PATTERNS FOR LIVING TOGETHER 1 1 1 



vival of the individualy that of the latter the survival of the 

 community. "Mutual aid" in the mammalian and human 

 scheme, wherever and insofar as it occurs, is a communal effort 

 to help individuals as such to survive, not an attempt to keep 

 the community or the social system going. When the citizens of 

 Baltimore, somewhat reluctantly and after long delay, decided 

 to tax themselves to build a city-wide sewer system instead of 

 individually disposing of their bodily wastes, they were moved 

 to do this not because they wanted to preserve Baltimore, but 

 because they finally came to believe that the probability of their 

 dying of typhoid fever and of their children dying of dysentery 

 would be lessened as a result of this course of action. Politicians 

 are well aware of the individualistic element in mammalian 

 sociality. The ward boss knows that his clients favor the Tam- 

 many type of socio-political organization for no other important 

 reason than because it sees that they are shod and fed. Hence 

 Tammany Hall survives as a social institution. If the Republi- 

 cans, or the Communists, or anarchists, or Beelzebub himself 

 shod and fed the customers better than Tammany, their contri- 

 butions of votes to the "mutual aid" system would be pretty 

 promptly transferred to helping the continuance of whatever 

 social instrument did the better shoeing and victualling. It is 

 as Byron said in Childe Haroldy "Mammon wins his way where 

 seraphs might despair." On the national scale it will have been 

 noted that the impassioned pleas for more and more social legis- 

 lation that are currently dinning in our ears are based on and 

 aimed at the survival of "underprivileged" individuals, not at 

 the survival of the American form of government, which is to 

 say the American pattern of social organization. Nobody calls 

 the American social system "my friend," or ever will. Nobody 

 could. It would be completely foreign to the mammalian way of 

 thought. Those in control of affairs in Russia delude themselves 

 into believing they are accomplishing the equivalent of this. 

 But at the same time they are permitting and encouraging indi- 

 viduals to have savings bank accounts. The truly and exclusively 



