John R. Commons on the Family.

This section reprints an essay from the book A Sociological View of Sovereignty, by John R. Commons. Coercion, when it has been transferred from private to public control, takes on the attributes of order and right, thus becoming sovereignty. The institution which is thus differentiated out from the primitive blending of all institutions is the state. It becomes the supreme institution, because it is looked upon as the property custodian of the decisive social relation, coercion. In thus emerging from the social mass the state has set off other institutions, based each upon its own peculiar persuasive sanction. The family, originally a coercive institution, becomes the custodian of sexual and filial affection. The church becomes the voluntary association of believers in common worship, based on the sanctions of belief in moral perfection and consciousness of guilt. Industrial property is transformed from slavery and serfdom into free contract and mutual interest. These are the three original institutions from which the state has been differentiated. There are also certain derived and secondary institutions which have sprung up with the free conditions that followed the differentiation of the four original institutions.