Spencer Heath Archive

Item 873

Penned on two lined, three-ring-binder pages

July 11, 1950

 

Dominion comes from Latin Dominus, master. Its opposite is Servus, slave.

The Latin dominus is probably from domus, house, and was originally man of the house — the man or master of the house or of the household, meaning not only the master of the house but also master of the other persons in or connected with the house, all of them subordinate, most of them slaves. Hence the opposite or correlative of dominus is servus, a slave, one who must obey. And the correlative of slavery is dominion.

Sovereign also means master, but a superior master. It comes, through the French sovrain, from the Latin, superanus and means a person or determinate body of persons having a wide dominion more extensive than dominion over a single house or household.

Sovereignty and Dominion, both signify rulership, mastery, jurisdiction, command; and both connote submission, enslavement, obedience. Without subjects or slaves there is no sovereignty.

Yet there are two kinds of dominion or authority. There is dominion over both persons and things, which is slavery or sovereignty or government, and there is dominion over places and things, without dominion over persons. Such dominion is ownership or property.

Sovereignty includes dominion over persons as well as over places and things. The basic instrument of sovereignty is force or coercion, slavery or war — slavery being the conquest or the submissive, the passive side of war, the object for which it is waged.

There are degrees of sovereignty as there are degrees of coercion, from the mere exaction of nominal tribute or taxation all the way to complete personal enslavement.

But dominion over places and things without coercion over persons is not sovereignty. It is ownership, the antithesis of sovereignty and slavery. Sovereignty, like slavery, originates in and rests upon submission either by conquest or by consent. Its dominion rests upon keeping persons under submission, once they are compelled to submit or once they have willingly done so.

But dominion over places or things without dominion over persons is not sovereignty; it is ownership. Ownership is of a wholly different origin or evolution. No submission to force is involved, either in its inception or during its continuation. It is a social convention, a non-political relationship, that cannot be practiced except towards and among persons none of whom commands or coerces others nor must another obey. Only so far as there is ownership instead of sovereignty can there be any society of free men.

Sovereignty may be as drastic or as mild as any degree of forced or consensual submission permits. Sovereignty is total when submission is unlimited and complete. It is limited when submission to it is qualified and incomplete. Total sovereignty is exercised by an autocrat or by an autocracy, numerous or few. It cannot be exercised by a whole population upon that population itself. A whole population submits to sovereignty only by utter conquest or equivalent force. Only when the autocrat or autocracy is elected is there any submission by consent. The larger the majority, the more complete the submission, the less limited the sovereignty. And a total majority would establish a total sovereignty. For sovereignty does not reside in any majority great or small but only in those whom they elect and to whom thus they submit.

Sovereignties, as stated, are exclusive dominions over places, including exclusive dominion over the inhabitants of them. Sovereignty, therefore, is mastery, the obverse of slavery.

The development of society consists in the limitation of sovereignty and the evolution of ownership, of dominion over men giving way to dominion over places and things.