Primitive Human Institutions

69:5.1Cap­i­tal is la­bor ap­plied as a re­nun­ci­a­tion of the pres­ent in fa­vor of the fu­ture. Sav­ings rep­re­sent a form of main­te­nance and sur­vival in­sur­ance. Food hoard­ing de­vel­oped self-con­trol and cre­ated the first prob­lems of cap­i­tal and la­bor. The man who had food, pro­vided he could pro­tect it from rob­bers, had a dis­tinct ad­van­tage over the man who had no food.

69:5.2The early banker was the val­or­ous man of the tribe. He held the group trea­sures on de­posit, while the en­tire clan would de­fend his hut in event of at­tack. Thus the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­di­vid­ual cap­i­tal and group wealth im­me­di­ately led to mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion. At first such pre­cau­tions were de­signed to de­fend prop­erty against for­eign raiders, but later on it be­came the cus­tom to keep the mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion in prac­tice by in­au­gu­rat­ing raids on the prop­erty and wealth of neigh­bor­ing tribes.

69:5.3The ba­sic urges which led to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal were:

69:5.41. Hunger—as­so­ci­ated with fore­sight. Food sav­ing and preser­va­tion meant power and com­fort for those who pos­sessed suf­fi­cient fore­sight thus to pro­vide for fu­ture needs. Food stor­age was ad­e­quate in­sur­ance against famine and dis­as­ter. And the en­tire body of prim­i­tive mores was re­ally de­signed to help man sub­or­di­nate the pres­ent to the fu­ture.

69:5.52. Love of fam­ily—de­sire to pro­vide for their wants. Cap­i­tal rep­re­sents the sav­ing of prop­erty in spite of the pres­sure of the wants of to­day in or­der to in­sure against the de­mands of the fu­ture. A part of this fu­ture need may have to do with one’s pos­ter­ity.

69:5.63. Van­ity—long­ing to dis­play one’s prop­erty ac­cu­mu­la­tions. Ex­tra cloth­ing was one of the first badges of dis­tinc­tion. Col­lec­tion van­ity early ap­pealed to the pride of man.

69:5.74. Po­si­tion—ea­ger­ness to buy so­cial and po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. There early sprang up a com­mer­cial­ized no­bil­ity, ad­mis­sion to which de­pended on the per­for­mance of some spe­cial ser­vice to roy­alty or was granted frankly for the pay­ment of money.

69:5.85. Power—the crav­ing to be mas­ter. Trea­sure lend­ing was car­ried on as a means of en­slave­ment, one hun­dred per cent a year be­ing the loan rate of these an­cient times. The mon­eylen­ders made them­selves kings by cre­at­ing a stand­ing army of debtors. Bond ser­vants were among the ear­li­est form of prop­erty to be ac­cu­mu­lated, and in olden days debt slav­ery ex­tended even to the con­trol of the body af­ter death.

69:5.96. Fear of the ghosts of the dead—priest fees for pro­tec­tion. Men early be­gan to give death pres­ents to the priests with a view to hav­ing their prop­erty used to fa­cil­i­tate their prog­ress through the next life. The priest­hoods thus be­came very rich; they were chief among an­cient cap­i­tal­ists.

69:5.107. Sex urge—the de­sire to buy one or more wives. Man’s first form of trad­ing was woman ex­change; it long pre­ceded horse trad­ing. But never did the barter in sex slaves ad­vance so­ci­ety; such traf­fic was and is a racial dis­grace, for at one and the same time it hin­dered the de­vel­op­ment of fam­ily life and pol­luted the bi­o­logic fit­ness of su­pe­rior peo­ples.

69:5.118. Nu­mer­ous forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Some sought wealth be­cause it con­ferred power; oth­ers toiled for prop­erty be­cause it meant ease. Early man (and some later-day ones) tended to squan­der his re­sources on lux­ury. In­tox­i­cants and drugs in­trigued the prim­i­tive races.

69:5.12As civ­i­liza­tion de­vel­oped, men ac­quired new in­cen­tives for sav­ing; new wants were rapidly added to the orig­i­nal food hunger. Pov­erty be­came so ab­horred that only the rich were sup­posed to go di­rect to heaven when they died. Prop­erty be­came so highly val­ued that to give a pre­ten­tious feast would wipe a dis­honor from one’s name.

69:5.13Ac­cu­mu­la­tions of wealth early be­came the badge of so­cial dis­tinc­tion. In­di­vid­u­als in cer­tain tribes would ac­cu­mu­late prop­erty for years just to cre­ate an im­pres­sion by burn­ing it up on some hol­i­day or by freely dis­tribut­ing it to fel­low tribes­men. This made them great men. Even mod­ern peo­ples revel in the lav­ish dis­tri­bu­tion of Christ­mas gifts, while rich men en­dow great in­sti­tu­tions of phi­lan­thropy and learn­ing. Man’s tech­nique varies, but his dis­po­si­tion re­mains quite un­changed.

69:5.14But it is only fair to re­cord that many an an­cient rich man dis­tributed much of his for­tune be­cause of the fear of be­ing killed by those who cov­eted his trea­sures. Wealthy men com­monly sac­ri­ficed scores of slaves to show dis­dain for wealth.

69:5.15Though cap­i­tal has tended to lib­er­ate man, it has greatly com­pli­cated his so­cial and in­dus­trial or­ga­ni­za­tion. The abuse of cap­i­tal by un­fair cap­i­tal­ists does not de­stroy the fact that it is the ba­sis of mod­ern in­dus­trial so­ci­ety. Through cap­i­tal and in­ven­tion the pres­ent gen­er­a­tion en­joys a higher de­gree of free­dom than any that ever pre­ceded it on earth. This is placed on rec­ord as a fact and not in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the many mis­uses of cap­i­tal by thought­less and self­ish cus­to­di­ans.