Spencer Heath Archive

Item 788

 

 

Given, any material thing, either as land or as wealth fabricated from land: to have any social significance it must be owned. For, apart from emotional compromises and adjustments or the imposition of force or duress, it is only when that thing can become the subject-matter of contract that there is any change in human relationships with respect to that thing. The title is founded not on force, not on possession and not on predation, but on the fact that as property the physical thing can become an object of purchase sale or lease and thereby have a rational social significance by coming under proprietary as contrasted with political or coercive administration

    

     Where the thing owned — the subject-matter of contract — has been physically transformed from mere land — raw material of nature — into wealth, its rational distribution to others with security and in a society-wide way, can be effected only so far as title to it is respected as inviolate and the authority of the title holder to make contracts with respect to it is thereby sustained

 

     The case is similar with respect to the raw materials of nature in situ — land — whether or not it has been artificially modified or privately or publicly improved. So far as it is non-political property, so far as private title to it is inviolate, only so far can it become the subject-matter of contract and thus socially instead of politically distributed.

 

      All wealth, whether natural or artificial, must be parceled out and distributed either socially by contract or politically under coercion and duress, by the free Market or by the Citadel, or State.

 

      Whether the property is wholly natural or in part artificial, the Market does not recompense any prior or physical act; it is only for the social act, for the transfer of title and jurisdiction over it that recompense is given.

      When production and distribution are separately regarded the legitimacy of recompense for distributive services is seldom if ever questioned, but whether the

With respect to property that is in part natural and in part artificially, by labor, produced into wealth, and its distribution (apart from production) is separately considered, the legitimacy of recompense for these distributive services is never or seldom brought in question.