Spencer Heath Archive

Item 632

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath.

December, 1955

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom and Force in Group Action

 

     A member of an industrial corporation is free; he is not dominated by any majority, because every member is just as free to withdraw his property and his membership as he was to contribute it in the first place. His freedom is never impaired in that respect. This statement can be generalized, whatever organization one belongs to. He is either free, goes into it voluntarily and he can get out of it voluntarily, assuming that he meets all his proper obli­gations, of course. But any organization that he must join, or that he cannot withdraw from without the consent of some person or authority, then that organization is either exercising political power or attempting to gain political power — as a labor union is, or as a Communist party is, or any political party or any political authority of any kind.

     So there are two kinds of things you can be a member of, those in which you choose to be a member and are a member only so long as you choose, such as a free community, if there be such, and those things which you go into against your consent and you are not free to withdraw from — like a /public school or a/ penitentiary. Freedom is something where men can always enter into without being forced, and something from which they can always sell themselves out if they wish. Slavery is something that men cannot avoid getting into and have no power of getting out of.

“Did you say freedom is something you can ‘get into?’”

No man has to join anything, become free, unless he wants to. Nor does he have to stay free unless he wants to stay free.

“It doesn’t follow that if he wants to be free, he can get free.”

No. Any man can be put in jail against his will, and no man can get out of jail by willing to do so. Citizens, so called, both of republics and democracies, are no more free to withdraw than subjects are free to withdraw from despotic governments. There is no provision for that; and the jurisdiction will reach them to the ends of the earth unless they fall under the protection of some other, perhaps more despotic government than the one to whom they are already confined.

“It seems, however, that there is

friendship among many governments to the extent that their citizens can peaceably exchange their citizenship from one to the other.”

 

Yes, that is true; and even armies that are in deadly combat with one another will exchange prisoners. /Laughing/ Isn’t that a deadly parallel!