| Paul C. Godfrey Marriott School of Management Brigham Young University 789 TNRB Provo, Utah 84602 (801) 378-4522 FAX: (801) 378-8098 EMail: pgodfrey@byu.edu |
This essay represents Mary Parker Follett’s response to David Korten’s When Corporations Rule the World. Written as a first person letter from Ms. Follett to Mr. Korten, Ms. Follett points out the deep philosophical divide which separates the two authors. In spite of that chasm, however, there is much commonality between the two authors; namely a focus on neighborhood-based solutions to human social problems. Ms. Follett ends her letter by offering Mr. Korten advice on how to strengthen his case.
"This is a must read book--a searing indictment of an unjust international economic order..." So comments Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu on the cover of David Korten’s 1995 book, When Corporations Rule the World. What if management pioneer Mary Parker Follett read this book? Would she consider it a "must read", or just another alarmist critique of the capitalist system?
More intriguingly, how would Follett respond to Korten? This paper considers this question, assuming that Ms. Follett had read the book. While it is impossible to say exactly how Ms. Follett would have responded, what follows draws exclusively from her own writings, thus being as true as possible to a Follett response. This essay moves away from a traditional academic format, and presents Follett’s intellectual views in the form of a letter from Follett to Korten.
Note that I have tried to fashion a plausible first-person response from Follett to Korten, without attempting to copy Follett’s unique style. My concern is with her ideas. I begin by presenting a brief sketch of Mary Parker Follett, and then move directly to Follett’s letter to Korten.
Mary Parker Follett was born into a well-to-do New England family in 1868. (1) She began her formal education at Thayer Academy in Braintree, MS, and went on to study at Harvards annex for women (later Radcliffe College) and at Newnham College in Cambridge, England. Her academic training included strong doses of philosophy, political science, history, and law. In 1896, she published her first book, The Speaker of the House of Representatives. She authored two other books--The New State and Creative Experience. (Parker Follett, 1918; Parker Follett, 1951) She also authored a number of papers, many of which appear in Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. (Fox and Urwick, 1973) Follett was active in community affairs for most of her life and gained recognition for her contributions to management thought. She also made several lasting contributions to civic life, primarily through her work with the community center movement. Ms. Follett died in 1933.
While her early work focused on the inner workings of political processes in the U. S. Congress, her later works advocated uniquely apolitical solutions to the social problems of organization. Her twentieth century works built upon two central theses: First, the summum bonum of human activity involves engaging in the integrative and creative processes of group life. Humanity can only reach its full potential, and society true progress, when individuals come together in groups and jointly work out common solutions to problems, challenges, and issues of the day.
Second, a sound understanding of scientific principles, and particularly in the domain of social psychology, provides the vehicle group members can convene and develop a strong, enduring, and meaningful group life. In this respect she belongs to the movement known as "scientific management;" but not in the typical sense of the term. Mainstreamers like Frederick W. Taylor concerned themselves with time and motion studies, effective wage rates, and the proper division of labor. Follett, on the other hand, called for the implementation of the scientific method in industry, in government, and in the life of communities. She held that such a scientific method--decision making grounded on the purposeful consideration of lived experience--held the key to true progress; the scientific method allowed individuals to utilize the vast set of principles which could reduce conflict and suffering in human affairs, and bring out the full measure of humanity in its capacity to love, to understand one another, and to create a positive life.
Boston, August 1997
Dr. David Korten
c/o Kumarian Press
14 Oakwood Avenue
West Hartford, Connecticut 06119-2127
Dear Dr. Korten:
I recently came across a copy of your book, When Corporations Rule the World; your book speaks of issues and concerns close to my own, and so I decided to write and give you some unsolicited feedback. All in all I enjoyed the book, although certain parts of the work troubled me greatly. In general, I was amazed at the similarity between your global situation in the 1990’s and the situation in the U.S. and Great Britain shortly after the first world war. There still exists a strong need for men and women to discover a new paradigm for living, one which moves away from the pursuit of greed and individual praise, and toward a truly communal life, based on common values, communications, and joint (or to use my phraseology integrative) decision making. My feedback considers three broad areas: 1) points of fundamental disagreement between your work and my work, 2) points of agreement, and 3) my suggestions for moving your cause forward.
Your book and my work disagree most strongly in philosophical position. Your work appears consistent with, if not formally grounded in, the emerging postmodern tradition, while my writings are firmly rooted in the modernist philosophy. The central building block in my later works--The New State and Creative Experience--is the idea of integrative experience between groups of people. Integrative processes build from the notion of "plusvalents." (Parker Follett, 1951, p. 73) A plusvalent considers an individual in constant interaction with his/ her environment, in an iterative Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis loop.
Integrative decision making is not merely consensus, and is by no means compromise. It encompasses the processes whereby individuals come together as groups and create a better solution to the actual problem, building from the foundation of each persons initial opinion, and constructing a new solution through joint discourse. When men and women see their actions within this constant, dynamic system of circular response, they begin to understand the true nature of human and social interaction. The Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis cycle comes from Hegel and, while I do not consider myself a Hegelian by any stretch of the imagination, his notion of a creative dialectic leading to an enlightened state of understanding provides one philosophical pillar of my work. I do reject, however, Hegel’s spiritualism and idealism and draw heavily on the pragmatism of American philosopher William James. Both of these philosophers appear in frequent references in The New State.
Your work, by contrast, fits clearly within the postmodern paradigm. While the pragmatists of the late 19th century began to move away from the modernist position, your work assumes a completely different orientation to philosophy, which while it remains unspoken, conforms within the broad definition of postmodernism. You adhere to three fundamental tenets of postmodern thought: 1) a rejection of "metanarratives", or overarching theories, discourses, or actions, which lead to a condition of progress, 2) a distrust of institutional arrangements because they typically seek the betterment of the few by the oppression of the many, and 3) a concern for the "unheard" voices in the social discourse--for the poor, ethnic minorities, or other marginalized groups. (2) I am unsure why you do not reference the philosophy of postmodernism directly, and would think that were you to do so, the book might gain more credibility and readership among a philosophically literate group of readers.
Our outlooks also differ in their spiritual foundations. My works seated spirituality and morality clearly within the realm of everyday experience. For example, in Creative Experience, I wrote: "The philosophy involved in ‘progressive integration’ gives us a soul at home and it gives us the crescent self; it shows us that our greatest spiritual nourishment comes not from ‘inviting our soul’ but in meeting the circumstance." (Parker Follett, 1951, p. 132) Similarly, in The New State, I write: "We need a constructive faith and a robust faith, faith in men, in this world, in this day, in the Here and Now." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 341) My spirituality is a distinctly this-world spirituality.
Your work seats itself within the humanist tradition, although you weave together strands of postmodern ideology with a unique spiritual orientation. You choose not to weave much spiritual thread into the body of your work, and offering a spiritual perspective at the end. The position you take is a highly personal one, speaking about a self-reflective universe capable of incorporating human interaction (Korten, 1995, pp. 326-7). While the notion strikes someone from my era as just a new name for Protestant conceptions of God, your position seems somewhat inconsistent with postmodernism. Many postmodernists disparage religion as a "metanarrative" and approach any appeal to spirituality with a high degree of skepticism.
Moving from general points of disagreement to more specific claims, we differ on the role of individuals in the social fabric. My works all begin with the assumption that man is the center of the social universe, and the instigator of all meaningful action. In fact, The New State begins by asserting "the importance of the new psychology is that it acknowledges man as the center and shaper of his universe." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 19) Studies of societies, governments, or businesses which do not build from this fundamental premise are bound to be flawed because they do not consider the human elements that construct these institutions. Institutions reflect the desires of men and women to express their true natures, and institutions cannot be considered as whole without considering the people who created them and who inhabit them. My view is, in the management parlance of your day, a social constructionist view. Men and women are the shapers, or creators, of their worlds, and they are in constant interaction with their worlds. Thus, "man is at the same time a social factor and a social product." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 60) I take this to mean that men and women are active participants in the processes of life, continuously shaping, and in turn being shaped by, the institutions they have created.
Your position seems to be that organizations, institutions, and ideologies are the center of the universe. Let me cite several examples from your work. You write: "[economic] forces have transformed once beneficial corporations and financial institutions into instruments of a market tyranny that is extending its reach across the planet like a cancer, colonizing ever more of the planet’s living space, destroying livelihoods, displacing people, rendering democratic institutions impotent, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money." (Korten, 1995, p. 12) Again: "Although this ideology [economic rationalism] denigrates the most basic human values and ideals, it has become so deeply embedded within our values, institutions, and popular culture that we accept it almost without question." (Korten, 1995, p. 71) Finally, "top executives have to be paid outrageous salaries to motivate them to not yield to their instincts toward social responsibility." (Korten, 1995, p. 242) In short, you create a vision of society where individuals are virtually helpless in the face of powerful institutions, ideologies, and systems which have taken on a life of their own.
The point of our differences on the center of the social universe is to make your ideas, and your entire position, very negative and dark. You spend 250-plus pages telling me that people have lost control, and that we are now governed by tyrannical institutions. How much confidence, then, can I really place on the solutions you advocate in the next section? The belief that institutions, rather than individuals, drive social processes makes your agenda for change seem unachievable. Your orientation, to put the matter bluntly, destroys much hope of an eventual or lasting solution. Further, your misdiagnosis of the causal driver of social processes leads you to write the wrong prescription. You advocate in your agenda for change a wholesale dismantling of our institutions, but have little to say about the fundamental changes in the human attitude, mind, and heart, which, I believe, are the real drivers of a more just, equitable, and meaningful social life. For example, regulation of multinational corporations and heavy taxation of the same represent distinctly negative inducements to behavior. The society both you and I desire to see requires positive inducements as well, it will not be enough to proscribe certain behaviors, we must work to both prescribe and inculcate other, community building, behaviors.
We seem to disagree on another fundamental point--the role of experts, professionals, and elites in our thinking. According to my view, one must be cautious of the destructive power of elites. Elites, particularly occupational or intellectual elites, have a strong tendency to distort, withhold, or improperly interpret data and information (Parker Follett, 1951, especially ch. 1). This distortion of information is not inherent in the system, however, as I view all individuals as capable of obtaining the important information that contributes to group decisions. A reliance on expert information signals an abdication of individual responsibility within a group.
Properly functioning group processes neutralize this power-seeking by elite groups. Professionals and those with extensive training do provide diversity within the social group, however, and a diversity of opinion is critical in formulating group solutions and integrative approaches to problems. Indeed, we cannot arrive at truly integrative solutions without a well-grounded set of alternative viewpoints. In my shorter papers I most clearly articulate the view that professional training and expertise are essential to the continued progress, and humanization, of industry (Fox and Urwick, 1973). In short, professionals and elite groups pose a potential risk for strong democratic group processes; however, their advantages may be neutralized through proper application of the group method and scientific principles.
You see professionals and elites in a very negative light. Your most powerful condemnation of them appears in your chapter "illusions of the cloud minders." (Korten, 1995, ch. 7) Your definition of who exactly is a "stratos dweller", however, is far from clear. You refer to them as the "rich and powerful" or corporate libertarians, but I did not feel that I came to know these people in a more detailed and discrete way. (Korten, 1995, p. 104, and chapter 5) Perhaps your most damning, and insightful, passages about the "stratos dwellers" comes in the chapter titled "the money game" where you blister corporate investors, stock traders, and those who speculate in financial transactions. (Korten, 1995, ch. 14) These people seem to be the personification of "corporate libertarianism" and their actions, coupled with their power, occupy the causal position driving the worlds bus over the cliff.
I must admit that your description of these people seems rather dizzying to me, the financial world of Post World War I America seemed much simpler and much slower. True, I lived to see many of the rogue financiers of my day wreak havoc on stock markets; however, much of what I wrote should have worked to control these rogues. I am puzzled by your description, because you are describing people that for me should be the epitome of proper management: people who have been well trained in both theory and cases, and acutely aware of the unfolding industrial situation (Fox and Urwick, 1973, pp. 93-94). Many of my papers dealt with leaders of industry, those whose daily tasks focused on interaction with employees and others, and so I am keenly interested in your description of a class of professionals who do their jobs without significant human interaction.
The consequence of our differing opinions is that your argumentation does little to overcome the problem of power. Professionals, elites, and experts will always have a high degree of power, and the potential for abusing power has been around since the dawn of social interaction. Your solution seems to be one of "off with their heads"-- a systematic attempt to reign in the power of elites through either government mandate or the removal and replacement of certain elites. This begs the question, however, of why governmentally sponsored elites (who regulate corporate elites) are not subject to the seductive elixir of power? Put simply, the solution lies not bringing in a new set of professionals, or regulating their behavior, but rather in changing the mindset and skillset of those professionals and elites. I advocated formal management training in order to teach the scientific method of management. For me the issue is not eliminating professionals, elites, or experts, but it is teaching them, and the others in a society, the importance of everyone making decisions and conclusions based on the facts yielded by experience. The issue is also redirecting the hearts and minds of professionals away from self aggrandizement and greed and towards an understanding of the positive power of group life. I see little in your philosophy which addresses this important aspect of behavior.
Finally, we differ about the value and nature of "progress." My view is that progress is not only possible and good, but through proper application of the scientific method to living, progress is inevitable. Managers, governmental leaders, and the citizenry must become subject to the "law of the situation" (Fox and Urwick, 1973, ch. 2). This "law" holds that the best decisions are made when all those involved in a decision completely understand the context of the decision and the nature of the outcomes. The law of the situation and the principles of group psychology help social groups progress: their standard of living is improved and the quality of their human interactions become deeper and richer. This for me is the essence of progress, and it is rooted in a collective application of the scientific method.
Your view is vastly different than mine. It seems that you see science, particularly economics, but also engineering and business administration, as creating a degenerative, not a progressive, social order. I have already noted your disdain for economic rationalism as the moral and intellectual foundation for capitalism. (Korten, 1995, p. 72) The same may be said of your condemnation of advertising and marketing professionals at this point. Your graph titled "the downward spiral of deepening alienation" attributes much of the blame to advertisers and marketers. (Korten, 1995, p. 267) These professionals, by plying their wares, destroy the foundations of human life, they do not provide the joy and fulfillment they claim. In short, you portray "progress"--at least defined as an improved material standard of living--as not a desirable goal of human endeavor. Specifically, where increasing one’s standard of living negatively impacts the environment and condition of someone else, such progress is neither sustainable nor right. (see Korten, 1995, p. 281)
The consequence of this difference reinforces our other points of disagreement. You see the solution to social problems as requiring a massive restructuring of social institutions while I advocate significant changes within individuals. In short, you seek to destroy the modernist order, while I seek to build it up and see it obtain its full potential.
I have highlighted some of the key differences between our two systems of thought. These differences all flow from my positioning within the modernist school of philosophy and your grounding in the postmodern school. Our philosophical outlooks drive our solutions for change. You favor abolishing, dismantling, and radically transforming the institutional forms of human life, while I advocate building a new life through a changed individual, then growing into a collective, consciousness. You see the institutions of business and government as barriers to creative human development, I see them as vehicles to human development and progress, provided they are inhabited by enlightened individuals.
If I were to judge your book solely on our points of difference, I would find it dark, hopeless, and misguided in its attempts to improve the human condition. There are, gladly, many points upon which our systems agree, and let me balance my feedback by turning to these points.
What I find so compelling about your work, and your thinking, is that despite the deep philosophical chasm that divides us, we arrive at essentially the same conclusions. We both reach the same diagnosis regarding the presence of social ills, greed and a concern for personal aggrandizement; in the mechanism for effecting lasting change, thinking in systemic wholes; and in the outcomes of a changed social order, truly human communities, based on small groups. I suspect that our works illustrate the principle of equifinality--starting from vastly different assumptions, we end up with the same or similar conclusions.
We both agree that the current, non-ideal states, of our societies stem from greed and a fundamental perversion of human relations. In The New State, I write: "Much of the evil of our political and social life comes from the fact that we crave personal recognition and personal satisfaction." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 31) Or again: "The evils of our big businesses have not come because Americans are prone to cheat, because they want to get the better of their fellows, because their greed is inordinate, their ambition domineering. Individuals have not been to blame, but our whole system." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 167) These points resonate with your reasoning, some of which I quoted earlier, which holds that greed and the desire for wealth is a central motive in current human activity. You add reinforcement to your views in this passage: "Incremental changes within individual corporations or political institutions cannot provide an adequate solution. The whole system of institutional power must be transformed." (Korten, 1995, p. 276)
I argue that the core of this selfishness comes from the misguided notion of power as power-over and not power-with. People become confused, and pervert proper human relations, when they seek power over another, for the only lasting power over is the power over the self (Parker Follett, 1951, p. 186). What is needed is a strong notion of power-with, a belief that working together as groups the power of any individual is magnified, and the group process works toward a solution beneficial for all. The challenge in our larger political arenas, such as the U.S. Congress or your United Nations, is to overcome the natural tendency of individuals to defend their own position, or to see their position in competition with others. Some of my most compelling argumentation in The New State is an attempt to illustrate the point that the principle of power-with need not be violated when neighborhoods come together and begin to form larger collective governmental bodies, such as cities, states, and nations.
You advocate power in its power-with form. The last chapters of your book are strongly infused with the reality that when men and women combine their power they can effect social change and progress. This seems to be your primary hope for building a better world, convincing people that cooperation really is superior to competition in creating a sustainable, meaningful life. Your discussion of effective citizen networking (Korten, 1995, pp. 297- 301) provides a compelling example of the principles of group processes built on shared power between individuals.
We also agree that solving our social problems requires thinking holistically, or systematically. My view is that a true understanding of human behavior comes in relation to a particular situation and within a concrete context of a larger environment. I write in Creative Experience that "the value of every fact depends on its position in the whole world-process, is bound up in its multitudinous relations." (Parker Follett, 1951, p. 12) Facts, individual behaviors, and social policies all must be understood within the entire system of relations in which they are found. One must also understand that humans, and their institutions, do not merely respond to events, but they interact with events in order to form a new state of the world. This is the power of the law of the situation. (Fox and Urwick, 1973, p. 30) When all men and women concerned with a decision are aware of the entire context, including consequences which may not affect them but will devastate others, they are prepared to make integrative, progressive, and good decisions.
Your views on this matter coincide with my own. Your chapters describing the rogue financial system in the world build from the fundamental premise that money traders make decisions based on only short term, non human factors. Problems arise because these short term interests fail to account for the system-wide ramifications of these individual actions. I was particularly impressed by the story of the Igorot people in the Philippines. Igorot livelihoods were ruined, and their land and culture destroyed, because managers of global mining companies failed to see the holistic context. (Korten, 1995, pp. 43-44). One of the solutions you recommend is to force business administrators to be more cognizant of the holistic situation in which their activities take place. Specifically, you recommend that "current national income accounting systems based on returns to business enterprises will be replaced by systems that measure economic performance on the basis of human needs met and the enhancement or depletion of a countries human, social, and natural capital stock." (Korten, 1995, pp. 303-304) I heartily endorse such changes, because they help to focus people on the need for thinking about wholes. Corporate performance must not be measured in abstract units divorced from actual situations; and performance must be seen within, and evaluated against, the concrete situation in which it occurred.
I am most encouraged by our agreement on the solution for social ills, and the outcome of a changed social order. We both see strong neighborhoods as the foundation of a prosperous and meaningful life, be that life lived at the local, national, or global level. The bulk of The New State is devoted to examining the advantages of neighborhood government, with citizen involvement in small groups as the key. "Our proposal is that people should organize themselves into neighborhood groups to express their daily life, to bring to the surface the needs, desires and aspirations of that life, that these needs should become the substance of politics, and that these neighborhood groups should become the recognized political unit." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 192) Neighborhood groups provide the most meaningful level of interaction between men and women because neighborhood relations are real relations. Real in the sense that we have sustained interactions with our neighbors, they are not feelingless faces we meet at the stadium, nor are they merely a bundle of tastes and preferences susceptible to advertising influence. "I learn my duty to my friends not by reading essays on friendship, but by living my life with my friends and learning by experience the obligations friendship demands." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 193) The constant and sustained interaction between neighbors allows the fruits of humanity to blossom and ripen. Neighborhood involvement provides the foundation for government at any level: "we shall never know how to be one of a nation until we are one of a neighborhood." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 202)
Your views parallel my own in this regard. Tucked safely in the middle of your calls for massive institutional reform lies a most personal, yet foundational story. You describe your experiences living in New York City, and you notice the tremendous potential of the neighborhood to meet all of your economic, physical, social, and spiritual needs. Herein lies the genius of neighborhoods-- real people living real lives of interaction and meaningful work. You extend this call to neighborhood action later in your agenda for change by wanting to dismantle global organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as limiting the reach and scope of global business corporations (see Korten, 1995, pp. 320-22 for examples of this call). Your vision, like mine, is to create a world full of small, vitally engaged neighborhoods, each of which provides opportunities for human interaction, involvement, and development, and each of which lends meaning and purpose to our collective existence.
I have enjoyed reading your work. We have much to disagree about: philosophical orientation, the role of individuals versus organizations, and the roles of professional elites. But we are also in fundamental agreement on so many points. In the space that remains, let me offer some points of advice and wisdom on how scientific management and scientific principles will help you advance your cause and create a new and better world.
I feel comfortable calling what I offer "advice." My personal experiences in Boston, and working on numerous committees to improve the situations of our communities, have given me insights into the unique challenges of effecting change on the order of magnitude for which you call. There are many groups and individuals who will oppose such changes, and so it is imperative to have a solid understanding of both goals and objectives. Having said that, let me outline some things you can do to enhance your chances of success.
Education needs to be the foundation of any serious attempts at lasting social change. As I read your concluding sections calling for massive institutional change, I was surprised that you made only one reference to schools, and then as advertising-free zones (Korten, 1995, p. 312). Other than this remark, you are strangely silent on the necessity of education. By education I mean not only formal schooling, but also experience and training on using the principles of group psychology. I summarized my views on education quite nicely in The New State: "Hence education should be largely the training in making choices. The aim of all proper training is not rigid adherence to a crystallized right (since in ethics, economics, or politics there is no crystallized right), but the power to make a new choices at every moment. And the greatest lesson of all is to know that every moment is new." (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 54) If you really want to make lasting changes to improve the condition of many of the world’s people, you must do more than destroy the existing institutional framework; you must build a new order based on individual choices made by an informed, trained, and educated citizenry.
Education becomes a central element in lasting social change for three strong reasons. First, education allows individuals to combat the nefarious uses of expert information. As I noted above, and wrote about extensively in Creative Experience, there is a certain power granted to experts which is usually discounted when those receiving the facts care enough to become educated about those facts (Parker Follett, 1951, ch. 1). Education allows true discourse and integrative decision making to occur because by leveling the intellectual playing field between experts and non-experts.
Second, education allows decision making to proceed according to the "law of the situation" (Fox and Urwick, 1973, ch. 2). Anything close to an optimal, or integrative, solution can be reached only when all parties to a decision come to a clear understanding about the objective facts and historical path surrounding the situation. Education does not mean that all parties will view the situation through exactly the same lens, but it does insure that everyone is at least aware of all the relevant facts. Only in a state of such awareness can groups forge unity out of diversity.
Third, education works both in time and through time. Dismantling the existing social order, and replacing it with a neighborhood-based system, requires at its outset an adult population attuned to the values, facts, and measures embedded in your books proposals. Thus, massive education programs are needed for the worlds adults. More importantly, however, the worlds children must be educated so that they may take their proper place in this new ordering of things. Without a strong system of education, for young and old alike, your proposals for change may be doomed to acceptance by only a small intellectual elite.
Your program bases its effort, and its success, on macro-level change. You are intent on abolishing, or at least restructuring, many of the world’s leading institutions, from supranational agencies to local business relations. Given your assumptions about the centrality of organizations in late twentieth century life, it is understandable that your call would be focused in this area. I reiterate a key theme of this letter: macro-level changes may prove necessary conditions for social change; however, they cannot provide the sufficient conditions for such change. Current institutional arrangements do place barriers between rich and poor, bond and free, and thus prevent the realization of your ideal social vision. Once these cultural and institutional barriers are removed, however, I predict you will be disappointed by the lack of progress toward a new order. Removing the barriers to change is not enough, people must be taught and trained in new ways of organizing, and new ways of relating to the world and to each other. This training occurs through the micro-level processes of group life.
I am not suggesting that you abandon your call for broad institutional change, I think it is an important piece of the puzzle. My calls after World War I were for micro-level, small changes in our methods of social organization. My belief was then that once effective micro-level change had taken place, they would create ripple effects which would engender change at increasingly higher levels of the social hierarchy. This is the thesis of the latter parts of New State (Parker Follett, 1918, chs. 22-27). History did not bear me out, however, because external factors--such as the depression of the 1930’s and the Second World War--effectively blocked micro-level changes from ever having macro-level effects. Thus, I heartily endorse your calls for broad institutional changes.
However, your macro-level changes, even if they could be brought about tomorrow, would create a social power vacuum. We are both aware of the catchy aphorism that nature abhors a vacuum. Abolishing the IMF or World Bank would be to no ultimate avail unless the premise of power-over in relations is replaced with the principle of power-with. Other institutions, perhaps created and led by some of those you view as most oppressed, could then arise to fill the vacuum created by "unmet current needs." To repeat: unless the principle of power-over is replaced with the strong spirit of power-with, it will not be long before the new institutions are just as dominant, and domineering, as the ones you abolished. Where is the principle of power-with learned? Not in current institutional settings, but in practice through the lived group experience.
Thus, lasting change requires the integration of micro-level group processes as a basis for macro-level institutional changes. Large institutions need not be abolished until a new crop of citizenry has grown up, a citizenry facile in group life and well-versed in integrative decision making. As such a citizenry emerges, it will be possible to dismantle existing institutions that cling to the old order without leaving a philosophical or social vacuum in its place. In fact, David, I would argue that as the micro-level group processes take hold and become woven into the warp of the social fabric, the very institutions you find so malevolent will begin a transformation process toward more humane organizations.
The Christian parable of the wheat and the tares illustrates my point. (3) A farmer plants his field with wheat. At night, the evil enemy comes and sows tares among the wheat. When the farmer’s servants realize that the field has been infested with tares, they offer to remove the tares. The farmer admonishes his servants to allow both to grow together, since the removal of the tares at this early stage would most likely damage the root system of the wheat as well, thus ruining the entire crop. The farmer advocates letting both grow together until the wheat and tares are both strong. At the harvest the tares can be removed without risk of damage to the wheat.
So it is with the relationship between the micro-level processes I recommend and the macro-level changes you advocate. Your macro-level changes must be sequenced to allow the requisite mindsets and skillsets to be developed to live in your post-institutional world, lest the whole project collapse because it cannot bear its own weight.
Your work is replete with policy prescriptions and actions for government leaders, business executives, and academics, but what can everyday people do in their everyday lives to bring about your social vision? Consistent with my advice on education, and the preceding section on micro-level changes, you need to consider, and articulate, the practical steps people can take to move forward. Should people divest their stock holdings in multinational firms or global mutual funds? Should people recycle their garbage? While your calls for concerted social action through activist groups will provide part of the practical way forward, there needs to be a personal agenda for change--something that everyone can do, without the need to become attached to larger groups.
The benefits of this personal, practical agenda are two-fold. First, the greater number of actors involved in the change increases the likelihood that the change will succeed, and that it will succeed in your lifetime. Second, as people make individual commitments to change their behavior, the transition to committed group membership, with its attendant social action, will be greatly facilitated. Again, the Christian principle applies. The first area in which change should occur is the individual human heart and consciousness. Once individuals become personally committed and aligned with the cause of social justice, they can work collectively to cement change at the next level, the neighborhood group; change can then percolate up the social hierarchy and produce the broad social changes you call for.
All social units should be considered nested within each other, and the neighborhood becomes the central core. Cities are collections of neighborhoods, states collections of cities, and nations constitute collections of states. As I noted above, neighborhoods provide a forum for people to solve real, immediate, and pressing problems, as well as to design new structures for their shared lives.
While your personal experience leads to a neighborhood solution, David, you are fairly silent on the mechanics of building and sustaining strong local communities. My experience has shown that this knowledge is not instinctive for most people; it must be taught and it must be learned. Let me review for you the essential ingredients of a strong neighborhood life.
This neighborhood consciousness can be evolved in five ways:
As we both agree, the neighborhood life must be an active life; it is not enough for people to be passive consumers in their neighborhoods. True participation--informed, educated, and empowered participation--enables the neighborhood group to become the crucible in which all forge the skills, attitudes, and values that are the hallmarks of true citizenship. You already have a clear idea for dismantling the institutional framework of a misguided global economy, what your writing lacks is a detailed explanation of a meaningful and service-full life you wish to see. These five steps provide a strong starting point for you to build such a vision.
Real neighborhood participation requires more than the mechanical implementation of these five steps, however. They must be infused with life, and with purpose. Clearly my five steps help neighborhood groups form and become functional as they solve the day to day problems of communal life. For the neighborhood movement to reach its true potential, these groups must do more than solve the day to day problems of their communities. As I noted in The New State:
If neighborhood organization is one among many methods of getting things, then it is not of great value; if, however, it is going to bring about a different mental life, it will give us an open mind, a flexible mind, a cooperative mind, then it is the greatest movement of our time. For our object is not to get certain things, or have certain things; our object is to evolve the kind of life, the way of thinking, within which these specific things will naturally have place. (Parker Follett, 1918, p. 208)
This, Dr. Korten, is your greatest challenge. Your book argues forcefully, and with strong language, that the global economic system is broken and in desperate need of repair. The challenge facing your generation, as was the challenge facing mine, is not merely the abolition of "rogue" institutions in the world, or even the solution to the tangible problems of poverty, pollution, and alienation. The challenge is to create a way of life, or as I would prefer, a way of living (Parker Follett, 1951, p. 88) which precludes greed, self aggrandizement, and waste, while it engenders love, meaningful work, and the realization of our full potential as social beings.
Sincerely,
Mary Parker Follett