Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2825

Five ring-binder pages of penciled matter by Heath

No date

 

 

 

 Socionomy is the dictionary name for the Science of Society that treats of society as a living organism having the unique function of re-building and thus constantly creating the physical environment in which it lives. Unlike any other life form, it has the power to make its habitat not less but ever more habitable and thereby to gain for its members and for itself ever increasing length of days.

 

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Socionomy is the “theory or formulation of the organic laws exemplified in the organization and development of society” (Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1924). In virtue of these organic laws, Socionomy treats of society as an organism, an organic structure, composed of living units interfunctioning therein and thereby having itself a higher function than any of its units as individuals can perform. This over-all function of the social organism is to transform and re-create its environment, to make its habitat progressively more and more habitable and thereby increase its own and its members’ length of days. Socionomy looks upon society as an organic life form that is evolving and is in process of development out of cruder and less creative or destructive relationships among men. Socionomy, therefore, has to do with men in their creative relationships, with those processes in which alone they become no longer the creatures but the creators of their environment. It is concerned therefore not with coercions and conflicts, governments and wars, but with the organic relationships in which men produce and create and do not destroy. These it finds founded on freedom and peace, on the contractual relationship — the only alternative to slavery or war where large numbers beyond the bonds of clan or tribe are involved. (Recent centuries — private contract _________)

 In all ancient times subjection to a ruling power, even outright slavery, was the lot of the generality of mankind. Property could be owned only by men of the master class or by their permission. Only by them or under their direction could free contracts be made and performed. Hence wealth was produced chiefly to be displayed and consumed or destroyed, and not to be exchanged. There was little or no productive administration and exchange of wealth, little or no capital properties and goods. Only in the interim between the crumbling of the ancient absolutes over trade and its current re-enslavement by the “free” governments spawned from their decay has there ever been any widespread expansion or high development of the contractual processes among men on a national or international scale. Modern civilization has risen between the fall of ancient sovereignties and the full growth of the modern spawned from their debris. But the functioning of the modern society of contract has grown up almost entirely within the field of action having to do with the kinds of properties, services and goods that are individually and not collectively owned or enjoyed. The properties and services that men must enjoy in common — the public or community services — have remained political, have not come under benefit of the free contractual mode of administration. The ancient political process is inherently absolute and coercive, hence not productive and cannot operate by exchange. Unlike the contractual, its final arbitraments and their enforcement are by power and not by the good faith of agreement and consent. The social process has not yet entered into the public community services.

 It is also true that the rent of land is the

 

 

Socionomy is the science that discovers and describes Society as an evolving organization, a super organism composed of individuals in statistical numbers (larger than families or tribes) as far as they act