CHAPTER SEVEN
THE ECONOMICS OF CIVILIZATION
Politics involves the exercise of authority--the policy making,
planning, control, direction and administration of a community. Economic
forces provide the wealth, income and livelihood--the wherewithal upon
which a community depends for its physical existence, its survival, its
geographical extension, the continuance of its life cycle.
There is no sharp line separating economics from politics. While the two
fields are different in character and scope, they are so interrelated
and interwoven that any successful attempt to separate them would leave
the inquirer with two segments of a lifeless social cadaver. In the
course of this exposition it will become increasingly evident, as the
political and economic lines cross and re-cross, that the two fields are
inseparable parts of a total body social.
One civilization after another has begun with a predominantly rural
economy that has become increasingly urban as it matured. Food
gathering, pastoral life and small scale agriculture were rural. Trade,
commerce, manufacturing and finance, concentrated populations, increased
division of labor, specialization, inter-communication and
interdependence produced the trade center, the commercial metropolis and
the general purpose city.
Herdsmen and land workers, dependent on grass and rainfall, lived close
to the subsistence margin and were at the mercy of forces they could not
control.
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