Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1468

Letter to Katherine D. Murdoch, Fifth Avenue at 59th Street, Plaza Hotel, New York City

June 5, 1952

 

Dear Mrs. Murdoch:

Your “Dynamic America” with its three departments is of much interest to me — your department of research on ideas, especially.

The development of right ideas — correct understand­ing of everyday continuing events is the prime essential to anything but a Topsy-like and even a topsy-turvy cul­ture or civilization. The modern societal process, free enterprise, as it goes on now in its limited way (vis a vis the old political and coercive), has “just growed” empirically, without anyone foreseeing it through being aware of its basic method or rationale — a product of blind experience, just as were all the special material arts of ancient times, however excellent or limited they were.

The limited development these special arts attained did not depend upon the possession of any correct ideas concerning them, in fact, they long preceded any science or rational understanding of them. In like manner, the modern societal technique of creative cooperation through contractual freedom (free enterprise) did not await any sound or rational understanding of its principle and modes of operation. It has, up to now, preceded any such sound ideas, just as did the ancient material arts.

These material arts are now, through the rational sciences, fundamentally understood and thus enormously developed beyond their ancient and empirical predecessors. But though the physical sciences have made such rational advance, the technique of free enterprise still lingers in its empirical stage. The social technology of today, though marvelously creative, is no more fundamentally understood than were the ancient material technologies before the advent of physical science.

As to physical things, the ideas of men have moved out of the limitations of empirical darkness, but the thoughts of modern men concerning the voluntary societal processes, as distinguished from coercive political processes, are still in the dark ages of faith in “prin­cipalities and powers” or, at best, in a coercive pragmatism. This is our social lag as against our material advance. And right here is the utmost need for rational ideas that can transcend mere empiricism. For men, though first moved by their necessities and needs, are far more willingly and powerfully energized by their dreams and ideals, whether they be false or true.

This lack of rational understanding of the dynamic technique of American freedom is what leaves our people’s minds exposed to the inroads of the Eastern and Asiatic totalitarian philosophies that now darken Western Culture and endanger the civilized world. America, the last outpost of creative freedom, must evolve a creative philo­sophy that will raise the standard of American thinking just as free enterprise, for all its political clogs and inhibitions, has raised the standard of American lives.

Right here, it seems to me, is the fallow-fertile field for your “Dynamic America” in its department of research on ideas — to disclose the rational ideology (and idealism) implicit in the voluntarism of free enter­prise, the rationale of that empirical system of volun­tary relations that embodies the fruits of physical science in services and supplies and distributes them to all, even after the vast levies consumed by government and in its huge largesses (appeasements) to governments abroad.

But this blind practice of peace and freedom by free enterprise cannot alone withstand the growing power of coercive control. It must waken to its high poten­tialities for productivity, and for profit, in a wider field — in the supplying also of value-building community services and goods for a voluntary revenue in lieu of taxation that destroys values. It must rise to its own philosophy of freedom that it may become invincible and far more widely serve. Sound ideas and these alone can foil the false upon the battle-ground of mind. Dependence on coercion must give way to the rational harmonies in the creative cooperation of unforced men on which alone a civilized society can stand or rise.

As a skeleton-basis for such research, I suggest Citadel, Market and Altar which, through your appreciation and assistance, I hope to have in course of publication before long. This approaches the empiricism of our voluntary Society in precisely the same inductive way that the physical, chemical and other natural processes were approached to turn the narrow and uncertain “arts and mysteries” of ancient craftsmen into the mighty technologies of the present day. It looks to creative freedom and is thus fundamental. It proposes no mere reform of force or mitigation of arbitrary power. Instead, it discloses the unsung modes in which cooperatively interfunctioning and often selfish modern men have raised the level of the common lives and of their own in the creative social system of contract and exchange. Yet, and even more sig­nificantly, it shows how these silent processes stand waiting only to be understood in order to penetrate spon­taneously the community services and properties to the high enrichment and liberation of all.

Confident as I am, I yet propose this basic outline only for tentative study and examination and for helpful guidance in a research among ideas for the sound and solvent and for the fruition of beauty in the paths of peace.

Sincerely,