THE NEW STATE
By May Parker Follett

The Occupational Group:
Chapter XXIX
Political Pluralism and Sovereignty

WHAT does group psychology teach us, as far as we at present
understand it, in regard to sovereignty?  How does the group get
its power?  By each one giving up his sovereignty? Never. By some
one from outside presenting it with authority? No, although that is
the basis of much of our older legal theory. Real authority inheres
in a genuine whole.  The individual is sovereign over himself as
far as he unifies the heterogeneous elements of his nature. Two
people are sovereign over themselves as far as they are capable of
creating one out of two. A group is sovereign over itself as far as
it is capable of creating one out of several or many. A state is
sovereign only as it has the power of creating one in which all
are. Sovereignty is the power engendered by a complete
interdependence becoming conscious of itself.  Sovereignty is the
imperative of a true collective will. It is not something academic,
it is produced by actual living with others -- we learn it only
through group life. By the subtle process of interpenetration a
collective sovereignty is evolved from a distributed sovereignty.
Just so can and must, by the law of their being, groups unite to
form larger groups, these larger groups to form a world-group.

  I have said that many of the pluralists are opposed to the
monistic state because they do not see that a collective and
distributive sovereignty can exist together. They talk of the Many
and the One without analyzing the process by which the Many and the
One are creating each other. We now see that the problem of the
compounding of consciousness, of the One and the Many, need not be
left either to an intellectualistic or to an intuitive metaphysics.

It is to be solved through a laboratory study of group psychology.
When we have that, we shall not have to argue any more about the
One and the Many: we shall actually see the Many and the One
emerging at the same time; we can then work out the laws of the
relation of the One (the state) to the Many (the individual), and
of the Many (the individual) to the One (the state), not as a
metaphysical question but on a scientific basis. And the process of
the Many becoming One is the process by which sovereignty is
created. Our conceptions of sovereignty can no longer rest on mere
abstractions, theory, speculative thought. How absurdly inadequate
such processes are to explain the living, interweaving web of
humanity.  The question of sovereignty concerns the organization of
men (which obviously must be fitted to their nature), hence it
finds its answer through the psychological analysis of man.

  The seeking of the organs of society which are the immediate
source of legal sanctions, the seeking of the ultimate source of
political control -- these are the quests of jurists and political
philosophers.  To their search must be added a study of the process
by which a genuine sovereignty is created. The political pluralists
are reacting against the sovereignty which our legal theory
postulates, for they see that there is no such thing actually, but
if sovereignty is at present a legal fiction, the matter need not
rest there -- we must seek to find how a genuine social and
political control can be produced. The understanding of
self-government, of democracy, is bound up with the conception of
sovereignty as a psychological process.

  The idea of sovereignty held by guild socialists [1] is based
largely on the so-called "objective" theory of _le droit_ expounded
by M. Leon Duguit of Bordeaux. This theory is accepted as the
"juridical basis" of a new state, what some call the functionarist
state [2].  Man, Duguit tells us, has no rights as man, but only as
a member of the social order. His rights are based on the fact of
social interdependence -- on his relations and consequent
obligations. In fact he has no rights, but duties and powers. All
power and all obligation is found in "social solidarity," in a
constantly evolving social solidarity [3].

     1. See writings of Ramiro de Maeztu in New Age and his book
     mentioned above.

     2. See "Traite de Droit Constitutionnel" and "Etudes de Droit
     Public": I, L'Etat, Le Droit Objectif et La Loi Positive; II,
     L'Etat, Les Gouvernants and Les Agents.
       As in French _droit_ may be either law or a rigat, Duguit,
     in order to distinguish between these meanings, follows the
     German distinction of _objektives Recht_ and _subjektives
     Recht, and speaks of le droit objectif and _le droit
     subjectif_, thus meaning by _le droit objectif_ merely law. 
     But because he at the same time writes of power as resting on
     function in contradistinction to the classical theory of the
     abstract "rights" of man, rights apart from law and only
     declared by law, political writers sometimes speak of Duguit's
     "objective" theory of law, as opposed to a "subjective" theory
     of law, when jurists would tell us that law is objective, and
     that subjective right is always merely a right, my right. This
     matter of terminology must be made much clearer than it is at
     present.

     3. Although how far Duguit had in mind merely the solidarity
     of French and Roman law has been questioned.

  The elaboration of this theory is Duguit's large contribution to
political thought.  His _droit_ is a dynamic law -- it can never be
captured and fixed.  The essential weakness of his doctrine is that
he denies the possibility of a collective will, which means that he
ignores the psychology of the social process. He and his followers
reject the notion of a collective will as "_concept de l'esprit
de'nue de toute re'alite' positive_." If this is their idea of a
collective will, they are right to reject it. I ask for its
acceptance only so far as it can be proved to have positive
reality.  There is only one way in the world by which you can ever
know whether there is a collective will, and that is by actually
trying to make one; you need not discuss a collective will as a
theory.  If experiment proves to us that we cannot have a
collective will, we must accept the verdict. Duguit thinks that
when we talk of the sovereignty of the people we mean an abstract
sovereignty; the new psychology means by the sovereignty of the
people that which they actually create. It is true that we have
none at present. Duguit is perfectly right in opposing the old
theory of the "sovereign state."

  But Duguit says that if there were a collective will there is no
reason why it should impose itself on the individual wills. 
"_L'affirmat ion que la collectivile a le pouvoir le'gitime de
commander force qu'elle est la collectivite", est une affirmation
d'ordre me'taphysique ou religieux_. . . ." This in itself shows a
misunderstanding of the evolution of a collective will. This school
does not seem to understand that every one must contribute to the
collective will; ideally it would have no power unless this
happened, actually we can only be constantly approaching this ideal
[1].  Duguit makes a thing-in-itself of _la volonte' nationale_ --
it is a most insidious fallacy which we all fall into again and
again. But we can never accept that kind of a collective will. We
believe in a collective will only so far as it is _really_ forming
from out our actual daily life of intermingling men and women. 
There is nothing "metaphysical" or "religious" about this. Duguit
says metaphysics "_doit rester e'tranger a' toute jurisprudence_.
. . ." We agree to that and insist that jurisprudence must be
founded on social psychology.

     1. I have just read in a work on sociology, "Men surrender
     their individual wills to the collective will." No, the true
     social process is not when they _surrender_ but when they
     _contribute_ their wills to the collective will. See chs.
     Il-VI, "The Group Process."

  Five people produce a collective idea, a collective will. That
will becomes at once an imperative upon those five people. It is
not an imperative upon any one else. On the other hand no one else
can make imperatives for those five people. It has been generated
by the social process which is a self-sufficing, all-inclusive
process. The same process which creates the collective will creates
at the same time the imperative of the collective will. It is
absolutely impossible to give self-government: no one has the right
to give it; no one has the power to give it. Group A _allows_ group
B to govern itself. This is an empty permission unless B has
_learned how_ to govern itself.  Self-government must always be
grown. Sovereignty is always a psychological process.

  Many of Duguit's errors come from a misconception of the social
process. Violently opposed to a collective will, he sees in the
individual thought and will the only genuine "_chose en soi_" (it
is interesting to notice that _la chose en soi_ finds a place in
the thought of many pluralists). Not admitting the process of
"community" he asserts that _la re'gle de droit_ is anterior and
superior to the state; he does not see the true relation of _le
droit_ to l'e'tat_, that they evolve together, that the same
process which creates _le droit_ creates _l'e'tat_ [1].  The will
of the people, he insists, can not create _le droit_. Here he does
not see the unity of the social process. He separates will and
purpose and the activity of the reciprocal inter-change instead of
seeing them as one.  Certainly the will of the people does not
create _le droit_, but the social process in its entire unity does.

"Positive law must constantly follow _le droit objectif_." Of
course. "_Le droit objectif_ is constantly evolving."  Certainly. 
But how evolving?  Here is where we disagree. The social process
creates _le droit objectif_, and will is an essential part of the
social process. Purpose is an essential part of the social process.
Separate the parts of the social process and you have a different
idea of jurisprudence, of democracy, of political institutions. 
Aim is all-important for Duguit. The rule of _le droit_ is the rule
of conscious ends: only the aim gives a will its worth; if the aim
is juridical (conformed to _la re'gle de droit_), then the will is
juridical. Thus Duguit's pragmatism is one which has not yet rid
itself of absolute standards.  It might be urged that it has,
because he finds his absolute standards in "social solidarity." But
any one who believes that the individual will is a _chose en soi_,
and who separates the elements of the social process, does not
wholly admit the self-sufficing character of that process.

     1. See p. 130.

  The modern tendency in many quarters, however, in regard to
conceptions of social practice, is to substitute ends for will [1].

     1. De Maeztu tells us, "Bights do not arise from personality.
     This idea is mystic and unnecessary. Rights arise primarily
     from the relation of the associated with the thing which
     associates them     Authority, Liberty, and Function, p.250.
       Mr. Barker substitutes purpose for personality and will as
     the unifying bond of associations, and says that we thus get
     rid of "murder in the air" when it is a question of the
     "competition of ideas, not of real collective personalities." 
     (See "The Discredited State," in _The Political Quarterly_,
     February, 1915.)  This seems a curiously anthropomorphic, so
     to speak, idea of personality for a twentieth-century writer.
     The article is, however, an interesting and valuable one.
       See also Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I,
     472.

This is a perfectly comprehensible reaction, but future
jurisprudence must certainly unite these two ideas.  Professor
Jethro Brown says, "The justification for governmental action is
found not in consent but in the purpose it serves." Not in that
alone.  De Maeztu says, "The profound secret of associations is not
that men have need of one another, but that they need the same
thing." These two ideas can merge. Professor Brown makes the common
good the basis of the new doctrine of natural right [1]. But we
must all remember, what I do not doubt this writer does remember,
that purpose can never be a _chose en soi_, and that, of the utmost
importance, the "new natural law" can be brought into manifestation
only by certain modes of association.

     1. See "Underlying Principles of Legislation."

  It is true, as Duguit says, that the state has the "right" to
will because of the thing willed, that it has no "subjective" right
to will, that its justification is in its purpose.  (This is of
course the truth in regard to all our "rights"; they are justified
only by the use we make of them.) And yet there is a truth in the
old idea of the "right" of a collectivity to will. These two ideas
must be synthesized. They _are_ synthesized by the new psychology
which sees the purpose forming the will at the same time as the
will forms the purpose, which finds no separation anywhere in the
social process. We can never think of purpose as something in front
which leads us on, as the carrot the donkey. Purpose is never in
front of us, it appears at every moment with the appearance of
will. Thus the new school of jurisprudence founded on social
psychology cannot be a teleological school alone, but must be
founded on all the elements which constitute the social process.
Ideals do not operate in a vacuum. This theorists seem sometimes to
forget, but those of us who have had tragic experience of this
truth are likely to give more emphasis to the interaction of
purpose, will and activity, past and present activity. The
recognition that _le droit_ is the product of a group process
swallows up the question as to whether it is "objective" or
"subjective"; it is neither, it is both; we look at the matter
quite differently [1].

     1. The teleological school of sociology is interesting just
     here. While it marked a long advance on older theories, the
     true place of selection of ends is to-day more clearly seen.
     We were told: "Men have wants, therefore they come together to
     seek means to satisfy those wants." When do men "come
     together"?  When were they ever separated?  But it is not
     necessary to push this further.

  To sum up this point. We must all, I think, agree with the
"objective" conception of law in its essence, but not in its
dividing the social process, a true unity, into separate parts.
Rights arise from relation, and purpose is bound up in the
relation. The relation of men to one another and to the object
sought are part of the same process. Duguit has rendered us
invaluable service in his insistence that _le droit_ must be based
on "_la vie actuelle_," but he does not take the one step further
and see that _le droit_ is born within the group, that there is an
essential law of the group as different from other modes of
association, and that this has many implications.

  The _droit_ evolved by a group is the _droit_ of that group. The
_droit_ evolved by a state-group (we agree that there is no
state-group yet, the state is evolving, the _droit_ is evolving,
there is only an approximate state, an approximately genuine
_droit_) is the _droit_ of the state. The contribution of the new
psychology is that _le droit_ comes from relation and is always in
relation. The warning of the new psychology to the advocates of
vocational representation is that the _droit_ (either as law or
right) [2] evolved by men of one occupation only will represent too
little intermingling to express the "community" truth. We don't
want doctors' ethics and lawyers' ethics, and so on through the
various groups. That is just the trouble at present. Employers and
employees meet in conference. Watch those conferences. The
difference of interest is not always the whole difficulty; there is
also the difference of standard. Capitalist ethics and workman
ethics are often opposed. We must accept _le droit_ as a social
product, as a group product, but we must have groups which will
unify interests and standards. Law and politics can be founded on
nothing but vital modes of association.

     2.  I have tried not to jump the track from legal right to
     ethical right but occasionally one can speak of them together,
     if it is understood that one is not thereby merging them.

  Mr. Roscoe Pound's exposition of modern law is just here a great
help to political theory. The essential, the vital part of his
teaching, is, not his theory of law based on interests, not his
emphasis upon relation, but his bringing together of these two
ideas. This takes us out of the vague, nebulous region of much of
the older legal and political theory, and shows us the actual
method of living our daily lives. All that he says of relation
implies that we must seek and bring into use those modes of
association which will reveal true interests, actual interests, yet
not particularist interests but the interests discovered through
group relations -- employer and employed, master and servant,
landlord and tenant, etc. But, and this is of great importance,
these groups must be made into genuine groups. If law is to be a
group-product, we must see that our groups are real groups, we must
find the true principle of association. For this we need, as I must
continually repeat, the study of group psychology. "Life," "man,"
"society," are coming to have little meaning for us: it is your
life and my life with which we are concerned, not "man" but the men
we see around us, not "society" but the many societies in which we
pass our lives. "Social" values?  We want individual values, but
individual values discovered through group relations.

  To sum up this point: (1) law should be a group-product, (2) we
should therefore have genuine groups, (3) political method must be
such that the "law" of the group can become embodied in our
legislation.

  M. Duguit's disregarding of the laws of that intermingling which
is the basis of his _droit objectif_ leads to a partial
understanding only of the vote.  Voting is for him still in a way
a particularist matter. To be sure he calls it a function and that
marks a certain advance. Moreover he wishes us to consider the vote
an "objective" power, an "objective" duty, not a "subjective"
right.  This is an alluring theory in a pragmatic age. And if you
see it leading to syndicalism which you have already accepted
beforehand, it is all the more alluring! But to call the vote a
function is only half the story; as long as it is a particularist
vote, it does not help us much to have it rest on function, or
rather, it goes just half the way. It must rest on the
intermingling of all my functions, it must rest on the
intermingling of all my functions with all the functions of all the
others; it must rest indeed on social solidarity, but a social
solidarity in which every man interpenetrating with every other is
thereby approaching a whole of which he is the whole at one point.

  Duguit, full of Rousseau, does not think it possible to have a
collective sovereignty without every one having an equal share of
this collective sovereignty, and he most strenuously opposes _le
suffrage universal egalitaire_. But le suffrage universel
egalitaire staring all the obvious inequalities of man in the face,
Rousseau's divided sovereignty based on an indivisible sovereignty
_- all these things no longer trouble you when you see the vote as
the expression at one point of some approximate whole produced by
the intermingling of men.

  True sovereignty and true functionalism are not opposed; the vote
resting on "subjective" right and the vote resting on "objective"
power are not opposed, but the particularist vote and the genuinely
individual vote are opposed. Any doctrine which contains a trace of
particularism in any form cannot gain our allegiance.

  Again Duguit's ignoring of the psychology of the social process
leads him to the separation of governors and governed. This
separation is for him the essential fact of the state. Sovereignty
is with those individuals who can impose their will upon others. He
says no one can give orders to himself, but as a matter of fact no
one can really give orders to any one but himself [1]. Here Duguit
confuses present facts and future possibilities. Let us _be_ the
state, let us be sovereign -- over ourselves. As the problem in the
life of each one of us is to find the way to unify the warring
elements within us -- as only thus do we gain sovereignty over
ourselves -- so the problem is the same for the state. Duguit is
right in saying that the German theory of auto-limitation is
unnecessary, but not in the reasons he gives for it. A psychic
entity is subordinate to the _droit_ which itself evolves not by
auto-limitation, but by the essential and intrinsic law of the
group.

     1. The old consent theory assumes that some make the laws and
     others obey them. In the true democracy we shall obey the laws
     we have ourselves made. To find the methods by which we can be
     approaching the true democracy is now our task; we can never
     rest satisfied with "consent."

  But Duguit has done us large service not only in his doctrine of
a law, a right, born of our actual life, of our always evolving
life, but also in his insistence on the individual which makes him
one of the builders of the new individualism [2]. We see in the
gradual transformation of the idea of natural law which took place
among the French jurists of the end of the nineteenth century, the
struggle of the old particularism with the feelings-out for the
true individualism. That the French have been slow to give up
individual rights, that many of them have not given them up for any
collective theory, but, feeling the truth underneath the old
doctrine, have sought (and found) a different interpretation, a
different basis and a different use, has helped us all
immeasurably.

     2. Although I do not agree with the form individualism takes
     in his doctrine.


  Group psychology shows us the process of man creating social
power, evolving his own "rights." We now see that man's only rights
are group-rights. These are based on his activity in the group --
you can call it function if you like, only unless you are careful
that tends to become mechanical, and it tends to an organic
functionalism in which lurk many dangers. But the main point for us
to grasp is that we can never understand rights by an abstract
discussion of "subjective" _vs_. "objective" -- only by the closest
study of the process by which these rights are evolved. The true
basis of rights is neither a "mystical" idea of related
personalities, nor is it to be found entirely in the relation of
the associated to the object sought; a truly modern conception of
law synthesizes these two ideas. "Function," de Maeztu tells us
"[is] a quality independent of the wills of men." This is a
meaningless sentence to the new psychology. At present the
exposition of the "objective" theory of law is largely a polemic
against the "subjective." When we understand more of group
psychology, and it can be put forth in a positive manner, it will
win many more adherents.

  Then as soon as the psychological foundation of law is clearly
seen, the sovereignty of the state in its old meaning will be
neither acclaimed nor denied. An understanding of the group process
teaches us the true nature of sovereignty. We can agree with the
pluralist school that the present state has no "right" to
sovereignty [1]; we can go further and say that the state will
never be more than ideally sovereign, further still and say that
the whole idea of sovereignty must be recast and take a different
place in political science. And yet, with the meaning given to it
by present psychology, it is perhaps the most vital thought of the
new politics. The sovereign is not the crowd, it is not millions of
unrelated atoms, but men joining to form a real whole. The
atomistic idea of sovereignty is dead, we all agree, but we may
learn to define sovereignty differently.

     1. Some of the pluralists are concerned, I recognize, with the
     fact rather than the right of sovereignty.

  Curiously enough, some of the pluralists are acknowledged
followers of Gierke and Maitland, and base much of their doctrine
on the "real personality" of the group. But the group can create
its own personality only by the "compounding of consciousness," by
every member being at one and the same time an individual and the
"real personality." If it is possible for the members of a group to
evolve a unified consciousness, a common idea, a collective will,
for the many to become really one, not in a mystical sense but as
an actual fact, for the group to have a real not a fictional
personality, this process can be carried on through group and
group, our task, an infinite one, to evolve a state with a real
personality.  The imagination of the born pluralist stops with the
group [2].

     2. The trouble with the pluralists is that their emphasis is
     not on the fact that the group creates its own personality,
     but on the fact that the state does _not_ create it  When they
     change this emphasis, their thinking will be unchained, I
     believe, and leap ahead to the constructive work which we
     eagerly await and expect from them.

  But even in regard to the group the pluralists seem sometimes to
fall into contradictions. Sovereignty, we are often told, must be
decentralized and divided among the local units. But according to
their own theory by whom is the sovereignty to be divided? The fact
is that the local units must _grow_ sovereignty, that we want to
revivify local life not for the purpose of breaking up sovereignty,
but for the purpose of creating a real sovereignty.

  The pluralists always tell us that the unified state proceeds
from the One to the Many; that is why they discard the unified
state. This is not true of the unifying state which I am trying to
indicate. They think that the only alternative to pluralism is
where you begin with the whole. That is, it is true, the classic
monism, but we know now that authority is to proceed from the Many
to the One, from the smallest neighborhood group up to the city,
the state, the nation. This is the process of life, always a
unifying through the interpenetration of the Many -- Oneness an
infinite goal.

  This is expressed more accurately by saying, as I have elsewhere,
that the One and the Many are constantly creating each other. The
pluralists object to the One that comes before the Many. They are
right, but we need not therefore give up oneness. When we say that
there is the One which comes _from_ the Many, this does not mean
that the One is _above_ the Many. The deepest truth of life is that
the interrelating by which both are at the same time a-making is
constant.  This must be clearly understood in the building of the
new state.

  The essential error in the theory of distributed sovereignty is
that each group has an isolated sovereignty. The truth is that each
should represent the whole united sovereignty at one point as each
individual is his whole group at one point. An understanding of
this fact seems to me absolutely necessary to further development
of political theory [1].  This does not mean that the state must
come first, that the group gets its power from the state. This the
pluralists rightfully resent. The power within the group is its own
genetically and wholly. But the same force which forms a group may
form a group of groups.

     1. It is also necessary to an understanding of the new
     international law  See ch. XXXV, "The World State."

  But the conclusion drawn by some pluralists from the theory of
"real personality" is that the state is superfluous because a
corporate personality has the right to assert autonomy over itself.
They thus acknowledge that pluralism means for them group and group
and group side by side. But here they are surely wrong. They ignore
the implications of the psychological fact that power developed
within the group does not cease with the formation of the group.
That very same force which has bound the individuals together in
the group (and which the theory of "real personality" recognizes)
goes on working, you cannot stop it; it is the fundamental force of
life, of all nature, of all humanity, the universal law of being --
the out-reaching for the purpose of further unifying. If this force
goes on working after the group is formed, what becomes of it? It
must reach out to embrace other groups in order to repeat exactly
the same process.

  When you stop your automobile without stopping your engine, the
power which runs your car goes on working exactly the same, but is
completely lost.  It only makes a noise. Do we want this to happen
to our groups? Are they to end only in disagreeable noises? In
order that the group-force shall not be lost, we must provide means
for it to go on working effectively after it is no longer needed
within the group, so to speak. We must provide ways for it to go
out to meet the life force of other groups, the new power thus
generated again and endlessly to seek new forms of unification.  No
"whole" can imprison us infinite beings. The centre of today is the
circumference of to-morrow.

  Thus while the state is not necessary to grant authority, it is
the natural outcome of the uniting groups. The state must be the
collective mind embodying the moral will and purpose of All. From
living group to living group to the "real" state -- such must be
our line of evolution.

  Sovereignty, it is true, is a fact, not a theory. Whoever can
gain obedience has the sovereign power. But we must go beyond this
and seek those political methods by which the command shall be with
those who have evolved a genuine authority, that is, an authority
evolved by what I have called the true social process. We must go
beyond this and seek those methods by which a genuine authority
_can_ be evolved, by which the true social process shall be
everywhere possible. To repeat: first, the true social process must
be given full opportunity and scope, then it must be made the basis
of political method. Then shall we see emerging a genuine authority
which we can all acclaim as sovereign. There is, I agree with the
pluralists, a great advantage in that authority being multiple and
varied, but a static pluralism, so to speak, would be as bad as a
static monism. The groups are always reaching out _towards_ unity. 
Our safeguard against crystallization is that every fresh unity
means (as I have tried to show in chapter III) the throwing out of
myriad fresh differences -- our safeguard is that the universe
knows no static unity. Unification means sterilization; unifying
means a perpetual generating. We do not want the unified
sovereignty of Germany; but when you put the individual and the
group first, you get unifying sovereignty [1].

     1. No one has yet given us a satisfactory account of the
     history of the notion of sovereignty: just how and in what
     degree it has been affected by history, by philosophy, by
     jurisprudence, etc., and how all these have interacted. We
     have not only to disentangle many strands to trace each to its
     source, but we have, moreover, just not to disentangle them,
     but to understand the constant interweaving of all. To watch
     the interplay of legal theory and political philosophy from
     the Middle Ages down to the present day is one of the most
     interesting parts of our reading, but perhaps nowhere is it
     more fruitful than in the idea of sovereignty. We see the
     corporation long ignored and the idea of legal partnership
     influencing the development of the social contract theory,
     which in its turn reacted on legal theory. We find the
     juristic conception of group personality, clearly seen as
     early as Althusius (1557-1638), and revived and expanded by
     Gierke, influencing the whole German school of "group
     sociologists." But to-day are not many of us agreed that
     however interesting such historical tracing, our present
     notion of sovereignty must rest on what we learn from group
     psychology?