ABSTRACT
IN order to live property is essential. I ts acquisition is a dominating force in the life of individuals and societies, and leaves an impress on every phase of their activities. That is why the history of the family, Church and State, is so often the history of property. The main task confronting every society is the satisfaction of its physical needs, and to its successful achievement a society will sub-ordinate everything else. In our highly complicated industrial communities the immediacy and urgency of this task are disguised by the mechanical character of commodity production, and by the universal use of money as a medium of exchange. We must go to a primitive society to see the pervasiveness of this problem and to sense its intimate connection with food supplies, and the animate and inanimate environment. To a primitive society its dependence on nature, on the weather, on the earth, on plants and animals is evident. It will surround this dependence with mystical and magical influences, and endeavour to propitiate them, or compel them to act on its behalf. It will suffuse its economic activities, and notions of property and property rights, with mana, magic and amm1sm.
