imagenes-spencer-heath

Spencer Heath's

Series

Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1303

Letter by Heath to S.A. Schneidman

June 1, 1940

 

 

 

Dear Dr. Schneidman:

 

     Many thanks for the kind letter from you and Miss Grodman. I have delayed writing to you until I should have some definite idea of when I could come to New York again. I am now making  arrangements to be there on the 17th and for a few days following and will have free time from the 13th onward, both daytime and evening except as new appointments are made. I hope very much to see you and some of your earnest and intelligent friends and if we can find access to some selected groups or organizations who are intent upon the “nature of things” in the world of social organization it will be a great pleasure to try to draw their thought along those avenues in which we are finding so much illumination.

 

     I am profoundly convinced that the exchange relationship, practiced by contract and consent, is the fundamental basis of all social order and organization. It is, in fact, the one and only bridge over which mankind may cross from the base condition of destructive nomads dependent upon the fortuitous gifts of their natural environment which they degrade and destroy but do not improve into the condition of creative artists divinely working and recreating a world, natural and social, fit for the physical and spiritual habitation of mankind — for the eternal growth and blossoming into beauty of its essential spirit.

     As to the things which men have exclusively of one another, there is a vague but insufficient recognition of their source and origin in the exchange process and relationship, but as to those things which characterize a community and which men have in common with one another there is no recognition of, or conscious attempt to practice the exchange relationship at all. This is what makes it so important that the nature and significance of rent be studied and understood, for it is only through tenancies and rents that community benefits or advantages can be transformed from special privileges maintained by force and arbitrary discrimination into social values democratically ascertained and impartially disposed.

     Wishing you many blessings and hoping to hear from you,

                            Sincerely,

Metadata

Title Correspondence - 1303
Collection Name Spencer Heath Archive
Series Correspondence
Box number 9:1191-1335
Document number 1303
Date / Year 1940-06-01
Authors / Creators / Correspondents S. A. Schneidman
Description Letter by Heath to S.A. Schneidman
Keywords Society Exchange Rent