Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1335

Carbons of two similar letters from Heath to Dr. Frank Aydelotte, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, and Dr. Alvin Johnson, New School For Social Research, 66  West 12th Street, New York City

January 17 and 23, 1941

 

 

 

Dear Doctor Johnson:

 

     For some years past, I have been inspired from time to time through reading many accounts of your ideals and activities in connection with the New School for Social Research, and in connection with the advancement of public and community life in general. I realize that in common with many others you have been seeking and moving forward towards a workable answer to that query so poignantly propounded by Dr. Harold W. Dodds, — “How can we arrange our public and community affairs so that they can be conducted without resort to violence and war?”

     This question has been on my own mind for a long time, and during recent years, has had my almost exclusive thought. I have tried to approach the phenomenon of community association in the same dispassionate manner and with the same methods of examination that have been so fruitfully employed by modern science in the examination of natural phenomena. In this quest I seem to find two basic rela­tionships between the units or individuals involved — those which tend to disorganization, disintegration and death, and those which tend towards organization, inte­gration, growth and life. In the former we find no permanence, no enduring reality; in the latter, we find evolvement, growth, an inherent power of permanency and, therefore, an abiding reality. There seems to be no third relationship differing from either of these two. The relationships between men are either essentially dis­integrative and, therefore, impermanent, or they are essentially constructive and, therefore, vital and abiding.

     At the social level, men must either divide or unite. Every relationship of compulsion or force divides, sends men out of the harmonies of association, drops them lower in the scale of being and, ultimately, to death. Every relationship of consent and agreement, every contractual commitment, expresses itself in the form of services voluntarily exchanged, each serving the other as he, himself, would be served. This unites men in the social bonds of creative service, gives birth to and maintains the vitality of community life.

     With respect to private and individual affairs, we practice the contractual technique of giving services to many and receiving many services in exchange. By this social technique, we create all the wealth and mate­rial values that we have. But with respect to those things that community members must have in common, such as means of communication with each other and all that is comprised under security of property and possession and other public services, we have not learned how to extend and practice the contractual technique of exchanging services. Govern­ment, in all its forms appears to be fundamentally coercive both at home and abroad.

     So accustomed are we to government on the Roman plan of coercive rule, we are prone to doubt even the possibility of public services being performed under purely voluntary and contractual engagements as private services are. It has been my privilege to discover in every community organization a basic contractual relation­ship by means of which its sites and resources are con­stantly distributed and redistributed without resort to violence or war. This institution, property in land, has been too little, if at all, understood, its services not at all recognized or appreciated and its social poten­tialities, therefore, entirely overlooked.

     We accept the benefits of proprietary administration and distribution of private properties and services on the principle of voluntary exchange. But with respect to public and community property, we have not yet become conscious that the community proprietors – site and resource owners – are now giving a social and contractual distribu­tion and access to these things and that they are now being recompensed in ground rents and values for these distributive services. Lacking this understanding, we have not been able, either in our thinking or in our practice, to extend the principle of proprietary administration through free contractual and non-coercive engagements over the public properties and affairs.

     I have a keen desire to engage the interest of your own and a few other competent minds towards an examination of the possibilities residing in an extension of free pro­prietary and exchange relationships into the conduct of the common services which are necessary to community life.

     Frankly, I am writing to ask your aid in discovering such persons and bringing to their attention the informa­tion I have been able to gather and interpret along these lines. To this end may I have the pleasure of a brief conference with you at an early date. I expect to be in New York on January 29th and for some days following. Please let me have your suggestion as to a convenient time. If a luncheon or dinner time would be more convenient for you, I should like very much to have you for my guest.

Sincerely yours,

 

  Spencer Heath

 

P.S. Please let me assure you that my interest in all of the above matters is wholly esthetic and intellectual, and that I

do not seek nor do I contemplate obtaining from any source any material aid or personal prestige.

 

 

Enc.  Inspiration of Beauty

      Private Property in Land