Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1471

Typed Draft by Heath for letter to Frank Chodorov, also added here is a single typed page on the same subject (partly in pencil by Spencer MacCallum though clearly by Heath) but differently composed.

January 1953

 

 

Frank Chodorov:

As you know, I have been much impressed by a number of your articles in Human Events, and now here’s my hat off again for yours of January 6, on the “Real Class Struggle.” You certainly have set it out so clearly that he who runs may read.

You conclude with, “The real class struggle is between Society and the State.” It is certainly a one­-way struggle. Any coercion between Society and State is directed only one way, though it is true that Society is reduced to a “struggle” to live. Is the real struggle not, as you so well conclude, between Society and the State but between the ins and the outs, those in power and those aspiring for it, with Society suffering under­neath as it were. If Society may be defined as men serv­ing one another without resort to force, either in the crude or the legislative process, then how shall Society struggle against the evils of what we may call “super” government?

But what of your therapy? As I get it you hold that the Marxian therapy — the bottom dogs taking the reigns of power from the top dogs — is utterly futile. I fully agree with you. There would be no essential improvement or change. But how does the Chodorovian therapy differ from the Marxian? You are not very explicit it is true. But can one infer anything else than a mere resisting of the evil power, in such manner as to transfer it to the hands of the resistors? If society is to be saved by placing restraints and limitations on the political power, how are these to be applied? Is there any agency but force in the hands of the resistors?

Perhaps you will tell me that Society, being a non­-coercive organization, has other power transcending that of physical force. I hope you will say that, and if you do, than I hope to see you make some move toward under­standing and toward helping others to understand how Society, through use of its creative power, will grow into the administration of public affairs without resort to violence, revolution, or war. Of course you can go on telling the world how evil, how destructive, government can be, but how can such knowledge be used — unless you tell the world how good and how creative Society can be. Surely such matters are worth thinking about, even talking about, with those who may have seen further in this direction than we.

I think society has a power of growth, within itself, and that all freedom arises from the growth of society, not from either the destruction or revolution of government. All the freedom gained through the centuries has come from industry outgrowing government — agriculture, for instance, growing out of its former slavery and serfdom into almost free enterprise without resort on its part to taxation, revolution or war. I think it possible for free enter­prise today not to break, but to outgrow, its bondage to the State. Without violence but by virtue of its own creative processes. Society must either outgrow its bonds, or it must outfight them, in which latter case it ceases to be Society, and becomes Government.

If we are ever going to get out of the dreary round of one class pulling another down and thereby taking over and becoming the same power that it destroys, must we not look to and try to understand that higher organization of men which is contractual rather than coercive, creative rather than destructive, and fully capable of performing without any violence to itself or its members all those defensive and protective functions which we so often think can be performed only by the political organization?

Again compliments on your fine diagnosis. It is a clear cold beam of critical intelligence in a field of popular confusion. With all best wishes I am,

 

Sincerely yours,

Spencer Heath

 

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11 Waverly Place New York

Dear Frank Chodorov:

Your thesis on “The Real Glass Struggle” (Human Events Jan. 6, 53) is most admirable. It is a clear cold beam of critical intelligence in a field of popular confusion, soap-box diatribe and academic obfuscation. It is brilliantly, yet not bitterly, diagnostic, in its pathological analysis, right up to its unerring conclusion: “The Real Class Struggle is between Society and the State.” And therein lies the evil: it is in the struggle itself, in the conflict, in the war to end wars.

This is fine diagnosis. But what of therapy? Is the struggle in reality between Society and the State? Is it not rather between the ins and the outs, between those who hold political power over society and those who, in the name of freedom, covet it — revo­lutionary and counter-revolutionary — the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown?

Society is composed of men engaged in the practice of freedom, not in any self-deluded struggle for it. It lays no taxes, seizes no power, levies no war.  It knows no rule but the golden rule of contract and exchange. It is productive, not destruc­tive; creative, not coercive; without suppressive or vindictive morality. It is spiritual, beyond the forbidden good-and-evil complex, which means conflict and death. And it is far more than self-sustaining; for it sustains not only itself but the vast burden of armaments, wars, and expenses of bureaucratic machines.