Spencer Heath Archive

Item 487

Penciling on lined, notepad paper

No date

There are just two world-wide institutions among men: the State which is as old as slavery and war and which rules whole populations by force, whether with or without a popular consent. Then there is the growing Society, the gradual emancipation from subservience to force. The ancient States rested on slavery, the modern on taxation. The principle is the same; only the form has changed. The ancient Society was limited. Only the elite were free to draw together in voluntary relationships not dictated by the State, and this they had but little need or care or opportunity to do. Masters and rulers alone, and among themselves, could make and perform contracts by exchange, and what they sold or exchanged was the bodies, the services and the products of slaves and tribute or tax-bound, state-dwelling, non-barbarian men. And even among these rulers and elite there was almost constant abrogation of contract in form of war. No state ever grew but by feeding on the liberties and the properties of men.

Society in its modern development dates from the collapse of the Roman political power. Thenceforth there were wide areas in which there was no state to keep men enslaved and no sovereignties organized with power to seize their lands or goods. Hence there sprang up “free cities” of men who on land were free to trade their services, hence trades-men, and who on the seas without sovereigns made their own laws as equals and thus forswore piracy and fraud. Thus grew up the modern trading system from the free cities of the sea while on land the barons held their serfs in thrall. The merchant princes drew their revenues mainly from the prac­tice of trade, not from its inhibition by taxation as did the ancient sovereignties.

But the barons on land…