the legislatures, were
allowed to declare their acts valid or invalid; the national
government was feared, therefore Congress was given only certain
powers.  Power was not granted because no man and no institution
was trusted.  The will to act could not be a motive force in 1789,
because no embodiment of the will was trusted; the framers of our
constitutions could not conceive of a kind of will which could be
trusted.  Fear, not faith, suspicion not trust, were the foundation
of our early government.  The government had, therefore, no large
formative function, it did not look upon itself as a large social
power.  As the individual was to be protected, the government was
to protect.  All our thinking in the latter part of the eighteenth
century was rooted in the idea of a weak government; this has been
thought to show our individualism [1].

     1.  While it is true that there were undemocratic elements in
     the mental equipment and psychological bent of our
     forefathers, and it is these which I have emphasized because
     from them came our immediate development, it is equally true
     that there were also sound democratic elements to which we can
     trace our present ideas of democracy.  Such tracing even in
     brief form there is not space for here.

  But our government as imagined by its founders did not work [2].

     2.  It became at once evident that a government whose chief
     function was to see that individual rights, property rights,
     state rights, were not invaded, was hardly adequate to unite
     our colonies with all their separate instincts, or to meet the
     needs of a rapidly development continent.  Our national
     government at once adopted a constructive policy.  Guided by
     Hamilton it assumed constructive powers authority for which
     could be found in the constitution only by a most liberal
     construction of its terms.  When Jefferson, an
     antinationalist, acquired Louisiana in 1803, it seemed plain
     that no such restricted national government as was first
     conceived could possibly work.

Our system of checks and balances gave no real power to any
department.  Above all there was no way of fixing responsibility. 
A condition of chaos was the result.  Such complicated machinery
was almost unworkable; there was no way of getting anything done
under our official system.  Moreover, the individual was not
satisfied with his function of being protected, he wanted an actual
share in the government.  Therefore an extra-official system was
adopted, the party organization.  The two chief reasons for this
adoption were: (1) to give the individual some share in government,
(2) to give the government a chance to carry out definite policies,
to provide some kind of unifying power.

  What effect has party organization had on the individual and on
government?  The domination of the party gives no real opportunity
to the individual: originality is crushed; the aim of all party
organization is to turn out a well-running vote machine.  The party
is not interested in men but in voters -- an entirely different
matter.  Party organization created artificial majorities, but gave
to the individual little power in or connection with government. 
The basic weakness of party organization is that the individual
gets his significance only through majorities.  Any method which
looks to the fulfilment of the individual through the domination of
majorities is necessarily not only partial but false.  The present
demand that the nation shall have the full power of the individual
is the heaviest blow that party organization has ever received.

  Now consider, on the other hand, what party organization has done
for the government.  The powers of government moved steadily to
political bosses and business corporations.  Boss-rule, party
domination and combinations of capital filled in the gaps in the
system of government we inaugurated in the eighteenth century.  The
marriage of business and politics, while it has been the chief
factor in entrenching the party system, was the outcome of that
system, or rather it was the outcome of the various unworkabilities
of our official government.  The expansion of big business, with
its control of politics, evasion of law, was inevitable; we simply
had no machinery adequate to our need, namely, the development of
a vast, untouched continent.  The urge of that development was an
overwhelming force which swept irresistibly on, carrying everything
before it, swallowing up legal disability, creating for itself
extra-legal methods.  We have now, therefore, a system of party
organization and political practice which subverts all our
theories.  Theoretically, the people have the power, but really the
government is the primaries, the conventions, the caucuses. 
Officials hold from the party.  Party politics became corrupt
because party government was irresponsible government.  The
insidious power of the machine is due to its irresponsibility.

  The evils of our big business have not come because Americans are
prone to cheat, because they want to get the better of their
fellows, because their greed is inordinate, their ambition
domineering.  Individuals have not been to blame, but our whole
system.  It is the system which must be changed.  Our constitution
and laws made possible the development of big business; our courts
were not "bought" by big business, but legal decisions and business
practice were formed by the same inheritance and tradition.  The
reformation of neither will accomplish the results we wish, but the
nation-wide acceptance, through all classes and all interests, of
a different point of view.

  The next step was the wave of reform that swept over the country.
The motive was excellent; the method poor.  The method was poor
because the same method was adopted which these reform movements
were organized to fight, one based on pure crowd philosophy.  It
was a curious case of astigmatism.  The trouble was that the
reformers did not see accurately what they were fighting; they were
fighting essentially the nonrecognition of the individual, but they
did not see this, so they went on basing all their own work on the
non-appreciation of men.  Their essential weakness was the weakness
of the party machine -- all their efforts were turned to the voter
not the man.  Their triumphs were always the triumphs of the polls.
Their methods were principally three:  change in the forms of
government (charters, etc.), the nomination of "good" men to
office, and exhortation to induce "the people" to elect them.

  The idea of "good" men in office was the fetich of many reform
associations.  They thought that their job was to find three or
four "good" men and then once a year to hypnotize the electorate to
"do their duty" and put these men into office, and then all would
go well if before another year three or four more good men could be
found.  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
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.
This extraordinary belief in officials, this faith in the panacea
of a change of character, must go.  If our present mechanical
government is to turn into a living, breathing, pulsing life, it
must be composed of an entire citizenship educated and responsible.

  This the reform associations now recognize, in some cases
partially, in some cases fully.  The good government association of
to-day has a truer idea of its function.  The campaign for the
election of city officials is used as a means of educating the mass
of citizens: besides the investigation and publication of facts,
there is often a clear showing of the aims of government and an
enlightening discussion of method.  Such associations have always
considered the interests of the city as a whole; they have not
appealed, like the party organization, to local sentiment.

  I have spoken of the relation of the reform movement of the last
of the nineteenth century to the body of citizenship.  What was its
relation to government?  The same spirit applied to government
meant patching, mending, restraining, but it did not mean
constructive work, it had not a formative effect on our
institutions.  Against any institution that has to be guarded every
moment lest it do evil, there is a strong a priori argument that it
should not exist.  This until recently has not been sufficiently
taken into account.  Now, however, in the beginning of the
twentieth century, we see many evidences that the old era of
restraint is over and the constructive period of reform begun.  We
see it, for instance, in our Bureaus of Municipal Research; we see
it in the more progressive sections of our state constitutional
conventions.  But the chief error of the nineteenth-century
reformers was not that they were reactionary, nor that they were
timid, nor that they were insincere, nor that they were hedgers. 
They were wanting in neither sincerity nor courage.  Their error
was simply that they did not appreciate the value of the
individual.  Individualism instead of being something we are
getting away from, is something we are just catching sight of.

  And if our institutions were founded on a false political
philosophy which taught "individual rights," distorted ideas of
liberty and equality, and thought of man versus the state, if our
political development was influenced by a false social psychology
which saw the people as a crowd and gave them first to the party
bosses and next to the social reformers, our whole material
development was dominated by a false economic philosophy which saw
the greatest good of all obtained by each following his own good in
his own way.  This did not mean the development of individuals but
the crushing of individuals -- of all but a few.  The Manchester
school of economics, which was bound to flourish extensively under
American conditions, combined with a narrow legal point of view,
which for a hundred years interpreted our constitutions in
accordance with an antiquated philosophy and a false psychology, to
make particularism the dominant note in American life.

  The central point of our particularism was the idea of being let
alone.  First, the _individual_ was to be let alone, the pioneer on
his reclaimed land or the pioneer of industry.  But when men saw
that their gain would be greater by some sort of combination, then
the _trusts_ were to be let alone -- freedom of contract was called
liberty!  Our courts, completely saturated with this philosophy,
let the trusts alone.  The interpretation of our courts, our
corrupt party organization, our institutions and our social
philosophy, hastened and entrenched the monopolistic age.  Natural
rights meant property rights.  The power of single men or single
corporations at the end of the nineteenth century marked the height
of our particularism, of our subordination of the state to single
members.  They were like _pate de foie gras_ made by the
enlargement of the goose's liver.  It is usual to disregard the
goose.  The result of our false individualism has been non-
conservation of our national resources, exploitation of labor, and
political corruption.  We see the direct outcome in our slums, our
unregulated industries, our "industrial unrest," etc.

  But egotism, materialism, anarchy are not true individualism. 
To-day, however, we have many evidences of the steadily increasing
appreciation of the individual and a true understanding of his
place in society, his relation to the state.  Chief among these
are: (1) the movement towards industrial democracy, (2) the woman
movement, (3) the increase of direct government, and (4) the
introduction of social programs into party platforms.  These are
parallel developments from the same root.  What we have awakened to
now is the importance of every single man.

  The first, the trend towards industrial democracy, will, in its
relation to the new state, be considered later.  The second, the
woman movement, belongs to the past rather than to the present. 
Its culmination has overrun the century mark and makes what is
really a nineteenth-century movement seem as if it belonged to the
twentieth.  It belongs to the past because it is merely the end of
the movement for the extension of the suffrage.  Our suffrage
related originally in many states on property distinctions; in New
Hampshire there was a religious and property qualification, -- only
Protestant tax-payers could vote.  Gradually it became manhood
suffrage, then the immigrants were admitted, later the negroes,
then Colorado opened its suffrage to women, and now in thirteen
states women have the full suffrage.  The essence of the woman
movement is not that women as women should have the vote, but that
women as individuals should have the vote.  There is a fundamental
distinction here.

  The third and fourth indications of the growth of democracy, or
the increase of individualism (I speak of these always as
synonymous) -- the tendency towards more and more direct government
and the introduction of social programs into party platforms --
will be considered in the next chapter together with a third
tendency in American politics which is bound up with these two: I
refer to the increase of administrative responsibility.

  The theory of government based on individual rights no longer has
a place in modern political theory; it no longer guides us entirely
in legislation but has yielded largely to a truer practice; yet it
still occupies a large place in current thought, in the speeches of
our practical politicians, in our institutions of government, and
in America in our law court decisions.  This being so it is
important for us to look for the reasons.  First, there are of
course many people who trail along behind.  Secondly, partly
through the influence of Green and Bosanquet, the idea of contract
has been slowly fading away, and many people have been frightened
at its disappearance because Hegelianism, even in the modified form
in which it appears in English theory, _seems_ to enthrone the
state and override the individual [1].

     1.  These English writers to whom our debt is so large are not
     responsible for this, but their misinterpreters. 

Third, the large influence which Tarde, Le Bon, and their followers
have had upon us with their suggestion and imitation theories of
society -- theories based on a pure particularism.  The development
of social and political organization has been greatly retarded by
this school of sociology.  Fourth, our economic development is
still associated in the minds of many with the theories of
individual rights.

  A more penetrating analysis of society during recent years,
however, has uncovered the true conception of individualism hidden
from the first within the "individualistic" movement.  All through
history we see the feeling out for the individual; there are all
the false trails followed and there are the real steps taken.  The
false trails led to the individual rights of politics, the
_laissez-faire_ of economics and our whole false particularism. 
The real steps have culminated in our ideas of to-day.  To
substitute for the fictitious democracy of equal rights and
"consent of the governed," the living democracy of a united,
responsible people is the task of the twentieth century.  We seek
now the method.
