Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2753

Photo of the editorial page, called “Plan-itorial,” of Urban Land Vol.16, No.9 carrying a review of Heath’s Citadel, Market and Altar by Max S. Wehrly, Editor, Executive Director of the Urban Land Institute.

October, 1957

 

 

“Property in Land”

A Challenge to a Free Society

 

In a period of history in which more and more centralized authority, governmental intervention and public regulation are taking place, and in fact are being advocated as the solution to the problems of the State, the Nation and the world, it is encouraging to find a person, who not only challenges this concept in highly effective terms, but offers positive and promising directions which society can take — if it is willing to exercise its abilities and restrain its excesses voluntarily by contract rather than through the coercion of government.

 

 The subject is intriguing, but the substance of a recent book, CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR in which this “new natural science of society” is set forth is even more so. The fact that Mr. Heath is an engineer and lawyer, and not a sociologist is also refreshing to say the least.

 

 Land and land ownership are at the base of the author’s theories for the “emerging society” of the future. John Chamberlain, of the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal, comments in his foreword to Mr. Heath’s book, that he isn’t sure how far the model system developed by the author “can be pushed.”

 

 “It seems likely that until men are angels the State must stand ready to pursue a murderer from one privately owned community to another, and to restrain violent madmen in some extra-community institution. Then, too, there is the problem of the jet planes needed to keep the Messrs. Khrushchev and Bulganin at a proper distance. Justice and safety may always require an occasional visit from the tax collector.

 

 “Nevertheless, Mr. Heath’s system does not have to be pushed to its logical extreme. Great advantages would undoubtedly accrue to everybody, landlord and renter alike, if a large number of municipal services (now so sloppily and inefficiently rendered) could be brought under the law of the free market.

 

 “Beyond Mr. Heath’s way of looking at the man-land problem there is the larger issue of freedom in general. Mr. Heath insists on what should be axiomatic to us in the days of Cold War, that ownership is what confers freedom. To be a free man, one must have the right to a home base, something to stand on without asking any politician’s permission. But there is more to freedom — and to ownership — than that. One cannot be truly free unless the product of one’s energies can be exchanged for other products in an uncoerced relationship. Free exchange depends on contract and without ownership there can be no contract. Ownership, contract and exchange are precedents to free

social-ization.”

 

 Heath’s main thesis is simple — that the individual is to society as a whole what the world is to the universe: that the whole of society has a given amount of natural energy: that each part, man society and cosmos, is governed by the same set of natural laws: and that this energy can only be expended effectively in a relationship of action and movement, which is free from collusion, compulsion and coercion.

 

 This freedom can best be attained through interchange of services including those of the community, under contractual agreement. In this process, the ownership, use and productivity of land are paramount.

 

Citadel, Market and Altar is not an easy book to read, but it is well worth the effort for those sincerely interested in preserving or recapturing the best elements of the free enterprise system. The book is published by The Science of Society Foundation, Inc., 1502 Montgomery Road, Elkridge 27, Maryland, at a price of six dollars.

 

M.S.W.