Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1265

Carbon of a letter to Mr. Willcox

August 29, 1939

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Willcox:

Sometime ago my good friend, C. H. Kendal, called my attention to your article, “Ricardo’s ‘Law of Rent’ Invalid,” which appeared in the March number of Land and Freedom. He asked me to write him my full comments on this article of yours, and I did so under date of July 30th.

    Thinking that my comments might be of some interest to you, I am enclosing, herewith, a copy of my letter that I had prepared for that purpose.

    It gratifies me very much to find some of the more intelligent people of the Henry George persuasion raising serious question about this so-called Ricardian Law. Like Malthus, Ricardo conceived the relationship of civilized man to the earth as being the same as that of savages and beasts. These men, like so many today, disregarded completely the exchange relationship by means of which social-ized men practiced division of labor and exchanged services with each other, thereby constantly creating and recreating their subsistence out of the raw materials of nature. This is a vast improvement and contrast upon the method of the primitive forms of life which is merely to take their subsistence as and where they find it, thus making their environment less and less serviceable to them and keeping these forms of life, but not civilized man, under the bondage of Malthusian Law. Ricardo, doubtless, was influenced by the Physiocratic notion that agriculture was the only source of wealth.

    It is certainly to be regretted that Henry George, after devoting four chapters to his masterly refutation of Malthus, should have so uncritically and without even any attempt at examination accepted the same general principle under the special formulation of Ricardo. In taking on the Malthusian Doctrine in its Ricardian form, Henry George gives us the perfect example of what Lord Morley referred to when he said that seldom does a discoverer of new truth fail to carry forward enough of the error of his predecessors to vitiate his own discoveries. It was a fatal error of his predecessor Ricardo, that has vitiated and held back the essential truths propounded and natural relationships by Henry George. And it is the more remarkable that he consciously swallowed the Ricardian application of the Malthusian Theory, as shown on page 229 where he states, “Thus the two theories, as I have before explained, are made to harmonize and blend, the law of rent becoming but a special application of the more general law propounded by Malthus, and the advance of rents with the increasing population a demonstration of its resistless operation.”

    It was Ricardo who made it difficult for George to progress to any higher ground than that upon which he condemned private property in land. Just as Ricardo held back the thought and conception of Henry George, so does Henry George hold back the thought and conception of those who feel a greater loyalty to the error he transmitted than to the truth he tried to make clear.

     Mr. Willcox, from what I have heard of you and some of your writings, I think you are a man of much more than ordinary intellectual capacity. When I began writing this letter, I intended to send you nothing but my letter to Mr. Kendal commenting on your article. I try not to send to a correspondent more than I think he can absorb, but in this case I am going to send also two little printed pamphlets, “Private Property in Land Explained,” and “The Inspiration of Beauty.” I would like you to keep these at hand for serious consideration from time to time. I am not sending any conclusions for your acceptance but only for your consideration in the light of the induction and observations upon which they are founded. An understanding of the institution of property in land, not from the standpoint of an owner’s interest but from the standpoint of the social functions that the institution performs has been the source of utmost satisfaction to me in contemplating the beauty and balance of natural law manifesting itself in the social realm.

    >>It is coming more and more to be recognized that the extension of political authority and restrictions to the field of private exchange relations and cooperative affairs is now, as it has always been, the dark shadow upon the freedom and future of mankind. It must, therefore, be of the greatest interest and importance to observe that the institution of private property in land is the one great limitation on arbitrary governmental power — to which we owe all the security of possession and opportunity of creating social values by practice of the exchange relationship with each other under the shadow of the political power that slowly but inevitably breaks that institution down. For it is only with its proprietary authority that the members of a society have relationships that are purely those of contract and exchange and not those of compulsion and force. The institution shines as the only social instrument for practice of the exchange relationship between the members of a society and a public (proprietary) authority which they establish or recognize and maintain.

     Since the functional interpretation of property in land is based upon the energy concept of population outlined on the mimeographed sheets which I also enclose, I am letting you have these also in the thought that you may be interested in the principal philosophic foundation upon which my social conclusions and interpretations are based.

     Please do not think me presumptuous, or that I mean to be other than complimentary in offering so much that is out of the usual line of thinking for your consideration. If you attend the Henry George Centenary, I hope I will be able to see you in New York and enjoy your more immediate acquaintance.

Very sincerely  yours,

 

    Spencer Heath

 

Enc.

 

Copy of July 30^th letter to Mr. C. H. Kendel.

“Private Property in Land Explained”

“Inspiration of Beauty”

“The Energy Concept of Population”