The dawn of the 20th century brought us a wave of pioneering communitarian thinkers such as John Dewey, L. T. Hobhouse, Leon Bourgeois, Emile Durkheim, and Mary Parker Follett. They exposed the stale dichotomies of reactionary complacency v revolutionary conflicts; total state control v laissez faire; rigid traditionalism and iconoclastic free-for-all. Instead, they put forward new ideas and practices for developing social, economic and political relations to improve people’s quality of life.
Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) is mostly remembered today as one of the earliest and most influential management theorists in the US. Occasionally, a few would point out that she was also a notable political thinker. In fact, Follett’s ideas on the management of organisations, on politics, and on the social centres movement, are all aspects of her core reflections on community development.
A key focus for Follett is the nature of human relations. She rejected the myopic individualist view that sought to idealise the isolated self as free from all ties and obligations – acting solely in pursuit of one’s own interests, defined without reference to others. At the same time, she would not accept as a viable alternative the notion that one would realise oneself through being absorbed by a larger group, or through some unthinking dedication to serving and obeying what the group calls for. The self, for her, comes to lead a more enriched life in developing wider interests and concerns in association with other people – through exchanging thoughts, feelings, perspectives, one grows intellectually, emotionally, democratically.
People who interact in this mutually instructive and supportive way form a community that gives greater meaning to its members, not because it represents something over and above them, but because it embodies what its members have themselves thoughtfully constructed as their shared goals – and most importantly, serves as an on-going nexus whereby people can work out together what they should do. Accordingly, Follett recommended the promotion of cooperative actions through schools, social/community centres, workplace democracy, political group discussions, in order to facilitate more satisfactory human endeavours.
Anticipating criticisms (echoes of which are heard to this day) that this would increase unruly, chaotic clashing of views, she drew a clear distinction between interactions that are in line with the community principle, and behaviour that is associated with the crowd mentality. The latter is actually just a collection of isolated individuals each driven solely by one’s own thoughts and emotions without any due recognition of others or engaging in any form of shared deliberation. Worse still would be mob behaviour where people blindly follow the instructions of someone who has taken a ‘lead’ position and act without critical exchange of diverse ideas or due consideration of the consequences for others.
Those who command a mob or order a subservient workforce exercise power over them. By contrast, democratic leaders exercise power with the fellow members of their community. Follett was aware that the threat of authoritarian power could push many towards the anarchic fantasy of everyone thriving with no power required for sustaining any organisation or enforcing any rule. Power, she understood, was essential to hold any group together, and the challenge was to ensure power was exercised cooperatively with respect for and input from all.
Follett’s conception of community life is that of interactions of pluralistic viewpoints. In place of monolithic, fossilised groups of people who unquestioningly comply with one set of doctrines and instructions, she advocated mutual learning and cooperative development at every level – from the neighbourhood, the city, to the nation and indeed, world governance.
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The New State by Mary Parker Follett remains an excellent introduction to her wide range of ideas on power, learning, organisation, and democracy.
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