Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1365

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Ernest 0. Kooser, Attorney at Law, Somerset, Pennsylvania

March 11, 1941

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Kooser:

 

     Many thanks for your reply to my letter of January 25th.

I note that you have taken out of my rather long letter the one sentence with which you disagree. I trust you have been giving as much consideration to those portions of my thought with which you are in accord and, or, which you can find useful for some assimilation with your own.

 

     However, I trust you are not placing any great confidence in your negative ideal of freedom as a mere exemption. There is no possible exemption from the impact of our environment, either natural or social; except as we change it, we must meet its demands or die. The ideal “freedom” of a thistledown floating unrestrained in the air, wafted by every whimsy of the wind, is the ideal of perfect slavery to environment.

 

     We have no powers but the powers that we use, and the more we use them, the more we have. The power that is put forth under freedom is the power to choose among varied and acceptable alternatives and to act thereupon.

 

     No tyranny is absolute. In every field of action there are some acceptable alternatives. The more we practice these, the more power we have for the gaining and the practice of others.

 

     Any freedom that consists in other than action upon alternatives, that consists in mere exemption from force without positive action, would be the freedom of non-existence or death.

 

     We think too much of freedom as a passive state; we should think of doing things, of choosing among alternate paths to our desires and acting positively therein.

 

     Merely to escape from our environment would be but a form of compulsion under and submission to it.

 

     The power to create, to rebuild his world is instinct in the nature of man, and he cannot change his nature. But this will to create — to dominate environment — can only be effectuated by the power of man in his social relationships of free consent and exchange. Out of this arises all that division of labor and specialization that has given to modern man such enormous material powers. The hope and the glory of the future waits upon the application of this technique of service through association in freedom to our public and general as well as to our private affairs.

 

     My analysis of private property in land as a functioning social institution (not as an individual status) discloses this institution as an agency through which a limited degree of social freedom, as distinguished from political tyranny, has already been attained. The enor­mous practical importance of this analysis lies in its showing the way for the profitable extension of the free contractual relationships under this institution further into the domain of public services and affairs. This extension of proprietary administrative services will obviously exempt any community from its present politi­cal tyranny by displacing the present technique of taxation — force and fraud — upon which alone it rests.

 

     Only by the practice of alternates in the choosing of the terms upon which they will perform and exchange services with one another is there any field of freedom. Through the positive aspects of this freedom, we have received all that distinguishes us from the savage and the beast.

 

     I should be glad to have you make further and care­ful study of the publications I sent you. When you do, I feel happy in the thought that you can join me in the discovery that through an understanding of and through the operation of our existing institutions as to land and other property, the full Sovereignty of Man in his Kingdom of Heaven can be achieved.

 

                        Very truly yours,   Spencer Heath