Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1314

Copy of a letter from Heath to Clifford. H. Kendal, 29 Bellevue Avenue, Summit, New Jersey

September 30th, 1940

Dear Mr. Kendal:

I send you the latest “No Taxes,” also two older numbers that I have just opened and looked through. Wish I had about half of Beckwith’s pep for putting things into print and circulating them.

There is a widespread but mistaken notion that tax raiders actually create public services and values — that after they have raided the producers of wealth they then use the spoil they have taken in such manner and with such benevolence as to undo all the damage, both direct and indirect, that they have caused by their rude and destructive manner of taking it and, in addition, create positive public services that are, somehow, the exchange equivalent of all the taxes taken. Most people seem to think these supposed services find their way back to the people who have been raided and, most marvelous of all, that they come back to the tax victims not only in greater amount than they have been wronged but in the same proportions that they have been forced to contribute. This certainly is evidence of the high and fine faith that the people have in their politicians. No wonder that emperors, kings and governments are looked upon as being divine and the voice of the “people” is the voice of God! Those who impute such wondrous white magic to the tax takers should be able to believe almost anything, either with or without being told.

But brother Beckwith goes them all one better. He not only believes that the tax takers create positive services in addition to restoring all the damage that they do, but that they sell these supposed services all to the land owners who in turn re-sell them to the land users for about five or six times the price that the politicians, by their taxes, compel the land owners to pay for them. According to this, it seems that taxation either makes or leaves the land users so prosperous that they are both willing and able to carry the land owners as a high and handsome overhead, although the alleged “services” are performed by the politicians and also by the same general public that buys its own services to itself back again from the land owners. If Brother Beckwith does not believe that Jonah swallowed the whale he certainly does not lack the capacity to believe it. According to him, taxes are payment for public services but the supposed services do not go to those who pay for them. They go first to the land owners and then the land users pay for them all over again to the land owners. In addition to all this and all the while, the land users are performing many kinds of services for each other. But while they are doing this they do not get from each other all of the services that they perform for each other. By some mysterious process a large part of these services goes to the land owners and the poor land users buy back from the land owners a large part of the services that they perform for each other. So the land users buy back from the land owners not only the “services of government” for all they are worth but also a large part of their own services to themselves, thus reimbursing the land owners about five-fold for all the taxes that the politicians take away from them. These are surely some wonderful land users.

And yet, the modern land owner has no political or governmental or other compulsive powers. He is no longer divine. He has no magic but the magic of the market, no technique but that of contract and consent.

How much clearer and simpler it is to recognize at once that the land owners perform a service of distribution in making a social, peaceable and non-forcible distribution of sites and resources, so far as it is possible or profitable, under taxation and other governmental restrictions, for them to be used. And how can these services of free and democratic distribution upon equal terms to all have any less value than that awarded to them in the open market? And how can these services of peaceable distribution be thought of as having small value when we realize that without them there could be no secure or peaceable possession, without which no wealth could be produced or exchanged?

When it comes to the owning of unoccupied land, this is not mere speculation (in the opprobrious sense); it is a stand-by service that insures a peaceable and socially desirable allocation of the land if and when the restraints of government upon employment and production can be sufficiently overcome to permit its use. Like most standby service, payment for it is deferred until such time as it is actually called for. Each successive purchaser and owner pays to his predecessor in title the market value of the accumulated standby services and takes his risk as to whether or when his services as a distributor shall come into actual demand. This is the way with all standby services of every kind. The owning of land does not prevent its use. But it does make it possible to distribute and hold it under contractual arrangements instead of those of compulsion or force, and this is the only way that there can be any security of possession or any productive use. It is a great fallacy to suppose that ownership prevents use. In a community it is quite possible to have ownership without use, but not use without ownership. Henry George was right as he was emphatic about this in his early writings.

You should have seen the show I put on in Washington last Friday. Percy Williams arranged it and said he was much impressed — afraid I might be right.

 

Yours,