Our political life is stagnating, capital and labor are virtually at war, the nations of Europe are at one another's throats -- because we have not yet learned how to live together. The twentieth century must find a new principle of association. Crowd philosophy, crowd government, crowd patriotism must go. The herd is no longer sufficient to enfold us.
    ... We talk about the evils of democracy. We have not yet tried democracy. Party or "interests" govern us with some fiction of the "consent of the governed" which we say means democracy. We have not even a conception of what democracy means. That conception is yet to be forged out of the crude ore of life.
    We talk about the tragedy of individualism. The individual we do not yet know, for we have no methods to release the powers of the individual. Our particularism -- our laissez-faire, our every-man- for-his-own-interests -- has little to do with true individualism, that is, with the individual as consciously responsible for the life from which he draws his breath and to which he contributes his all.
    Politics do not need to be "purified." This thought is leading us astray. 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.
    Government by the people must be more than the phrase. We are told -- The people should do this, the people should do that, the people must be given control of foreign policy, etc. etc. But all this is wholly useless unless we provide the procedure within which the people can do this or that. What does the "sovereign will" of the people amount to unless it has some way of operating? Or have we any "sovereign will?" There is little yet that is practical in "practical politics."
    ... The immediate problem of political science is to discover the method of self-government. Industrial democracy, the self-government of smaller nations, the "sovereignty" of an International League, our own political power,- -how are these to be attained? Not by being "granted" or "conferred." Genuine control, power, authority are always a growth. Self-government is a psychological process. It is with that psychological process that this book is largely concerned. To free the way for that process is the task of practical politics.... (1)

"We are told to do this and do that," Follett complains, telling us in her own rhetorical way to do this and do that, just as have almost all activists before and since, to the point that many people believe that there simply is no other way to address 'the people' at all. And they all put the problem clearly: unless we own the procedure, no result of the people can be anything other than yet another feeble, futile, frustrated, obedient doing of this or that.

This leaves one with a choice: one can either believe that there is no solution (stating the problem is as close as it is possible to get), or that one or more Orwellian layers of silence surrounds the enuciation of the solution (if the way we state problems is itself a problem, what could be more trivial than 'solving' that?). (2)

In any case, as the problem-staters are far and away in the majority, these pages are dedicated to peeling back any and all layers of silence, just to see what is concealed beneath them. At no point will they tell you what to do (if they do, you just let me know!), but you're welcome to poke around, and even contribute. Who knows what might turn out to be useful in your own thinking?

A Caveat

For those whose faith is stronger, a second, more subtle, tack is handy. Researchers in artificial intelligence (AI) trying to give some 'common sense' to their programs cannot define even the simplest things ("What is a chair?") because any absolute definition is arbitrary. Now, since most people have no problem using the concept of chair (or the chair itself), the task is to slowly and carefully pick out the path by which each of us gets from the specific ( this chair, my concept) to the general (A chair is...), and to show that it applies to the use of language (this encounter, our concept of communication), not merely to the individual words within it. At no point in human discourse will it be found necessary to 'define' any step of the way without such derivation, despite the determined efforts by some to present themseves as automata. But to their typical assertion that 'Everybody knows how to communicate,' the question, 'Why doesnt it work, then?' may provide a point of beginning.

Notes

Comments? Contributions? Write to Serchan.