Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

CONTRACTUALISM

—“Curt, would you say the English model of “contracts” paved the way for removing people from blood, soil and kinship loyalty?”—

Um. It looks like Scandinavian and maybe northern european groups in general were organized as militial freemen back into prehistory – they could choose their leadership and form ‘private corporations’ so to speak to raid, conquer, and settle land. This ancient european custom led to Germanic law in general which lead to anglo-saxon law in particular, incorporated manorialism (sort of like land owners seeking franchisees), and prior to and up into the Hansa, iteratively developed ‘rule of law’ or rather ‘rule without rulers’, and english law is essentially contractualism, and the British and American constitutions contracts. At present we call this the ‘anglo saxon model’ in which (until say the 1970’s) has been employed across the anglosphere (britan, america, canada, australia, new zealand). This ‘contractualism’ is not existent elsewhere. Because militial civilization (sovereignty, reciprocity, truth, duty, voluntary organization/markets) was not possible or did not evolve elsewhere. So I think it’s been a battle between contractual, kinship-contract, and dominance/ownership models throughout time with the militial and naval developing contractual, and the militial and army developing kin-contract, and we have been largely free of the rest of the world’s ‘dominance/ownership’ and ‘religious kinship’ models. And I think until the postwar years we preserved it. (Women and other groups cannot function in this model. The enlightenment was wrong, women’s suffrage was wrong, universal suffrage was wrong.)