Spencer Heath Archive

Item 861

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath on the road between Baltimore and New York.

December 1, 1955

Original is in item 860.

The same people who are running, we’ll say, General Motors today, Harlow Curtis, for instance, probably does not feel himself altogether in opposition to bureaucracy. He probably feels that bureaucracy can be used legitimately in connection with his business in some way, and might easily be tempted to seek to get some political edge over the other people in the automotive business — put the Fords down by getting political monopoly, or license or advantage for General Motors, or getting some kind of legislation or political franchise that would bear more heavily upon its rivals than upon itself — all of which can happen if his opposition to political power is unconscious, if he does not know that his whole development of General Motors business is a movement in the contrary direction from political movements. That feeling of their being consistent with one another is the temptation to employ politics illegitimately. I suppose I should say meretriciously, because anything that is politically established is legitimate. The literal sense of the term legitimate is that it is according to law — law meaning law in the human sense and not in the sense of natural or divine. An illegitimate child is a child that has been born in accordance with the laws of nature. It is not legitimate unless it has been born in accordance with the laws that men make. A pretty good illustration of the difference, isn’t it? — Because it was born under natural instead of under artificial law.