Less personal, but of major concern among the institutions of civilization were the channels of communication and transportation that have played so decisive a role in the life of every civilization.  Top ranking among the means of communication were common language, spoken and written on metal, papyrus, paper; a unified system of accounting and cost keeping; permanent records.  Among the means of transport were waterways, including canals, viaducts, roads, bridges skillfully built and kept in good repair.

Another significant institution of civilization is the idea of ownership, the division of property into public property and private property and the right of the private property owner to do what he will with his property, subject always to the over-riding principle of eminent domain:  the right of the community to expropriate private property for public uses, with or without compensation.

Another institution of civilization is the provision of public services in addition to means of communication and transportation.  These public services include a water supply; the disposal of waste; public defense of life and property; food and diversion (bread and circuses) for the needy; fire prevention and fire fighting apparatus; educational facilities, including libraries and reading rooms; outside recreational facilities such as parks and play-grounds.  All of these facilities could be provided by the rich and powerful for themselves and members of their families.  They could be supplied more effectively and apportioned more justly when they were public services open to all.

The countryside lacks the financial and the administrative means of providing a wide range of public services.  Indeed, countryside dwellers pride themselves on being able to provide necessary services on a family, household or village basis.  City dwellers learn to regard such public services as a matter of public right.  Their existence is a magnet which draws a steady stream of migrants from the countryside into the cities.

Civilizations are dominated by business interests.  It is for them to provide facilities for the transaction of business, cash money, credit instruments, installment buying, means for changing money, insurance, discounting facilities.  As a civilization grows in wealth and population the political apparatus becomes a major employer, a major producer of goods and services, a major purchaser of producer and consumer goods, a major agency for borrowing, lending, insuring, in short a major factor in the multitudinous activities of a commercial, industrial community.

Classes, class interests and class lines are a part and parcel of all civilizations.  They are less rigid and more flexible than similar lines existing in an agrarian community where land ownership plays so large a role in determining social forms and social functions.  In a static agrarian community dominated by landlords, war-lords and the clergy, rigid class lines help to hold the community together.  In a community dominated by business interests, both labor power and purchasing power must be free to respond to demand and supply.  This is as true in a planned public economy as it is in a private enterprise economy.  In accordance with the same principle, facilities are provided for the movement of individuals back and forth across class lines.