Spencer Heath Archive

Item 294

New York

July 19, 1936

     No man can take our liberties away. They are not in us. They are in our social organization. We are born into them, not they into us. There is no liberty in the individual. It is the child, the fruit, of social organization.

     Men may destroy their social organization, their civilized existence, by restricting its operation, by employing force to restrain men from serving and employing each other — from carrying on trade and exchange, but in no other way can liberty be destroyed.

     “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” There is no other.

     So long as pirates, warfare, violence (and for the time being fraud) is restrained, taxation itself with all that it maintains is the only anti-social power. With taxation abolished and no other form of violence permitted. /words missing? Check original/ Taxation does not save or protect. Taxation destroys. Taxation is anarchy. Only rent can save. Only through rent can we purchase the service of protection from violence and every other form of public service as well.

     Taxation is violence; it cannot save us from violation.

     Rent is exchange; it is a fulfillment of the societal law — the law of mutual exchange of services.