THE NEW STATE
By Mary Parker Follett

The Occupational Group:
Chapter XXXI
Political Pluralism and The True Federal State

IN the last two chapters I have taken up the two fundamental laws
of life -- the law of interpenetration and the law of multiples. 
(1) Sovereignty, we have seen, is the power generated within the
group -- dependent on the principle of interpenetration. (2) Man
joins many groups -- in order to express his multiple nature. These
two principles give us federalism.

  Let us, before considering the conception of federalism in
detail, sum up in a few sentences what has already been said of
these two principles. The fundamental truth of life we have seen is
self-perpetuating activity -- activity so regnant, so omnipresent,
so all-embracing, that it banishes even the conception of anything
static from the world of being. Conscious evolution means that we
must discover the essential principle of this activity and see that
it is at work in the humblest of its modes, the smallest group or
meeting of even two or three. The new psychology has brought to
political science the recognition of interpenetration and the
"compounding of consciousness" as the very condition of all life.
Our political methods must conform to life's methods. We must
understand and follow the laws of association that the state may
appear, that our own little purposes may be fulfilled.  _Little_
purposes? Is there any great and small? The humblest man and the
price of his daily loaf -- is this a small matter -- it hangs upon
the whole world situation to-day. In order that the needs of the
humblest shall be satisfied, or in order that world purposes shall
be fulfilled -- it matters not which -- this principle of
"compounding" must be fully recognized and embodied in our
political methods. It is this vital intermingling which creates the
real individual and knits men into the myriad relations of life. We
win through life our individuality, it is not presented to us at
the beginning to be exploited as we will. We win a multiple
individuality through our manifold relations.  In the workings of
this dual law are rooted all of social and political progress, all
the hope and the potency of human evolution.

  Only the federal state can express this dual principle of
existence -- the compounding and the multiple compounding.  It is
an incomplete understanding of this dual law which is responsible
for the mistaken interpretation of federalism held by some of the
pluralists: a conception which includes the false doctrines of
division of power, the idea that the group not the individual
should be the unit of the state, the old consent of governed
theory, an almost discarded particularism (group rights), and the
worn-out balance theory.

  The distributive sovereignty school assumes that the essential,
the basic part of federalism is the division of power between the
central and separate parts: while the parts may be considered as
ceding power to the central state, or the central state may be
considered as granting power to the parts, yet in one form or
another federalism means a divided sovereignty.  Esmein says
definitely, "L'Etat fe'de'ratif. . . fractionne la souverainete'
.... " [1]. No, it should unite sovereignty. There should be no
absolute division of power or conferring of power. The activity of
whole and parts should be one.

     1. Quoted by Duguit.

  In spite of all our American doctrines of the end of the
eighteenth century, in spite of our whole history of states-right
theory and sentiment, the division of sovereignty is not the main
fact of the United States government. From 1789 to 1861 the idea of
a divided sovereignty -- that the United States was a voluntary
agreement between free, sovereign and independent states, that
authority was "divided" between nation and states -- dictated the
history of the United States. The war of 1861 was fought (some of
the pluralists seem not to know) to settle this question [1]. The
two ideas of federalism came to a death grapple in our Civil War
and the true doctrine triumphed. That war decided that the United
States was not a delegated affair, that it had a "real" existence,
and that it was sovereign, yet not sovereign over the states as an
external party, for it is composed of the states, but sovereign
over itself, merely over itself. You have not to be a mystic to
understand this but only an American. Those who see in a federal
union a mere league with rights and powers granted to a central
government, those who see in a federal union a balancing of
sovereign powers, do not understand true federalism. When we
enumerate the powers of the states as distinct from the powers of
our national government, some people regard this distinction as a
dividing line between nation and states, but the true "federalist"
is always seeing the relation of these powers to those of the
central government. There are no absolute divisions in a true
federal union.

     1. It must be remembered, however, that while in the Civil War
     we definitely gave up the compact theory held by us since the
     Mayflower compact, yet we did not adopt the organism theory.
     The federal state we have tried and are trying to work out in
     America is based on the principles of psychic unity described
     in chapter X. The giving up of the "consent" theory does not
     bring us necessarily to the organic theory of society.

  Do we then want a central government which shall override the
parts until they become practically non-existent? The moment
federalism attempts to transcend the parts it has become vitiated.
Our Civil War was not, as some writers assert, the blow to states-
rights and the victory of centralization. We shall yet, I believe,
show that it was a victory for true federalism [1]. The United
States is neither to ignore the states, transcend the states, nor
to balance the states, it is to _be_ the states in their united
capacity.

     1. Duguit says that the United States confers the rights of a
     state on a territory. No, it recognizes that which already
     exists.

  Of course it is true that many Americans do think of our
government as a division of powers between central and local
authority, therefore there is as a matter of fact much balancing of
interests. But as far as we are doing this at Washington it is
exactly what we must get rid of. The first lesson for every member
of a federal government to learn is that the interests of the
different parts, or the interests of the whole and the interests of
the parts, are never to be pitted against each other. As far as the
United States represents an interpenetration of thought and feeling
and interest and will, it is carrying out the aims of federalism.

  We have not indeed a true federalism in the United States to-day;
we are now learning the lesson of federalism. Some one must analyze
for us the difference between centralization and true federalism,
which is neither nationalization, states-rights, nor balance, and
then we must work for true federalism. For the federal government
to attempt to do that which the states should do, or perhaps even
are doing, means loss of force, and loss of education-by-experience
for the states. On the other hand, not to see when federal action
means at the same time local development and national strength,
means a serious retarding of our growth. It is equally true that
when the states attempt what the federal government alone should
undertake, the consequence is general muddle.

  And it is by no means a question only of what the federal
government should do and what it should not do. It is a question of
the _way_ of doing. It is a question of guiding, where necessary,
without losing local initiative or local responsibility. It is a
question of so framing measures that true federation, not
centralization, be obtained. Recently, even before the war, the
tendency has been towards increased federal action and federal
control, as seen, for instance, in the control of railroad
transportation, of vocational education etc. The latter is an
excellent example of the possibility of central action being true
federal and not nationalized action. The federal government upon
application from a state grants to that state an amount for
vocational education equal to what the state itself will
appropriate. The administration of the fund rests with the state.
The federal government thus makes no assumptions. It _recognizes
existing facts_. And it does not impose something from without. The
state must understand its needs, must know how those needs can best
be satisfied; it must take responsibility. The experience of one
state joins with the experience of other states to form a
collective experience.

  As we watch federalism being worked out in actual practice at
Washington, we see in that practice the necessity of a distinction
which has been emphasized throughout this book as the contribution
of contemporary psychology to politics: nationalization is the
Hegelian reconciliation, true federalism is the integration of
present psychology. This means a genuine integration of the
interests of all the parts.  If our present tendency is towards
nationalization, we must learn the difference between that and
federalism and change it into the latter. We need a new order of
statesmen in the world to-day -- for our nation, for our
international league -- those who understand federalism.

  But I have been talking of federalism as the integration of parts
(the states). We should remember also, and this is of the greatest
importance, that the United States is not only to be the _states_
in their united capacity, but it is to be all the men and women of
the United States in _their_ united capacity. This it seems
difficult for many Europeans to understand; it breaks across their
traditional conception of federalism which has been a league, a
confederation of "sovereign" parts, not a true federal state. We of
Massachusetts feel ourselves not first children of Massachusetts
and then through Massachusetts of the United States. We belong
directly to the United States not merely through Massachusetts.
True federalism means that the individual, not the group, is the
unit. A true federal government acts directly on its citizens, not
merely through the groups.

  America has not led the world in democracy through methods of
representation, social legislation, ballot laws or industrial
organization. She has been surpassed by other countries in all of
these. She leads the world in democracy because through federalism
she is working out the secret of the universe actively. Multiple
citizenship in its spontaneous unifying is the foundation of the
new state. Federalism and democracy go together, you do not decide
to have one or the other as your fancy may be. We did not establish
federalism in the United States, we are growing federalism. 
Cohesion imposed upon us externally will lack in significance and
duration. Federalism must live through: (1) the reality of the
group, (2) the expanding group, (3) the ascending group or unifying
process.

  The federal state is the unifying state. The political
pluralists, following James, use the "trailing and" [1] argument to
prove that we can never have a unified state, that there is always
something which never gets included. I should use it to prove that
we can and must have a unifying state, that this "and" is the very
unifying principle. The "trailing and" is the deepest truth of
psychology. It is because of this "and" that our goal must always
be the unified state -- the unified state to be attained through
the federal form. Our spirit it is true is by nature federal, but
this means not infinite unrelation but infinite possibility of
relation, not infinite strung-alongness but infinite seeking for
the unifying of the strung-alongness. I forever discover
undeveloped powers. This is the glory of our exhaustless nature. We
are the expression of the principle of endless growth, of endless
appearing, and democracy must, therefore, so shape its forms as to
allow for the manifestation of each new appearing. I grow
possibilities; new opportunities should always be arising to meet
these new possibilities.

     1. "The word 'and' trails along after every sentence.
     Something always escapes. . . . The pluralistic world is thus
     more like a federal republic than like an empire or a
     kingdom."  "A Pluralistic Universe," 321-322.


  Then through group and group and ascending group I actualize more
and more. The "trailing and" is man's task for ever and ever -- to
drag in more spirit, more knowledge, more harmony.  Federalism is
the only possible form for the state because it leaves room for the
new forces which are coming through these spiritual "ands," for the
myriad centres of life which must be forever springing up, group
after group, within a vital state. Our impulse is at one and the
same time to develop self and to transcend self. It is this ever
transcending self which needs the federal state. The federal state
is not a unified state, I agree, but it is a unifying state, not a
"strung-along" state.

  Thus it is the federal state which expresses the two fundamental
principles of life -- the compounding of consciousness and the
endless appearings of new forces.

  I have said that the pluralists' mistaken interpretation of
federalism includes the particularist notions of "consent" and
"rights" and "balance," and that all these come from a false
conception of sovereignty. What does the new psychology teach us of
"consent"? Power is generated within the true group not by one or
several assuming authority and the others "consenting," but solely
by the process of intermingling.  Only by the same method can the
true state be grown.

  If divorce is to be allowed between the state and this group or
that, what are the grounds on which it is to be granted? Will
incompatibility be sufficient? Are the manufacturing north and
agricultural south of Ireland incompatible? Does a certain trade
association want, like Nora, a "larger life"? The pluralists open
the gates to too much. They wish to throw open the doors of the
state to labor: yes, they are right, but let them beware what
veiled shapes may slip between those open portals.  Labor must
indeed be included in the state, it is our most immediate task, but
let us ponder well the method.

  The pluralists assume that the unified state must always claim
authority over "other groups" [1].

     1. When they say that the passion for unity is the urge for a
     dominant One, they think of the dominant One as outside.

But as he who expresses the unity of my group has no authority over
me but is simply the symbol and the organ of the group, so that
group which expresses the unity of all groups -- that is, the state
-- should have no authority _as a separate group_, but only so far
as it gathers up into itself the whole meaning of these constituent
groups. Just here is the crux of the disagreement between the
upholders of the pluralistic and of the true monistic state: the
former think of the other groups as "coextensive" or
"complementary" to the state -- the state is one of the groups to
which we owe obedience; to the latter they and all individuals are
the constituents of the state [1].
        
     1. One of the pluralists says, "I cannot see that . . .
     sovereignty is the unique property of any one association."
     No, not sovereignty over "others," but sovereignty always
     belongs to any genuine group; as groups join to form another
     real group, the sovereignty of the more inclusive group is
     evolved -- that is the only kind of state sovereignty which we
     can recognize as legitimate.  (See ch. XXIX on "Political
     Pluralism and Sovereignty.")

  I have said that our progress is from Contract to Community [2].
This those pluralists cannot accept who take the consent of the
group as part of their theory of the state. They thereby keep
themselves in the contract stage of thinking, they thereby and in
so far range themselves with all particularists [3].

     2. See ch. XV.

     3. Mr. Laski is an exception to many writers on "consent."
     When he speaks of consent he is referring only to the actual
     facts of to-day. Denying the sovereignty postulated by the
     lawyers (he says you can never find in a community any one
     will which is certain of obedience), he shows that as a matter
     of fact the state sovereignty we have now rests on consent. I
     do not wish to confuse the issue between facts of the present
     and hopes for the future, but I wish to make a distinction
     between the "sovereignty" of the present and the sovereignty
     which I hope we can grow. This distinction is implicit in Mr.
     Laski's book, but it is lacking in much of the writing on the
     "consent of the governed."

  Secondly, in the divided sovereignty theory the old particularist
doctrine of individual rights gives way merely to a new doctrine of
group rights, the "inherent rights" of trade-unions or
ecclesiastical bodies. "Natural rights" and "social compact" went
together; the "inherent rights" of groups again tend to make the
federal bond a compact [1]. The state resting on a numerical basis,
composed of an aggregate of individuals, gives way only to a state
still resting on a numerical basis although composed now of groups
instead of individuals. As in the old days the individuals were to
be "free," now the groups are to be "independent." These new
particularists are as zealous and as jealous for the group as any
nineteenth-century "individualist" was for the individual. Mr.
Barker, who warns us, it is true, against inherent rights which are
not adjusted to other inherent rights, nevertheless says, "If we
are individualists now, we are corporate individualists. Our
individuals are becoming groups. We no longer write Man _vs_. the
State but The Group _vs_. the State." But does Mr. Barker really
think it progress to write Group _vs_. the State ~ If the principle
of individual _vs_. the state is wrong, what difference does it
make whether that individual is one man or a group of men? In so
far as these rights are based on function, we have an advance in
political theory; in so far as we can talk of group _vs_. the
state, we are held in the thralls of another form of social
atomism. It is the pluralists themselves who are always saying,
when they oppose crowd-sovereignty, that atomism means anarchy.
Agreed, but atomism in any form, of groups as well as individuals,
means anarchy, and this they do not always seem to realize.

     1. Wherever you have the social contract theory in any form,
     and assent as the foundation of power, there is no social
     process going on; the state is an arbitrary creation of men. 
     Group organization to-day must give up any taint whatever of
     the social contract and rest squarely and fully on its
     legitimate psychological basis.

  Mr. Barker speaks of the present tendency "to restrict the
activity of the state in order to safeguard the rights of the
groups." Many pluralists and syndicalists are afraid of the state
because for them the old dualism is unsolvable. But as I have tried
to show in the chapter on "Our Political Dualism" that the rights
of the state and the citizen are never, ideally, incompatible, so
now we should understand that our present task is to develop those
political forms within which rights of group and state can be
approaching coincidence.

  As long as we settle down within any one group, we are in danger
of the old particularism. Many a trade unionist succumbs to this
danger. Love of a group will not get us out of particularism. We
can have egoism of the group as well as egoism of the individual.
Indeed the group may have all the evils of the individual --
aggrandizement of self, exploitation of others etc. Nothing will
get us out of particularism but the constant recognition that any
whole is always the element of a larger whole. Group life has two
meanings, one as important as the other: (1) it looks in to its own
integrated, coordinated activity, (2) it sees that activity in
relation to other activities, in relation to a larger whole of
which it is a part. The group which does not look out deteriorates
into caste. The group which thinks only of itself is a menace to
society; the group which looks to its manifold relations is part of
social progress. President Wilson as head of a national group has
just as clear a duty to other national groups as to his own
country.

  Particularism of the individual is dead, in theory if not in
practice. Let us not now fall into the specious error of clinging
to our particularism while changing its name from individual to
group.

  The outcome of group particularism is the balance of power
theory, perhaps the most pernicious part of the pluralists'
doctrine. The pluralist state is to be composed of sovereign
groups. What is their life to be? They are to be left alone to
fight, to compete, or, word most favored by this school, to
balance. With de Maeztu the balance of power is confessedly the
corner-stone of the new state. "The dilemma which would make us
choose between the State and anarchy is false. There is another
alternative, that of plurality and the balance of powers, not
merely within the nation but in the family of nations" [1].

     1. This is perhaps a remnant of the nineteenth-century myth
     that competition is the mode of progress.

  But whenever you have balance in your premise, you have anarchy
in your conclusion.

  The weakness of the reasoning involved in the balance of power
argument has been exposed in so much of the war literature of the
last three years, which has exploded the balance of power theory
between nations, that little further criticism is needed here.
Unity must be our aim today. When you have not unity, you have
balance or struggle or domination -- of one over others. The
nations of Europe refuse domination, aim at balance, and war is the
result.

  It seems curious that these two movements should be going on side
by side: that we are giving up the idea of the balance of nations,
that we are refusing to think any longer in terms of "sovereign"
nations, and yet at the same time an increasing number of men
should be advocating balancing, "sovereign" groups within nations.
The pluralists object to unity, but unity and plurality are surely
not incompatible. The true monistic state is merely the multiple
state working out its own unity from infinite diversity.  But the
unifying state shows us what to do with that diversity. What
advantage is that diversity if it is to be always "competing,"
"fighting," "balancing?" Only in the unifying state do we get the
full advantage of diversity where it is gathered up into
significance and pointed action.

  The practical outcome of the balance theory will be first
antagonistic interests, then jealous interests, then competing
interests, then dominating interests -- a fatal climax.

  The trouble with the balance theory is that by the time the
representatives of the balancing groups meet, it is too late to
expect agreement. The chief objection to pluralism is, perhaps,
that it is usually merely a scheme of representation, that its
advocates are usually talking of the kind of roof they want before
they have laid the foundation stones. No theory of the state can
have vitality which is merely a plan of representation. The new
state must rest on a new conception of living, on a true
understanding of the vital modes of association. The reason why
occupational representation must bring balance and competition is
because the integrating of differences, the essential social
process, does not take place far enough back in our life. If
Parliaments are composed of various groups or interests, the
unification of those interests has to take place in Parliament. But
then it is too late. The ideas of the different groups must mingle
earlier than Parliament. We must go further back than our
legislatures for the necessary unifying. We do not want
legislatures full of opposing interests. The ideas of the groups
become too crystallized by the time their representatives get to
the Parliament, in fact they have often hardened into prejudices.
Moreover, the representatives could not go against their
constituencies, they would be pledged to specific measures. The
different groups would come together each to try to prevail, not to
go through the only genuine democratic process, that of trying to
integrate their ideas and interests.

  When the desire to prevail is once keenly upon us, we behave very
differently than when our object is the seeking of truth. Suppose
I am the representative in Congress of a group or a party. A bill
is under consideration.  I see a weakness in that bill; if I point
it out some one else may see a remedy for it and the bill may be
immensely improved. But do I do this? Certainly not. I am so afraid
of the bill being lost if I show any weakness in it that I keep
this insight to myself and my country loses just so much. I cannot
believe that occupational representation will foster truth seeking
or truth speaking. It seems to me quite a case of the frying pan
into the fire. Compromise and swapping will be the order in
Parliaments based solely on the vocational principle. The different
interests must fight it out in Parliament. This is fundamentally
against democracy because it is against the psychological
foundation of democracy, the fundamental law of association.
Democracy depends on the blending, not the balancing, of interests
and thoughts and wills. Occupational representation assumes that
you secure the interests of the whole by securing the interests of
every class, the old particularist fallacy transferred to the
group.

  Moreover, it is often assumed that because the occupational group
is composed of men of similar interests we shall have agreement in
the occupational group; it is taken for granted that in these
economic groups the agreement of opinion necessary for voting will
be automatic. But do poets or carpenters or photographers think
alike on more than a very few questions? What we must do is to get
behind these electoral methods to some fundamental method which
shall _produce_ agreement.

  Moreover, if the Cabinet were made up of these warring elements,
administration would be almost impossible. Lloyd-George's Cabinet
at present is hampered by too much "difference." I have throughout,
to be sure, been advocating the compounding of difference as the
secret of politics, but the compounding must begin further back in
our life than Parliaments or Cabinets.

  And if you had group representation in England would not the
Cabinet be made up of the most powerful of the groups, and would
not a fear of defeat at any particular time mean overtures to
enough of the other groups to make success in the Cabinet? And
would not an entirely improper amount of power drift to the Premier
under these circumstances? Have we any leaders who would, could any
one trust himself to, guide the British Cabinet for the best
interests of Great Britain under such conditions as these?

  To sum up: a true federalism cannot rest on balance or
group-rights or consent. Authority, obedience, liberty, can never
be understood without an understanding of the group process. Some
of the advocates of guild socialism oppose function to authority
and liberty, but we can have function _and_ liberty _and_
authority: authority of the whole through the liberty of all by
means of the functions of each. These three are inescapably united.
A genuine group, a small or large group, association or state, has
the right to the obedience of its members. No group should be
sovereign over another group. The only right the state has to
authority over "other" groups is as far as those groups are
constituent parts of the state. All groups are not constituent
parts of the state to-day, as the pluralists clearly see. Possibly
or probably all groups never will be, but such perpetually
self-actualizing unity should be the process.  Groups are sovereign
over themselves, but in their relation to the state they are
interdependent groups, each recognizing the claims of every other.
Our multiple group life is the fact we have to reckon with; unity
is the aim of all our seeking. And with this unity will appear a
sovereignty spontaneously and joyfully acknowledged.  In true
federalism, voided of division and balance, lies such sovereignty.
