The New State · Chapter
The Group Principle at Work explained
This chapter examines how the group principle is manifesting in contemporary society across education, immigration, criminal justice, and industrial relations.
What happens
This chapter examines how the group principle is manifesting in contemporary society across education, immigration, criminal justice, and industrial relations. It argues that true progress toward democracy requires understanding man's capacity to join with others to form a living group, and illustrates this through changing educational methods (vocational guidance, group classroom work), evolving immigration theories (from amalgamation to separatist colonies to the community idea), new approaches to crime (community responsibility, rehabilitation through social service and self-governing colonies), and innovations in industrial relations (trade agreements, reconciliation courts) that move beyond mere compromise toward integration of interests.
Themes in this chapter
Education for Social Citizenship and Group Life
The chapter highlights the shift in education from individual development to fitting the child into community life, through group classroom work, vocational training, and continuous education.
Transformation of Law and Justice Through Group Principles
Discusses community responsibility for crime, rehabilitation over punishment, the juvenile court, the Reconciliation Court of Cleveland, and the colony system as applications of the group principle to justice.
Integration of Occupational and Neighborhood Groups
Examines Trade Agreements and collective bargaining as methods for integrating labor and capital, moving beyond compromise toward community and joint control.
Characters to notice
- Narrator
The narrator presents observations on the group principle at work in education, immigration, criminal justice, and industrial relations, citing specific examples and authorities.
- We the People
Referenced as the collective society that is gradually adopting community responsibility for crime and rethinking education and immigration.
- Mr. Osborne
His work at Sing Sing through the Mutual Welfare League is cited as an example of using group incentives and community consciousness within prisons to prepare inmates for community life.
- Mr. Justice Brandeis
His 1910 protocol scheme for the garment industries of New York is mentioned as a notable Trade Agreement that prevented strikes for six years.
- William James
Not directly mentioned in excerpts, but the chapter's focus on group process and community aligns with Jamesian themes; no explicit reference found.
Key passages
“The chief aim of education now is to fit the child into the life of the community; we do not think of his 'individual' development except as contributing to that.”
Education's primary purpose is to integrate the child into community life, with individual development seen only as a means to that end.
Illustrates the shift from individualism to community-oriented education.
“We do not want Swedes and Poles to be lost in an undifferentiated whole, but equally we do not want all the evils of the separatist method; we are trying to get an articulated whole.”
The goal is neither assimilation into a homogeneous mass nor isolation in separate colonies, but a community where diverse groups contribute and receive equally through mutual permeation.
Describes the third, community-based approach to immigration.
“The old idea of justice was punishment, a relic of personal revenge; this punishment took the form of confinement, of keeping the man outside society. The new idea is exactly the opposite: it is to join him to society by finding out just what part he is best fitted to play in society and training him for it.”
Justice has shifted from punitive exclusion to rehabilitative inclusion, aiming to identify and train the offender for a constructive role in society.
Captures the transformation of criminal justice under the group principle.
“Not bargaining in any form, not negotiation, is the key to industrial peace and prosperity; the collective contract must in time go the way of the individual contract. Community is the key-word for all relations of the new state.”
True industrial harmony comes not from bargaining or negotiation but from community, and collective contracts will eventually be replaced by a deeper integration.
Summarizes the chapter's critique of compromise and advocacy for community in industrial relations.
