Spencer Heath Archive

Item 804

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

February 10, 1956

It comes to my mind from many sources again and again that modern property, as an administrative function through contract, is the same in principle as the most primitive in that it is administrative just as the chieftain or patriarch parceled out the use of lands and goods (you can make it distributed the use of lands and goods) in accordance with folk-moot decision based on custom, so the modern individual or corporate owner makes distribution in accordance with the mores of the market and its contractual custom. The only difference is that the primitive group made its determination emotionally, under the instincts of kinship. The modern market makes its determinations, no less binding on the administrator, by the rationality of contract. The primitive balance is maintained by the consensus of kinship, the modern by the rational precision of accountancy.

All this bears out the general proposition underlying all organic development as its different types evolve. Each is born into a specific pattern. New relationships among the units composing it are what give it a new and specific form and function springing from that form. Every type of organization thus originates in a specific new form. Its new function it performs feebly, but it belongs to that form. The extension, refinement and perfection of this function depends upon its development in the pattern and form from which its earliest functioning springs. Whether it be the seedling, the infant animal or the basic social unit, the primitive society, it can elaborate its function only through elaboration of its structure in the specific pattern with which it began.