[David,]

Is it an accident of history that the medieval echoes through the modern or is it that the medieval and the modern are necessarily and inevitably similar? Perhaps it is impossible for a society of a certain size and complexity to operate in any other way: "It may well be that compulsion in the economic as well as the political realm is necessary for civilized life."

What do you think is referred to with the phrase "civilized life?" I am not entirely comfortable with it but it might be interesting to break it down and see if whatever society seems to fit it -- whether medieval, modern or some other -- has a property system "based on compulsion." I am intersted in societies that actually do or actually have existed, not utopias.

What do you think?

[R.J.S.P.]