Passing from this simplest case of co-operation to a case not quite so
simple--a case in which the homogeneity is incomplete--let us ask how a
member of the group may be led without dissatisfaction to expend effort
in achieving a benefit which, when achieved, is enjoyed exclusively
by another? Clearly he may do this on condition that the other shall
afterward expend a like effort, the beneficial result of which shall be
similarly rendered up by him in return. This exchange of equivalents
of effort is the form which social co-operation takes while yet there
is little or no division of labor, save that between the sexes. For
example, the Bodo and Dhimals "mutually assist each other for the
nonce, as well in constructing their houses as in clearing their plots
for cultivation." And this principle--I will help you if you will help
me--common in simple communities where the occupations are alike in
kind, and occasionally acted upon in more advanced communities, is one
under which the relation between effort and benefit, no longer directly
maintained, is maintained indirectly. For whereas when men's activities
are carried on separately, or are joined in the way exemplified above,
effort is immediately paid for by benefit, in this form of co-operation
the benefit achieved by effort is exchanged for a like benefit to
be afterward received when asked for. And in this case as in the
preceding case, co-operation can be maintained only by fulfillment of
the tacit agreements. For if they are habitually not fulfilled, there
will commonly be refusal to give aid when asked; and each man will
be left to do the best he can by himself. All those advantages to be
gained by union of efforts in doing things that are beyond the powers
of the single individual, will be unachievable. At the outset, then,
fulfillment of contracts that are implied if not expressed, becomes a
condition to social co-operation, and therefore to social development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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