THE THEORY OF ASSOCIATION

A study of animal life reveals one essential factor common to all - that they associate with their fellows in the pursuit of the means of life. Man is in no way different in this respect - he is a social being.
It may seem a truism to say this, except for the fact that the observation commonly misses something of the utmost importance. Among animals social life is generally confined to the family group, hunting, grazing, sleeping together for safety.
Man, being intelligent, has enlarged this simple method of association; not only do human beings live together in family groups, but families are grouped together in larger associations, townships - or clans in pastoral cultures - and these in turn in even larger groups, called Nations.

Society, or the "Association of Humans," is then, in its natural development, not a single herd of individuals, but a "Society of societies." Or to put it another way: "A society is a complex association of associations."
The factors of culture (the tradition of knowledge, mores, customs, even techniques of work and production) and language obviously determine the greatest size of a nation, and the factors of homeland and economy determine the smallest size. These four factors define the limits beyond which association is not only undesirable, but probably impossible.

Such ideas as "World Government" etc., are abstractions, having no existence in reality. The greater the size of the society the more likely it is to break up - the more unwieldy are the factors of its association.

Internationalism, with its corollary a World State is one end of the scale and self-determination of the individual is the other….. the smaller the genuine political unit, the nearer you are getting to self-determination of the individual.

The Increment of Association
A study of the animal kingdom reveals that not only do animals live in association, but that they benefit from their association. The benefits range from the greater ease with which food may be caught, or grazing lands found, by animals in packs or herds, to the greater protection from attack which being together gives. This benefit is the increment of association. At this point we may observe, especially, that being a member of a pack affords the individual animal more protection, and more ease in obtaining food, than its efforts would procure if it hunted alone. But the individual animal does not enjoy this greater protection or greater comfort at the expense of other members of the pack.

Factors Associating in Production
We must now consider in general terms the factors involved in the production of wealth and the best way to do this is to be clear about what terms mean. What is termed civilisation was unknown at one time in human history. Mankind, at one period lived the life of wanderers. The only unit was the family, or possibly the tribe.

Civilisation resulted from the nomadic life being exchanged for the settled, permanent community life. Various historians have given slightly different versions of the ways Civilisation began, but they are all agreed that it was from the result of individuals discovering that by living in permanent communities, they could obtain results which were otherwise impossible of attainment.
As the historian Elliot Smith has put it: "True civilisation began when man adopted a settled mode of life based upon the practice of agriculture. The realisation of the possibility of obtaining a secure means of sustenance without giving up his whole time to the daily search for food, induced man to settle in a definite place, which he made his home. It also provided him with the leisure and the inducement to devise arts and crafts and a social organisation, the need for which was now felt by simple nomads".

Although obscured by the complexities of modern civilisation, the primary objective of social life remains what it was originally:
to obtain greater security and freedom for the individual. It is of fundamental importance that we realise clearly that society is a device which exists for the benefit of individuals; that society is built up from the individual, and that all organisations which have been evolved through social life are for the purpose of' serving the requirements of individuals.

Wealth:
Matter which has been consciously transformed by the application of energy from a condition in which it is less serviceable to human need, into a condition in which it is more serviceable to human need. Without wealth man cannot live. Man must produce a certain kind and a certain amount of wealth, depending upon his degree of civilization.

Production:
The transformation of one thing into another by the application of energy. The basic source of energy is human labour, to which has been added animal labour and primary energy, first employed two-thousand plus years ago by means of the water-wheel.

Labour:
The human energy applied to the material forces about us. Human energy is increasingly displaced by solar, fossil and atomic energy.

Land:
The general term applied to all the materials and forces to which we may apply energy, and which we need to transform in order to live. Land is the source through the green plants, of all human and chemical energy. It also plays a considerable part, again through the green plants, in the movement of wind and water. Energy is therefore used in a cyclical manner - the "Law of the conservation of energy."
All production takes time. During that time the producer must be fed, that is energy must be supplied in the form of food, to be transformed into labour. There must be an accumulation of wealth created in the past, and reserved to maintain labour during its next production cycle. The accumulation represents the increment of association.

Capital:
The store set aside to support future production. It may take the form of stores of food or supplies or tools. In a more sophisticated form it will take the form of money or credit, invested for the purpose of supporting labour while it produces.

Implements:
Things of a mechanical nature devised to assist man in the production of wealth. They are used to employ human energy more efficiently, to utilize natural and chemical energy, and to displace human limbs and fingers. They are all based on an understanding of the increment obtained by such simple modes of mechanical association as the lever and the wheel, which yield the mechanical advantage.
The implements range in complexity from the hammer to the atomic power station. With the development of the industrial arts Man becomes increasingly dependent upon implements for his production of wealth. There are a certain kind and number of implements without which he cannot produce. For example a man of the Late Stone Age would be helpless without his stone tools. We of the Late Iron Age would be reduced to starvation if we awoke one morning to find we had nothing but stone tools.

Self determination:
Self-determination is of no practical significance to an organism which spends its entire waking life in the search for and consumption of food, to give it sufficient energy to search for and consume food. Where a condition of life approximating to this is found among men there can be no progress.
In the modern state power over men, by making livelihood dependent upon a specified way of applying labour, can be retained by a caucus. By controlling the time spent in labour you also control leisure.

Labour, Land, Capital, Implements, the "means of production," are the factors which must be brought together in association to produce the Wealth without which man cannot live.

Further Reading:
"Social Credit: Economics," by Anthony Cooney (to be republished early 2006).
"Social Credit: Obelisks," by Anthony Cooney. Price: $11.50 posted.
Social Credit: Asterisks," by Anthony Cooney. Price $8.50 posted.
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