Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2239

Carbon of three typed pages by Robert V. Andelson. No indication as to whether or where it might have been published.

About 1962?

 

 

 

  AN AFTERNOON WITH SPENCER HEATH

by Robert V. Andelson

It was my privilege last August to spend an afternoon in conversation with Spencer Heath. I use the word “privilege” advisedly, for I am well aware that many Georgists regard Mr. Heath with emotions ordinarily reserved for Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. for this man, who years ago materially assisted Oscar Geiger in the founding of the Henry George School of Social Science, is today the most formidable critic of the philosophy it teaches. A passion for individual freedom, inspired by Progress and Poverty, led him finally to reject its social remedy as overly coercive.

 I came to meet him quite by accident, although I had earlier read portions of his magnum opus, Citadel, Market and Altar, which impressed me by the sonorous eloquence of its closely-reasoned prose.  In the course of a visit to California, he arrived one day as a luncheon guest at Campbell House near San Jacinto, where I was helping to conduct a socio-religious seminar with a group of graduate students. White-bearded and surmounted by unique spectacles of his own invention, the visage of this tall old patriarch would alone have been enough to pique my  interest. But the originality of his book had already made me curious to know its author.

 When, as we were introduced, he learned of my association with the School, he evidently sensed an area of mutual concern. After lunch, while others toured the grounds, we sought each other out and probed each other’s minds for several hours until his companions returned to drive him back to town.

 Appreciatively acknowledging his own debt to Henry George, Mr. Heath quietly but forcefully explained the reasons which led him to repudiate site-value taxation in favor of a system grounded on the indefeasibility of private land titles. It was really more of a monologue than a discussion, for I was ill-prepared to attempt an on-the-spot refutation of the intricate and tightly woven argument which for years had been his chief preoccupation. I shall not here engage to summarize its substance; suffice it to say that although I did not find it ultimately convincing, it struck me as an imposing line of reasoning with which Georgists would do well to come to grips.

 Without doubt, Spencer Heath is one of the most arresting speculative geniuses of our time. A former patent attorney and research engineer, he pioneered in the development of the airplane propeller. After a distinguished career in law and engineering, he turned in middle life to a profound study of the natural and social sciences. He has welded insights from all these fields into a truly impressive synthetic system which he calls “socionomy, the new natural science of society.” His thinking has been acclaimed by such outstanding figures as William Ernest Hocking, Roscoe Pound, John Chamberlain, Virgil Jordan and Ralph Sockman. Yet within the Georgist movement it is conspicuously and deliberately neglected.

 For decades we followers of Henry George have cried for an honest examin­ation of his doctrines. We have demanded that his opponents try to prove him wrong with arguments, instead of merely dismissing him with a historical footnote or a patronizing allusion to his literary style. But an honest critical examination has appeared. In 1952 Spencer Heath published Progress and Poverty Reviewed, a concise attempt at refutation which, whether successful or not, should command our earnest attention and our respect for its thoughtfulness and sincerity. Yet our response is to treat its author in the very same way in which we complain that Henry George is treated. Our response is to ignore him.

 Sociologists who have studied the morphology of institutions have long observed a dismal pattern of crystallization, ossification, and eventual disintegration. Concomitant with this has been a tendency toward super­stitious veneration of the founder, and uncritical acceptance of the “sacred canon” of the institution. The time has come for us to ask ourselves these questions: Have we made of Henry George a sacred cow and of his works a sacred canon? Have we transformed his living witness into a rigid dogma propagated by a catechism? Have our extensions become shrines of a sectarian orthodoxy which operates according to the hoary fallacy that “error” has no right to a hearing?

 The existence of our movement is itself proof that to dismiss is not to refute, and that ideas cannot be made to disappear by pretending that they do not exist. If we really believe in the philosophy of Progress and Poverty, let us quit playing ostrich and defend it in the marketplace of open inquiry and free debate. If it has merit, we need not fear for its survival.

 But if, out of a school with over twenty branches, we are unwilling or unable to come up with a careful and convincing answer to Mr. Heath’s critique, then, although the Henry George philosophy may yet deserve to survive, we, as a movement, shall not, for we shall have become unworthy to carry the banner of him who wrote:

I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon us is the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the very heart of our civilization today women faint and little children moan. But what that law may prove to be is not our affair. If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch . . .

 

/Ends here/