THE NEW STATE
By Mary Parker Follett

Chapter XXI
After Direct Government -- What?

We have outgrown our political system.  We must face this frankly. 
We had, first, government by law [1], second, government by parties
and big business, and all the time some sort of fiction of the
"consent of the governed" which we said meant democracy.

     1.  With the executive and legislative limited in their
     powers, the decisions of the courts gradually came,
     especially as they developed constructive powers, to be a body
     of law which guided the American people.

But we have never had government by the people.  The third step is
to be the development of machinery by which the fundamental ideas
of the people can be got at and embodied; further, by which we can
grow fundamental ideas; further still, by which we can prepare the
soil in which fundamental ideas can grow.  Direct government will
we hope lead to this step, but it cannot alone do this.  How then
shall it be supplemented?  Let us look at the movement for direct
government with two others closely connected with it -- the
concentration of administrative responsibility and the increase of
social legislation -- three movements which are making an enormous
change in American political life.  Then let us see if we can
discover what idea it is necessary to add to those involved in
these three movements, in other words what new principle is needed
in modern politics.

  We are at present trying to secure (1) a more efficient
government, and (2) a real not a nominal control of government by
the people.  The tendency to transfer power to the American
citizenship, and the tendency towards efficient government by the
employment of experts and the concentration of administrative
authority, are working side by side in American political life to-
day.  These two tendencies are not opposed, and if the main thesis
of this book has been proved, it is understood by this time why
they are not opposed.  Democracy I have said is not antithetical to
aristocracy, but includes aristocracy.  And it does not include it
accidently, as it were, but aristocracy is a necessary part of
democracy.  Therefore administrative responsibility and expert
service are as necessary a part of genuine democracy as popular
control is a necessary accompaniment of administrative
responsibility.   They are parallel in importance.  Some writers
seem to think that because we are giving so much power to
executives, we must safeguard our "liberty" by giving at the same
time ultimate authority to the people.  While this is of course so
in a way, I believe a truer way of looking at the matter is to see
centralized responsibility and popular control, not one dependent
on the other, but both as part of the same thing -- our new
democracy.

  Both our city and our state governments are being reorganized. 
We have long felt that city government should be concentrated in
the hands of a few experts.  The old idea that any honest citizen
was fit for most public offices is rapidly disappearing.  Over
three hundred cities have adopted the commission form of
government, and there is a growing movement for the city-manager
plan.  But at the same time we must have a participant electorate. 
We can see three stages in our thinking: (1) our early American
democracy thought that public offices could be filled by the
average citizen; (2) our reform associations thought that the
salvation of our cities depended on expert officials; (3) present
thinking sees the necessity of combining expert service and an
active electorate [1].

     1.  For ways of doing this see Part III.

  The increasing number of states which are holding, or are
considering holding, constitutional conventions for the
reconstruction of state governments shows the wide-spread
dissatisfaction with our state machinery.  The principal object of
nearly all of these conventions is increased efficiency through
concentration of responsibility.   In our fear of abuse of power
there has been no one to use power; we must change this if we are
to have administrative efficiency.  Most of the schemes for a
reconstruction of state governments are based on (1) concentration
of executive leadership in the hands of the governor, and (2)
direct responsibility to the electorate.  The former implies
appointment of administrative officials by the governor, an
executive budget, and readjustment in the relation of executive and
legislative so that the governor can introduce and defend bills. 
The latter necessitates the ability of the electorate to criticize
work done and plans proposed.

  Therefore the tendency towards an effective responsibility
through the increased power of our executive does not mean that
less is required of citizens, but more.  To the initiative,
referendum and recall is to be added the general control by the
people themselves of our state policies.  Executive leadership may
reduce the power of legislatures, but it will increase the power of
the electorate both directly and indirectly: indirectly by
weakening party organization, and directly by giving the people
more and more control.  It has been suggested, for instance, that
in any dispute between governor and legislature the people might be
called in to decide, either directly by passing on the proposed
legislation itself, or by a new election.  At any rate ultimate
control must somehow be with the people.  That this was not
sufficiently provided for in the New York constitution submitted to
the voters of New York a few years ago was one of the reasons for
its rejection.  What frightened the men of New York was undoubtedly
the increased power of the state administrative without any
corresponding increase in democratic control.  To increase at the
same time democratic control and administrative responsibility,
while not an easy thing to do, is the task of our new
constitutions.
  With regard to direct government we are at present making two
mistakes: first, in thinking that we can get any benefit from it if
it is operated from within the party organization [1]; secondly, in
thinking that it is merely to record, that it is based on counting,
on the preponderance of votes.

     1.  We used to think frequent elections democratic.  Now we
     know that this mean simply an increase of party influence and
     a decrease of official responsibility.

  The question staring us in the face in American politics to-day
is -- What possible good can direct government do us if party
organization remain in control?  The movement for direct primaries,
popular choice of United States senators, presidential primaries,
initiative and referendum, the recall etc., will bear little fruit
unless something is done at the same time to break the power of the
party.  Many people tell us that our present party system, with its
method of caucuses, conventions, bosses etc., has failed, and they
are now looking to the direct primary as their hope, but the direct
primary in itself will not free us from the tyranny of party rule. 
Look at this much-lauded direct primary and see what it is actually
giving us: the political machines have known from the beginning how
to circumvent it, it often merely increases the power of the boss,
and at its best it is accomplishing no integrating of the American
people -- the real task of democracy.  No development of party
machinery or reform of party machinery is going to give us the will
of the people only a new method.

  Moreover, merely giving more power to the people does not
automatically reduce the hold of the party; some positive measures
must be taken if direct government is not to fail exactly as
representative government has failed.  The faith in direct
government as a sure panacea is almost pathetic when we remember
how in the past one stronghold after another has been captured by
the party.  Much has been written by advocates of direct government
to show that it will destroy the arbitrary power of the party,
destroy its relation to big business, etc., but we see little
evidence of this.  We all know, and we can see every year if we
watch the history of referendum votes, that the party organization
is quite able to use "direct government" for its own ends.  Direct
government worked by the machine will be subject to much the same
abuses as representative government.  And direct and representative
government cannot be synthesized by executive leadership alone. 
All that is said in favor of the former may be true, but it can
never be made operative unless we are able to find some way of
breaking the power of the machine.  Direct government can be
beneficial to American politics only if accompanied by the
organization of voters in nonpartisan groups for the production of
common ideas and a collective purpose.  Of itself direct government
can never become the responsible government of a people.

  I have said that direct government will never succeed if operated
from within the party organization, nor if it is considered, as it
usually is, merely a method by which the people can accept or
reject what is proposed to them.  Let us now look at the second
point. We have seen that party organization does not allow group
methods, that the party is a crowd: suggestion by the boss,
imitation by the mass, is the rule.  But direct government also may
and probably will be crowd government if it is merely a means to
counting.  As far as direct government can be given the technique
of a genuine democracy, it is an advance step in political method,
but the trouble is that many of its supporters do not see this
necessity; they have given it their adherence because of their
belief in majority rule, in their belief that to count one and one
and one is to get at the will of the people.  But for each to count
as one means crowd rule -- of course the party captures us.  Yet
even if it did not, we do not want direct government if we are to
fall from party domination into the tyranny of numbers.  That every
man was to count as one was the contribution of the old psychology
to politics; the new psychology goes deeper and further, -- it
teaches that each is to be the whole at one point.  This changes
our entire conception of politics.  Voting at the polls is not to
be the expression of one man after another.  My vote should not be
my freak will any more than it should be my adherence to party, but
my individual expression of the common will.  The particularist
vote does not represent the individual will because the evolution
of the individual will is bound up in a larger evolution. 
Therefore, _my duty as a citizen is not exhausted by what I bring
to the state; my test as a citizen is how fully the whole can be
expressed in or through me_.

  The vote in itself does not give us democracy -- we have yet to
learn democracy's method.  We still think too much of the
solidarity of the vote; what we need is solidarity of purpose,
solidarity of will.  To make my vote a genuine part of the
expression of the collective will is the first purpose of politics;
it is only through group organization that the individual learns
this lesson, that he learns to be an effective political member. 
People often ask, "Why is democracy so unprogressive?"  It is just
because we have not democracy in this sense.  As long as the vote
is that of isolated individuals, the tendency will be for us to
have an unprogressive vote.  This state of things can be remedied,
first, by a different system of education, secondly, by giving men
opportunity to exercise that fundamental intermingling with others
which is democracy.  To the consideration of how this can be
accomplished Part III is mainly directed.

  But I am making no proposal for some hard and fast method by
which every vote shall register the will of a definite, fixed
number of men, rather than of one man.  I am talking of a new
method of living _by_ which the individual shall learn to be part
of social wholes, _through_ which he shall express social wholes. 
The individual not the group must be the basis of organization. 
But the individual is created by many groups, his vote cannot
express his relation to one group; it must ideally, I have said,
express the whole from his point of view, actually, it must express
as much of the whole as the variety of his group life makes
possible [1].
     1.  See ch. XXX, "Political Pluralism and Functionalism."

  When shall we begin to understand what the ballot-box means in
our political life?"  _It creates nothing_ -- it merely registers
what is already created.  If direct government is to be more than
ballot-box democracy it must learn not to record what is on the
surface, but to dig down underneath the surface.  No "democracy"
which is based on a preponderance of votes can ever succeed.  The
essence of democracy is an educated and responsible citizenship
evolving common ideas and _willing_ its own social life.  The
dynamic thought is the thought which represents the most complete
synthesis.  In art the influence of a school does not depend upon
the number of its adherents but upon the extent to which that
school represents a synthesis of thought.  This is exactly so in
politics.  Direct government must create.  It can do this through
group organization.  We are at the crossroads now: shall we give
the initiative and referendum to a crowd or to an interpenetrating
group?

  To sum up: the corruption of politics is due largely to the
conception of the people as a crowd.  To change this idea is, I
believe, the first step in the reform of our political life. 
Unless this is done before we make sweeping changes in the
mechanism of government, such changes will not mean progress.  If
the people are a crowd capable of nothing but imitation, what is
the use of all the direct government we are trying to bring about,
how can a "crowd" be considered capable of political decisions? 
Direct government gives to every one the right to express his
opinion.  The question is whether that opinion is to be his
particular opinion or the imitation of the crowd or the creation of
the group.  The party has dominated us in the past chiefly because
we have truly believed the people to be a crowd.  When we
understand the law of association as the law of psychic interplay,
then indeed shall we be on the way towards the New Democracy.

  Direct government will not succeed if it is operated through the
party organization; it will not succeed even if separated from
party control if it means the crowd in another guise.  To be
successful direct government must be controlled by some method not
yet brought into practical politics.  When we have an organized
electorate, we shall begin to see the advantages of direct
government.

  At the beginning of this chapter three closely related movements
in American politics were mentioned.  The third must now be
considered -- the introduction of social programs into party
platforms.

  We have had three policies in legislation: (1) the let-alone
policy [1], (2) the regulation policy, and now (3) the constructive
policy is just appearing.

     1.  _Laissez-faire_ was popular when there were great numbers
     of individual producers.  When the large-scale business system
     made wage-earners of these, there was the beginning of the
     break-down of _laissez-faire_.

  In order to get away from the consequences of _laissez-faire_, we
adopted, at the end of the nineteenth century, an almost equally
pernicious one, the regulation theory.  The error at the bottom of
the "regulation" idea of government is that people may be allowed
to do as they please (_laissez-faire_) until they have built up
special rules and privileges for themselves, and then they shall be
"regulated."  The regulation theory of government is that we are to
give every opportunity for efficiency to come to the top in order
that we shall get the benefit of that efficiency, but at the same
time our governmental machinery is to be such that efficiency is to
be shorn of its power before it can do any harm -- a sort of
automatic blow-off.  Gauge your boiler (society) at what it will
stand without bursting, then when our ablest people get to that
point the blow-off will make society safe.

  But the most salient thing about present American politics is
that we are giving up both our let-alone and our regulation
policies in favor of a constructive policy.  There has been a
steady and comprehensible growth of democracy from this point of
view, that is, of the idea of the function of government being not
merely to protect, to adjust, to restrain, and all the negative
rest of it, but that the function of government should be to build,
to construct the life of its people.  We think now that a
constructive social policy is more democratic than the protection
of men in their individual rights and property.  In 1800 the
opposite idea prevailed, and Jefferson, not Hamilton, was
considered the Democrat.  We must reinterpret or restate the
fundamental principles of democracy.

  But why do we consider our present constructive social policies
more democratic?  Are they necessarily so?  Has not paternalistic
Germany constructive social policies for her people?  Social
legislation in England and America means an increase of democracy
because it is a movement which is in England and America bound up
with other democratic movements [1].

     1.  Besides the more obvious one of "universal suffrage."

In America we see at the same time the trend towards (1) an
increase of administrative responsibility, (2) an increase of
direct control by the people, (3) an increase of social
legislation.  Not one of these is independent of the other two. 
They have acted and reacted on one another.  Men have not first
been given a more direct share of government and then used their
increased power to adopt social policies.  The two have gone on
side by side.  Moreover, the adoption of social policies has
increased the powers of government and, therefore, it has more and
more come to be seen that popular control of government is
necessary.  At the same time the making of campaign issues out of
social policies has at once in itself made all the people more
important in politics.  Or it is equally true to say that giving
the people a closer share in government means that our daily lives
pass more naturally into the area of politics.  Hence we see, from
whichever point we begin, that these three movements are bound
together.

  Thus in America there is growing recognition of the fact that
social policies are not policies invented for the good of the
people, but policies created by the people.  The regulation theory
was based on the same fallacy as the let-alone theory, namely, that
government is something external to the structural life of the
people.  Government cannot leave us alone, it cannot regulate us,
it can only express us.  The scope of politics should be our whole
social life.  Our present idea of an omnipresent, ever-active,
articulate citizenship building up its own life within the frame of
politics is the most fruitful idea of modern times.

  Moreover, social legislation is an indication of the growth of
democracy, the increase of individualism, because it is legislation
for the individual.  We have had legislation to protect home
industries, we have encouraged agriculture, we have helped the
railroads by concessions and land grants, but we have not until
recently had legislation for the individual.  Social legislation
means legislation for the individual man: health laws, shorter
hours of work, workman's compensation, old age pensions, minimum
wage, prevention of industrial accidents, prohibition of child
labor, etc.  Over and over again our social legislation is pointed
to as a reaction against individualism.  On the contrary it shows
an increase of genuine individualism.  The _individual_ has never
been so appreciated as in the awakening _social_ world of to-day.

  This is not a contradiction of what is said in chapter XV, that
law according to its most progressive exponents is to serve not
individuals, but the community; that modern law thinks of men not
as separate individuals, but in their relation to one another. 
Modern law synthesizes the idea of individual and community through
its view of the social individual as the community-unit.  Law used
to be for the particularist individual; now it serves the
community, but the community-unit is the social individual.

  In our most recent books we see the expression "the new
individualism."  The meaning of this phrase, although never used by
him, is clearly implied in the writings of Mr. Roscoe Pound.  He
says "As a social institution the interests with which law is
concerned are social interests, but the chiefest of these social
interests is in the full human life of the individual."  Here is
expressed the essential meaning of the new individualism -- that it
is a synthesis of individual and society.  That the social
individual, the community-unit, is becoming "the individual" for
law is the most promising sign for the future of political method. 
When Mr. Pound says that the line between public law and private
law in jurisprudence is nothing more than a convenient mode of
expression, he shows us the old controversy in regard to the state
and the individual simply fading away.

  Social legislation, direct government, concentration of
administrative responsibility, are then indications of the growth
of democracy?  Yes, but only indications.  They can mean an actual
increase of democracy only if they are accompanied by the
development of those methods which shall make every man and his
daily needs the basis and the substance of politics.
