Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2976

Review of Heath’s Citadel, Market and Altar in The Freeman, pp. 63-64.

July 1958

For more than two decades, Mr. Spencer Heath has served, unheralded, the cause of freedom in America. Now, with Citadel, Market and Altar, this keen and sprightly octogenarian offers his magnum opus after what has been a virtual lifetime of thought and effort, following his retirement as an eminent aeronautic engineer and patent attorney.

 Heath’s most remarkable quality is the striking originality  of his thought; for he has carved out an elaborate philosophic system much of which is his own, and he has pushed these ideas on liberty beyond their usual limits to new and exciting frontiers. He is perhaps the first scholar since World War I to advocate the supply of defense and other “public” services by voluntary methods instead of coercive taxation. Not only that. He offers a plan for voluntary finance of defense which is unique and which never occurred to the eminent nineteenth century sponsors of “voluntaryism.”

 Heath arrived at his plan in the process of emerging from the Georgist movement, of which he was a prominent member. The Henry Georgists believed that all “public” services should be financed by a single tax on land (especially urban) rent. Heath, accepting the theory that public services should be paid for by rent, came to ask the question: Why not supplied by private landlords rather than by government? From this question came Heath’s new theory of “proprietary administration:” that all the landlords in a given city should pool their assets into one city-wide corporation which would own all the land and supply public services to the tenants for their rent charges. Taxation and all other trappings of government would then disappear, and the rights of persons and private property would become truly inviolate. The only voting would be through the shareholders’ democracy that prevails in any corporation, with landowners voting in proportion to their shares in the corporate entity.

 It is questionable whether the free market, if no longer subject to taxation, would resolve its remaining problems in precisely the manner Mr. Heath proposes. His proposal is, at any rate, a challenging one, and it deserves serious consideration.

 There are many other important contributions in this book. Among them is Heath’s conclusive demonstration that landlords perform a highly worthy and important function: that of allocating land sites.

 Some of the best nuggets are buried in the appendix. Note Heath’s unsurpassed definition of monopoly:

 Monopoly exists when government by its coercive power limits to a particular person or organization, or combination of them, the right to sell particular goods or services, and thereby abrogates the right of any other person or organization to compete . . . Neither bigness nor singleness can be injurious, so far as it results from unforced preferences of purchasers and freedom of competition prevails.

                                      MURRAY N. ROTHBARD