Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1544

Further thoughts, typed by Heath, for possible use in the letter intended for circularizing “The Trojan Horse of Land Reform” (see Item 1541), a project that was not carried out.

Fall 1957?

     It is not too often realized how psychologically deep is the modern movement for abrogation of property rights and relationships. There are those who resist this collectivist trend only so far as it affects property rights and contractual relationships with respect to artificial things. Many entertain ardently the belief that property in natural things is inconsistent with and inimical to the full enjoyment of property rights with respect to the artificial property called capital. This misconception springs very largely from thinking of property in its primitive sense as possession instead of in its social and functional sense as non-political and thereby contractual administration. This means that pro­perty in the modern world is owned for the most part not primarily for the use and benefit of its owners but adminis­tratively for the use and benefit of any and all persons who wish to pay the market value of having it administered for or to them.

     All administration of property culminates in its distribution. That is the crowning act of administration. Unless property and its use is distributed contractually, as none but its owners can do, it must be administered politically with all the injustice, corruption and ultimate tyranny inherent in political administration.

     The fundamental property is land. So far as it is administered politically, there can be no escape from political collectivism. As soon as more than one person desires to occupy land, there must be an arbiter between him and another. If this arbiter is political, the opposite of equity is assured. If it is administered by an owner, it will be distributed contractually — not only by non-political process, but by a process in which the self-interest of the owner impels him to give preference to the prospective occupant who can use it most productively, for no other person will be able consistently to pay the highest price or rent.

     Opposition to proprietary and thereby contractual administration of the gifts of nature springs on the one hand from crude envy, and on the other hand from a mistaken sympathy for the so-called disinherited. This last insists upon a religious sanction for political distribution. No better statement of this religious misconception was ever made than the statement of the Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn upon which he was reinstated to his priesthood after many years of bitter controversy and excommunication.