Spencer Heath Archive

Item 628

Notes by Heath at page 203 of Lester F. Ward, Pure Sociology.

About 1937?

CONFLICT

Genesis of Society in the struggle of the races. Follows and endorses Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer.

     Does not see that exchange of services, division of labor and exchange, trade and commerce, mutual aid by exchange, is what social-izes men, draws them together and constitutes the basis of all social integration and organ­ization. Does not know that conflict de-social-izes, disintegrates social organization.

     Conflict diminishes subsistence and security, imperils life and threatens extinction — shortens the span of individual life. To maintain her quantity of life — (social conservation of energy) — nature responds with reproductivity, increasing numbers of shorter lives. Out of these greater numbers she seeks new variations or varieties less hostile to each other by being more capable of exchange and social integration with each other. Conflict is nature’s penalty for failure to inte­grate — to exchange.