Spencer Heath Archive

Item 505.

No date

 

White envelope contains items 505 – 508.

 

     It is only to the extent that men associate and give services to each other that they have any life or security above that of the brutes. Without this they can exist in temperate climes only as starveling tribes and clans wandering for food or in reptilian lethargy in lush tropic isles. To do this, to associate and exchange services, to civilize themselves, they must form a civis, a society, within a definite territory in which they can have public services to protect them in giving private services to each other and to serve them with safe and convenient means of communication and exchange; for there can be no general communications and exchange of services except there be such order and protec­tion as only public services can establish or maintain.

 

The society, as a unit or entity, cannot itself perform any kind of act or service. It cannot even take possession of its territory except by some of its members taking posses­sion in what seems their own interest but is also in the interest of the whole. It is as needful for a society of men to have special members for attaching it to its soil as for a colony of marine animals to have specialized individuals to give it attachment to the rock upon which it multiplies and grows.

 

Since there are two kinds of services that men in a society must give to and have from each other, namely, private services, which are exchanged among the members generally, and public services, which are performed and conferred upon the territory itself and can be received by the members of the society only in virtue of their respective private occupancies of the territory that is publicly served.

 

To have these two kinds of services, private and public, there must be two kinds of territory. There must be terri­tory held in private occupancy and possession, and there must be territory held for the common use of all the members of the society. Both of these kinds of territory, private and public, must be held under two kinds of officers and servants to exercise the jurisdiction of the whole society over its whole territory.

 

Over the private part of its territory devoted to private occupancy the society recognizes or establishes proprietary officers or owners. And over the public parts of its terri­tory, consisting of all its rights of way and other territory devoted to public use and occupancy, the society recognizes or establishes by appropriate formalities, political officers and servants. By means of and through the acts of these two sets of officers the whole society exercises its whole jurisdiction over its whole territory; and it is only by the proper functioning of these two sets of officers that the society can keep possession of its territory and maintain itself and be of permanent service to the members composing it. Without such proper services and relationships between its proprie­tary and political officers the social organization cannot continue of service to its members, its members cannot con­tinue to practice division of labor and exchange of services with each other but must fall out of their employment and lapse back into the wandering barbarism from which their ancestors emerged.

 

Having seen now that the basic activity that raises the subsistence of men above that of the beasts and lays the basis for all higher values is the division of labor and its concomitant exchange of services and having seen that a social organization or society is necessary in order to establish the conditions under which alone such exchanges can be effected, and having seen in what manner the society organizes itself and takes possession of and jurisdiction over its whole territory, private and public, through appropriate officers, we will now examine in what manner men organize themselves together for division of labor and exchange of private services. Afterwards, we will examine the organization of the society and the actual or appropriate relationships between its officers and servants for the performing of public services.

 

Doubtless there were cycles of ages during which men sought to obtain services from each other by no means other than force and stealth, but slowly a better method and relationship evolved. Dimly and slowly it dawned on men how much more of the good things they desired they could obtain by exchange with each other than by the prac­tice of force and fraud; so, little by little, the technique of exchange emerged and by this practice limited groups of men became social-ized in their relations to one another. At first, individuals worked alone and bartered their pro­ducts. Then under the protection of public services they formed producing or serving groups and introduced tokens, credits and accounts, and business organizations were formed.

 

A business organization is an association of persons having differing capacities who cooperate together to supply others with certain kinds of services, either directly or indirectly, the latter by supplying commodities into which they have incorporated their services.