All of these facilities could
be provided by the rich and powerful for themselves and members of their
families. They could be supplied more effectively and apportioned more
justly when they were public services open to all.
The countryside lacks the financial and the administrative means of
providing a wide range of public services. Indeed, countryside dwellers
pride themselves on being able to provide necessary services on a
family, household or village basis. City dwellers learn to regard such
public services as a matter of public right. Their existence is a magnet
which draws a steady stream of migrants from the countryside into the
cities.
Civilizations are dominated by business interests. It is for them to
provide facilities for the transaction of business, cash money, credit
instruments, installment buying, means for changing money, insurance,
discounting facilities. As a civilization grows in wealth and population
the political apparatus becomes a major employer, a major producer of
goods and services, a major purchaser of producer and consumer goods, a
major agency for borrowing, lending, insuring, in short a major factor
in the multitudinous activities of a commercial, industrial community.
Classes, class interests and class lines are a part and parcel of all
civilizations. They are less rigid and more flexible than similar lines
existing in an agrarian community where land ownership plays so large a
role in determining social forms and social functions.
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