Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1390

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

July 12, 1941

Dear Mr. Kendal:

So you want to know what ground rent is? Well, Here it is:

Ground rent is the recompense that the occupants of a community automatically give for the advantage of enjoying a peaceable and productive distribution and use of its sites and natural resources upon terms open and equal to all.

They get these advantages from the persons whom they designate, with much formality, as proprietors to hold and distribute the sites and resources by a public and general consent that henceforth takes the place of the former private violence.

This results in a distributive service being per­formed by contract and consent and for this service they give the voluntary recompense called ground rent.

They pay this ground rent out of the wealth that this peaceable holding and distribution of land makes it possible for them to produce.

They exchange part of this wealth in payment for these public and community services that enable them to produce it. The amount of ground rent thus paid is deter­mined by the amount of their total production and by their own wishes and desires as expressed in the free contracts which they respect and to which they consent.

The reason this exchange of ground /rent/ for distributive services is so little understood is because it is an example of that subtle and unconscious cooperation which Henry George says is the function of the Greater Leviathan or Social Organism which he says is older and greater than the political state and whose laws and processes cannot be controlled by it.

Ground rent is paid and received by contract and consent. Taxation is enforced by compulsion, confusion and deceit. Ground rent is paid for a service that makes production possible and thus contributes to it. Taxation is a drain on production; furthermore, it supports re­strictions on trade and exchange that restrain production and finally prevent it altogether.

All taxation of the properties and processes of production and exchange inhibits the performance of services (employment) and the production of wealth.

Taxation prevents the free distribution and exchange of wealth by the contracts and consent of those who produce it and own it and distributes it by favor and force, thus preventing further production of it.

Taxation destroys ground rent by destroying the production of wealth, thus reducing both the need and the demand for land while reducing the current fund of wealth out of which alone ground rent can be paid.

Taxation not only seizes existing wealth out of the common markets but it is then used in ways that prevent new wealth from coming in. It thus prevents the employment and creates unemployment of land and its resources, of capital in all its forms and of men in all their capacities.

Land cannot be in demand while production is in decline.

Taxation is the fuel that feeds destruction and war. It makes government a parasite on Society, finally destroying its host and thus terminating its own existence.

Taxation in any form — any systematic taking by brute force — is mass enslavement. It cannot support a free society.

Taxation is perennial warfare against the fundamental social process of free cooperation and association in service by voluntary contract, consent and exchange.

No other public service is so needful, nor can be so profitable, as the abolition of taxation.

Income to public owners, to the territorial pro­prietors, depends wholly and utterly upon production, — for it is a part of production and must come from the production of wealth and services.

Land owners, as the public proprietors, have no other office or function but to give the kind of public services and protection to the territory they own, and thus to those who inhabit it, that will insure the greatest freedom of production and the utmost productivity.

In such public service and protection they will be the servants of all, — and they will become the greatest of all in their recompense — in their incomes, values, honors and rewards.

Well, this ought to hold you for a while. I am coming North next Tuesday the fifteenth and will probably call you and come to see you that night if you are home. I will be spending a few days in New York.

Best wishes ‘n’ everything,