FINS

Updated September 15, 2008

follett_fin.jpg (49K)

Cornelia P. Atchley, artist.
Portrait of Mary Parker Follett in blue. 2001.

Definitions of "democracy" *

Index of section links

Democracy

Democracy is … a genuine union of true individuals. 1

Democracy means the will of the whole, but the will of the whole is not necessarily represented by the majority, nor by a two-thirds or three-quarters vote, nor even by a unanimous vote; majority rule is democratic when it is approaching not a unanimous but an integrated will … All talk of majority and minority is futile. It is evident that we must not consider majority versus minority, but only the methods by which unity is attained. 2

(D)emocracy transcends time and space, it can never be understood except as a spiritual force. Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations. 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 [or her] 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.3

Representation is not the main fact of political life; the main concern of politics is modes of association. We do not want the rule of the many or the few; we must find that method of political procedure by which majority and minority ideas may be so closely interwoven that we are truly ruled by the will of the whole. We shall have democracy only when we learn to produce this will through group association -- when young men [and women] are no longer lectured to on democracy, but when they are made into the stuff of democracy. 4


Genuine union

Individuality is the capacity for union. The measure of individuality is the depth and breath of true relation. I am an individual not as far as I am apart, but as far as I am a part of other men [and women].   Evil is nonrelation. 5

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, or absorbed. 6

Anarchy means unorganized, unrelated difference; coordinated, united difference belongs to our ideal of a perfect social order. We don't want to avoid our adversary but to "agree with him quickly"; we must, however, learn the technique of agreeing. As long as we think of difference as that which divides us, we shall dislike it; when we think of it as that which unites us, we shall cherish it. Instead of shutting out what is different, we should welcome it because it is different and through its difference will make a richer content of life. The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it. 7

In trying to explain the social process I may have seemed to over emphasize difference as difference. Difference as difference is non-existent. There is only difference which carries within itself the power of unifying. It is this latent power which we must forever and ever call forth. Difference in itself is not a vital force, but what accompanies it is - the unifying spirit. 8


True individuals

We find the true man only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Man discovers his true nature, gains his true freedom only through the group. Group organization must be the new method of politics because the modes by which the individual can be brought forth and made effective are the modes of practical politics. 9

The activity which produces the true individual is at the same time interweaving him [or her] and others into a real whole. A genuine whole has creative force.... The power of our corporations depends upon this capability of men [and women] to interknit themselves into such genuine relations that a new personality is thereby evolved. This is the "real personality" of modern legal theory. 10

We cannot, however, mould our lives each by himself; but within every individual is the power of joining himself [or herself] fundamentally and vitally to other lives, and out of this vital union comes the creative power. Revelation, if we want it to be continuous, must be through the community bond. No individual can change the disorder and iniquity of this world. No chaotic mass of men and women can do it. Conscious group creation is to be the social and political force of the future. 11

I am advocating throughout the group principle, but not the group as the political unit. We do not need to swing forever between the individual and the group. We must devise some method of using both at the same time. Our present method is right so far as it is based on individuals, but we have not yet found the true individual. The groups are the indispensable means for the discovery of self by each man. The individual finds himself in a group; he has no power alone or in a crowd. One group creates me, another group brings into appearance the multiple sides of me…. But my relations to the state is always as an individual. The group is method merely. It cannot supplant either the individual on the one hand or the state on the other. The unit of society is the individual coming into being and functioning through groups of a more and more federated nature. Thus the unit of society is neither the group nor the particularist-individual but the group individual. 12

…. The essence of democracy is the expression of every man in his multiple nature. To sum up: no one group can enfold me, because of my multiple nature. This is the blow to the theory of occupational representation. But also no number of groups can enfold me. This is the reason why the individual must always be the unit of politics, as group organization must be its method. We find the individual through the group, we use him always as the true individual - the undivided one - who, living link of living group, is yet never embedded in the meshes but is forever free for every new possibility of a forever unfolding life. 13


Word list

Part of the past and present disagreement of opinion is verbal. Below is a list of words which can be used to describe the genuine social process and a list which gives exactly the wrong idea of it: 14


A Technique of Democracy

Politics must be vitalized by a new method. "Representative government," party organization, majority rule, with all their excrescences, are dead wood. In their stead must appear the organization of non-partisan groups for the begetting, the bringing into being, of common ideas, a common purpose and a collective will.15

We have said, "The people must rule." We now ask, "How are they to rule?" It is the technique of democracy which we are seeking. We shall find it in group organization. 16


The law of democracy

Article IV, §4 of the Constitution of the United States guarantees to every State in the Union a Republican Form of Government. Republicanism has become synonymous with "representative government," arising from the fact that many of the framers of the Constitution were very much concerned with protecting the rights of the minority that held substantial property. 17 Whereas Thomas Jefferson held to the principle that "the will of the majority should always prevail," 18 James Madison spoke at length about "the protection of minorities." 19 According to Madison, the institution of representative governance would serve to "refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will least likely sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. 20

By early in the 20th-century the legitimacy and effectiveness of "representative government" was severely eroded, as Follett claimed. Moreover, the perception that Republican government was merely "representative government" was put in question by the Supreme Court. "Under our constitutional assumptions," the Court has ruled, "all power derives from the people." 21 The people can either delegate their power "to representative instruments which they create" or "reserve to themselves power to deal directly with matters which might otherwise be assigned to the legislature." 22

The people are thus at the center of power in a democracy; provided however, they must first learn how to exercise their sovereign democratic powers. To achieve this goal the people must discover the collective will of the whole supported by a technology of democracy, as Follett anticipated, for it is only through the collective will generated by broad dialogue between themselves that the people can learn to discover their political strength and to act in unity with each other. When this is achieved the power of the people is unvanquishable.


Ideas of true democrats

Shortly after the Supreme Court decision following our last election (2000), I received a query from a reporter in Mexico with whom I had frequent communication at the time. I wrote back that wasn't it interesting, at the time of a previous exchange a few weeks earlier, Mexico was not a democracy -- and the United States had been.

She replied, with great wisdom: "Aiie professor, democracy, it has never existed anywhere."

From James K. Galbraith, Chairman Government/Business Relations, and Professor of Government, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin


Authorities

* Mary Parker Follett, The New State (1918) (republished by Penn State University, 1998).

The American philosopher of democracy, Mary Parker Follett, was one of the first Management Scientists. Her early 20th-century writings were lost in a time warp for more than six decades after her death in 1933, largely because she was a woman in a man's world, but most significantly, perhaps, because her ideas were ahead of her own time. Reborn at century's end, Follett's ideas on business management, including her insight into the importance of "integration" for the winning decision-making strategy, are now celebrated under the title, The Prophet of Management (A Harvard Business School Press Classic, 1996): pp. 73-86, 188-189. Systems scientists of the 21st-century now follow Follett's principle of "integration" as a basis for the highly successful revolution in the management of group dialogue, which is now guided by an architecture for the Structured Design Dialogue (SDP) process, elucidated by Christakis and Bausch (Feb 2006).

  1. Introduction, at page 5.

  2. Chapter XVII, Democracy Not The Majority: Our Political Fallacy, at page 142.

  3. Introduction, at page 7.

  4. Chapter XVII, Democracy Not The Majority: Our Political Fallacy, at pages 142, 147.

  5. Chapter VII, The Individual, at pages 60, 62-63.

  6. Chapter III, The Group Process: The Collective Idea, at page 39.

  7. Id., at pages 39-40.

  8. Id., at page 41.

  9. Introduction, at page 8.

  10. Id., at pages 7-8.

  11. Chapter XIII, The Secret of Progress, at pages 93, 101.

  12. Chapter XXX, Political Pluralism and Functionalism, at page 288, 292.

  13. Id., at page 295.

  14. Chapter III, The Group Process: The Collective Idea, at page 39, note 1.

  15. Introduction, at page 4.

  16. Chapter XVIII, Democracy Not The Crowd: Our Popular Delusion, at page 155.

  17. T. Cronin, Direct Democracy 28 (1989).

  18. D. Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, 2 Jefferson and his time (1951).

  19. D. Malone, The Sage of Monticello ch. XXIV, 6 Jefferson and his Time (1977).

  20. The Federalist No. 10 (J. Madison) (J. Cooke ed. 1961).

  21. City of Eastlake v. Forest City, 426 U.S. 668, 672 (1976).

  22. Id., at page 672.


Portrait of Vigdor in Blue (9K)

This site is the exclusive property of Vigdor Schreibman
and managed as a public service without fee
by Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher.
18 - 9th Street NE Apt. #206, Washington, DC 20002 USA.
Phone, fax, and voice mail: (202) 547-8715.
email to: omnicapital@verizon.net

Sunsite_logo65 (45K)




Cornelia P. Atchley, artist,
Portrait of Vigdor in blue 2001.