Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2182

Page typed by Heath, enlarging on a single-page Fragment on three-ring binder paper in pencil

No date

 

 

 

 

Every political government must raise its revenues precisely as it wages its wars—overtly by force or intimidation and covertly­ by stratagem: by the force of systematic seizure as taxation and by the subtle strategem of public debt. During times of peace as during time of external or internal war whether of aggression or of defense, no sovereignty, no political government can keep itself effective and alive otherwise than by strategem and force

 

     Thus in all history no political government can or ever has permanently en­dured. Its days are finally numbered by the substance that it seizes and the lives it destroys. Government exercising restraints and compul­sions over all classes of persons, punishing them all and singly without respect to any guilt or innocence of crime is necessarily par­asitical on those whom it rules, upon the Society from which it draws all its support. It cannot therefore survive the host on which it lives and which, if it grows, it must at last destroy. And there is widespread anxiety today at the recent many hundred-fold increases in the pow­ers and the costs of government itself and of the non-producing inter­ests and organizations on which it confers special privileges and to which it grants or permits the exercise of coercive powers.

 

     Yet even the soberest among educated minds, while generally intolerant of violence by private or self-constituted men, have no conception or dream of public services or needs coming otherwise than from the destroying hand of a democratically or a militarily established coercive power. Protection against violence and the other services that men must share in common and cannot have separately or alone are relegated to a power that must ultimately destroy. Instead of seek­ing an alternative, a better way, a qualitative and not a merely quan­titative change, the highest conception until today has been that of limited coercive powers, a self-limiting government, under a consti­tution which none but that government alone is authorized to inter­pret or has any power to enforce. And if, as is often urged, govern­ment could be cut back to its original limited powers, how shall that constitution serve to keep it there in the time to come when it has not done so in the time that is past?

 

 

 

 

 

                                 /Fragment in pencil:/

 

Every government must raise its revenues precisely as it wages wars, overtly by force and covertly by stratagem — by the force of seizure by taxation and by the stratagem of public debt. During time of peace as during war, external or internal, whether of aggression or of defense, no sovereignty, no political government can keep itself alive but by stratagem and force. Thus in history no political government endures. Be it free or absolute, democratic or monarchical, its days are finally numbered by the subsistence that it seizes and the lives it destroys. Political government by its very nature must be parasitical on human society and cannot outlive the host that if it grows it must at last destroy. And there is widespread anxiety today at the many hundredfold recent increases in the _________ and coercive forms of government itself and of vast non-productive private organizations to which it grants privileges and immunities and large portions of its irresponsible coercive powers.

 

 Yet even the soberest among educated minds while for the most part intolerant of violence by private and self-constituted men have no conception or dream but of at least the basic public needs coming from the ultimately destroying hand of a “democratically” or otherwise established political and coercive power. The protection from violence and other services that men must share in ..