Spencer Heath Archive

Item 496

Penciling on small notepad paper

No date

When any people other than nomads occupy a place of livelihood and habitation that place is a community and has definite territorial metes and bounds. Within that territory there are two kinds of ownership or sovereignty — political and proprietary.

The political sovereignty has no final sanction but force. Its decrees, legislative or autocratic, are all arbitrary and compulsive. The citizen or subject must sub­mit. He has no alternative but attack or escape, fight or flight, rebellion or desertion to the distant and unknown. Political sovereignty takes jurisdiction directly over per­sons so far as they submit, either willingly or by force. Their only field of options, their only freedom, is what remains beyond the scope or influence of its decrees.

The political sovereignty is an ancient mystical and transcendental conception. Its executive organ of all its powers /?/ is the political organization called the state, and the state is that body of persons who, whether by usurpa­tion or by delegation, exercise and enforce the sovereign power. It is closely organized

Proprietary sovereignty, on the other hand, exercises no authority of force