Spencer Heath Archive

Item 931

Penciling in a pocket notepad

Spring 1943?

Original -> 924

Dear Mrs. G.

Being has no significance except it be related to action. Structure, physical, biological or social, is relevant to nothing but their functions, considered as the effects resulting from the transference and modification of the energy that flows through them.

     Property, as commonly considered, consists of material things. Such things possess physical and even biological functions but can have no social significance in themselves. It is only in the presence of and as the instruments for effecting social relationships that property is of any significance in the social organization. Property does not of itself perform any social function, transmit or transform any social energy; it only acts as an instrument or medium for the transfer and exchange of services, of social energy. It is only an instrument of the social organism by which organism alone can any social functions be performed.

     A science of society, then, must be concerned with the functioning of the social organism by the flow of social energy through property as an instrument, much as food is the instrument through which biological energy flows. The energy of men that is social is distinguished from all other human energy by the term service, and service may be defined as social energy that evokes a voluntary recompense or return by way of exchange, and the recompense so evoked is called the value of the property or service conveyed. When property is transferred outright or for an indefinite term there is no limitation on the use and enjoyment of the services that have been incorporated in it or performed by means of it. The recompense received for it called its price or value, the more especially when it is stated with reference to more or less similar articles or units of measurement, such as volume or weight. When the transfer is not outright but only for a limited use or term the recompense for such limited use is commonly and properly called rent. This is the term universally employed, whether the limited use be of land, with or without improvements on it, or any other property or merchandize. But the term “royalty” is often used to designate the rent paid for the term use of mines, etc., probably because such rents were once paid only to kings.