Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1313

Carbon of a letter from Hotel Woodstock, New York City, to Gilbert M. Tucker, Albany, New York

September 18, 1940

Dear Mr. Tucker:

I am still here in New York (Hotel Woodstock) but will be in Elkridge, Maryland very soon now.

Your kind letter and criticism of the fourth has been forwarded to me here.

I thank you for your encouragement of my efforts to present the Philosophy of Freedom in the more favorable light which it deserves and without any dependence upon a philosophy of force against or abuse of any person or institution. Recently I concluded a long letter to an earnest Georgist as follows:

We who profess a Philosophy of Freedom and would honor him who gave it name should scorn the dark diabolism that puts its faith in destructive might and all that pagan superstition that the heavenly kingdom of high desire can be builded with the sword of force (called justice) in the hand of compulsive power. The divine power, the creative power, lies not in “justice” but in the love that takes the form of services and is practiced by exchange. It comes to us from the beauty that lies within the heart of the world, in the consensual engagements and contractual institutions of men. When thus we seek we shall find and when we open our eyes we are infused and inspired. Seeing the practice of that love which transcends force and thus abides and endures, we are made free to rejoice in it, to think creatively — divinely — and divine action will follow and attend us on every hand.

The question you raise should be carefully thought out. It amounts to this: Does not the land lord now receive from the land user more than he should for the undoubted services which he performs? To my mind the important question is not how much but how the land user pays. Does he pay in the freedom of contract or under the compulsions of assessment and decree? Shall he not pay what he wills to pay, no force being used or penalty imposed? Is it not lawful for him to do what he will with his own? He is free to forego the land owner’s services by occupying land that he can take other than by contract and agreement in a market and therefore without the services that would make its possession secure. He is under no compulsion beyond this, that if he accepts the distributive services that make his possession secure, he must pay for them. The quantum of his payment is determined by his own consent and that of others practicing the freedom of the market — social freedom.

But if we could suppose that the amount paid by the land user under the award of the market is too great, it would seem much more reasonable that the compulsive authority should restore the excess to him (whatever its amount might be) rather than to appropriate it to itself for its own benefit or for the supposed benefit of the community at large (by whom the excess payment was not made). Or, if we think of the aggregate rent as being paid by the community as a whole (instead of only by purchasers or lessees as is the case) by what authority higher than their common consent and the inviolability of their aggregate contracts should they receive back any part of what they have paid?

It is my desire to view this social phenomenon, namely, the contracts that result in the payment of ground rent, as a scientist examines the phenomena in other fields, that is, with a view not to objecting to its mode of operation but only of understanding it, of thinking rightly concerning it. I think what makes the most normal and efficient social processes the last and least to be understood is that we are so nearly unconscious of them. As in our bodily organization, we have little consciousness of all that which is best and most perfectly performed, but a very acute consciousness of that which is poorly done or fails. This is why we have not been conscious of the social distribution of sites and resources through land ownership — because it has been so perfectly done.

Land — the world — is the necessary environment of man; he inherits it just as it inherits him.

The land has qualities, from nature, that are physical; it has values, from man, that are social.

A value is always one side of an exchange, the side of recompense, that which is received as distinguished from that which is given. That which is received (in exchange) is always the value of that which is given.

Ground rent is the value not properly of land but of the ownership of land, meaning the function or service performed by land ownership. This, at present, is only the service of giving it a social distribution — equably and by agreements instead of by chaos or compulsions. This is the service for which ground rent is received, of which ground rent is the value.

Up to the present, land owners have given no protection against taxation. Hence they are not paid for any such service, and their values decline. I believe this is their proper function and duty and that when they perform it their recompense (rents) will enormously rise.

Protection against robbery is a common service — a service received in common by the members of the community. It is not the common duty of the members, but the specific and individual duty of those designated to it and recompensed for it. And the general membership of the community can no more supervise in common the performance of this duty than they could in common perform it. Supervision is always the duty (function) of proprietors or of those supervised by them.

What has been said about protection against robbery is equally and precisely true about protection against taxation.

I feel very grateful to you and Mrs. Tucker for the hospitalities of your delightful home so freely extended and for your excellent and stimulating entertainment. I should love to be able to make you similarly indebted to me. I do greatly hope for an opportunity to make at least some little reciprocation. Please tell Mrs. Tucker how much I enjoyed meeting her.

Regarding the copies of your book that you kindly offer, I have spoken to several about it and there are at least two or three right here in New York whom I know who would like to read it. I wish I had asked you to let me bring some of them with me. Will you send them to me at Elkridge or shall I send the names and addresses to you?

Please remember me kindly to Mrs. DeMille if she is still with you.

Sincerely yours,