Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1460..

Pencil draft for letter to Darwin Meserole, New York City. Repeated in bold (to avoid confusing the two drafts) for purpose of editing

September 1949?

 

Original is in item 1459.

Dear Darwin:

In closing my last letter I said I would try to tell you something of the advances in modern society that, all unrecognized as such, are nevertheless the sound and solid gains towards a social organization fully functioning and thereby free. Some of these things, perhaps the most vital, have been received askance and even legislated against, as steps in social progress almost always are. I refer of course to those parts and populations of the world, chiefly European, that since about 500 A.D. have enjoyed a dynamic advance, in which the mode of life and condition of people has radically changed from what it had been for thousands of years before and still is throughout the greater portion of the world today. That condition was one of abject servitude.

The vast majority of men in all lands were either slaves or under relentless tribute to sovereign persons and powers. Only the very elect could own anything, even themselves. Property was the prerogative of those only who ruled, of the privileged alone. It was accumulated only by force and used (except to a small extent among the elect) not productively for others, but only as an instrument of oppression, so far as the masses of men were concerned. Commerce, if any, was only for the service of the state, indulgence of the few, and all other production and distribution, where any, was similarly controlled. There were no alternate periods of prosperity and depres­sion for the masses, only cycles of subsistence and starva­tion. There were no cycles of production and trade; only those of government, of conquest (or revolt) and dynasty. All ownership was legal and static, a condition and not a process; functional or administrative ownership by the free process of contract had but little, if any, evolved. Under universal coercion only a starveling physical produc­tion could be attained; all the values to be created by the system /of/ contract and exchange were unknown. Men acted not by reciprocal consent but under unilateral authority. Force was the initial and final arbiter, and government was the instrument of man’s inhumanity to man. Such was the almost universal condition out from which nature about 1500 years ago dimly set the worn feet of the Western man upon the toilsome road to grander goals.

There had been a Galilean dream, not of a golden age but of a golden rule, a reciprocal relationship of free exchange under which men could create for one another, each for all and all for each, and that in this divine relation­ship, impersonal and universal, so far as they followed it, all men could be saved from their aboriginal sins, redeemed from their ancient slaveries, and by this divine creative power enter into their inheritance of a heavenly dominion over this earthly world. Under this spiritual relationship and power they could continue the cosmic dream, regenerate the world (divinely created out of chaos) into boundless beauty and a habitation for ever-lengthening days.

For all the legioned and legally ordered power of a united sovereignty over the world, there was still enough beauty shining on and in the created earth to inspire such a poet’s dream. It was a divine intuition of what never had been but was to be; so it could be stated only in its general principle and illustrated only by parable and meta­phor. Nor could it begin to be practiced on any wide scale under a world enslaving and destroying power. So the dream slumbered through a half-thousand years of slavery and public works until there was no more left to be destroyed. Free barbarians haunted broken temples and fallen thrones, and the one-world sovereignty perforce took flight in other­worldly power — a wide and, in part, benevolent, sometimes inspiring, dominion over hopes, fears and minds. A celestial Phoenix, yet in earthly state, was all that survived the ashes of one-world dominion at last burned out.

In the easy-living, flat and fertile lands conquerors had risen and fallen in almost endless succession; there was always a quick, if mean, subsistence for their oppressed. When Rome relied for resource and power upon her barbarian terrain, nature herself forbade her Oriental extreme of sovereignty in these rugged lands. Slavery in these rugged lands was too inefficient, not sufficiently productive to maintain both power and population. No great king or con­quest toppled her throne, and it was circumstance, not barbarian arms that brought her low.

The new principalities and little states that arose in Europe from the fifth century on inherited all the absolutist aspirations that brought their single predecessor down. They attempted conquest one upon another, but none could maintain both population and revenue with absolute power. Necessity forbade slavery after the manner of Rome. Moreover, people in rugged lands are by nature independent and self-reliant, not so tolerant to tribute nor blandished by largesses and public works. So the sovereignties of Europe, up until the present age of high technological pro­ductivity, have never been able to impose slavery except in some one or other of its, for the time, less destructive forms. Until the modern era serfdom was the most general, being more productive agriculturally than the absolute form. With development of commerce and industry both serfdom and free agriculture became relatively inefficient and were gradually “emancipated” into taxation and finally into the “security” of regimentation as great increase of physical productivity has been gained. But for a thousand years, these technological advances were not made and serfdom generally prevailed. Yet there was this dream of freedom, of the final worth and blessedness of all men in the world, a dream and hope that the heart and mind of ancient pagan man had never held.

Through all the wars and conquests, alliances and subjections out of which the European powers of state arose, above the clash of rival arms a new star shown… The barbarian zest for freedom nurtured and kept alive the Galilean dream, while in the rugged European terrain, nature yielded her bounty only to hearts and hands not completely enslaved. In the long toilsome regrowth in an austerer clime after the Classic Fall the enslavement of men to governments was less rigid and complete. The pat­tern softened, kings were no longer gods. States were not accepted as absolutely supreme. Not slavery but society, though vaguely and even grotesquely dreamed, became the common aspiration of men.

Having some degree of property in themselves, it became possible for large numbers of men to own other things, some of their own or others’ products wherewith they could serve one another in the golden rule of reciprocal exchange. Thus through property the right of free relationships slowly became the heritage of the generality of men. Especially among the maritime peoples of the Baltic and Adriatic lands it finally expanded into a general system of impersonal and universal exchange. This spiritual process of creating for and exchanging with one another laid the necessary material basis for that eventual revival of learning and the arts that marked the ending of the middle and the beginning of the modern age. The right of property gave men the right to contract, the unprecedented right to serve and to be served, each free from coercion and without sub­servience or domination from either side.

Both official and private violence and fraud were destructive and still rife in the world, but this process of contract was new for the generality of men. It was practiced imperfectly as all new things are, but those popu­lations in which it best and most prevailed became richer and longer lived. In its beginnings there was more piracy than exchange, but piracy did not command the sovereign allegiance of men and the creative results of reciprocal exchange made it, even if unconsciously, bound to prevail. All things very new take on a semblance of their precedent old and so we are prone to mingle and confuse them in our minds with their very opposites which they eventually trans­cend and supersede.

By the close of the nineteenth century, this new non-political kingdom of heaven had pervaded the whole Western world. In its forums men practiced the democracy of service — the only kind that does not pull its own house down. They pooled in public markets their contributions to the general welfare and by bidding and asking, a voting process, made peaceable resolve of their conflicting wishes and desires.

 

 

                                      /Scroll down/

 

 

/The following, set in bold-face type so as not to be confused with the foregoing, is the same as above, except that the opening paragraph has been edited, preparatory to editing all of it./

Advances in modern society, all unrecognized as such, have been sound and solid gains towards a social organization fully functioning and thereby free. Some of these, perhaps the most vital, have been received askance and even legislated against, as steps in social progress almost always are. We are speaking, of course, of those parts and populations of the world, chiefly European, that since about 500 A.D. have enjoyed a dynamic advance, in which the mode of life and condition of people has radically changed from what it had been for thousands of years. That condition was one of abject servitude.

     The vast majority of men in all lands were either slaves or under relentless tribute to sovereign persons and powers. Only the very elect could own anything, even themselves. Property was the prerogative of those only who ruled, of the privileged alone. It was accumulated only by force and used (except to a small extent among the elect) not productively for others, but as an instrument of oppression, so far as the masses of men were concerned. Commerce, if any, was only for the service of the state, indulgence of the few, and all other production and distribution, where any, was similarly controlled. There were no alternate periods of prosperity and depres­sion for the masses, only cycles of subsistence and starva­tion. There were no cycles of production and trade; only those of government, of conquest (or revolt) and dynasty. All ownership was legal and static, a condition and not a process; functional or administrative ownership by the free process of contract had but little, if any, evolved. Under universal coercion only a starveling physical produc­tion could be attained; all the values to be created by the system /of/ contract and exchange were unknown. Men acted not by reciprocal consent but under unilateral authority. Force was the initial and final arbiter, and government was the instrument of man’s inhumanity to man. Such was the almost universal condition out from which nature about 1500 years ago dimly set the worn feet of the Western man upon the toilsome road to grander goals.

     There had been a Galilean dream, not of a golden age but of a golden rule, a reciprocal relationship of free exchange under which men could create for one another, each for all and all for each, and that in this divine relation­ship, impersonal and universal, so far as they followed it, all men could be saved from their aboriginal sins, redeemed from their ancient slaveries, and by this divine creative power enter into their inheritance of a heavenly dominion over this earthly world. Under this spiritual relationship and power they could continue the cosmic dream, regenerate the world (divinely created out of chaos) into boundless beauty and a habitation for ever-lengthening days.

 

     For all the legioned and legally ordered power of a united sovereignty over the world, there was still enough beauty shining on and in the created earth to inspire such a poet’s dream. It was a divine intuition of what never had been but was to be; so it could be stated only in its general principle and illustrated only by parable and meta­phor. Nor could it begin to be practiced on any wide scale under a world enslaving and destroying power. So the dream slumbered through a half-thousand years of slavery and public works until there was no more left to be destroyed. Free barbarians haunted broken temples and fallen thrones, and the one-world sovereignty perforce took flight in other­worldly power——a wide and, in part, benevolent, sometimes inspiring, dominion over hopes, fears and minds. A celestial Phoenix, yet in earthly state, was all that survived the ashes of one-world dominion at last burned out.

     In the easy-living, flat and fertile lands conquerors had risen and fallen in almost endless succession; there was always a quick, if mean, subsistence for their oppressed. When Rome relied for resource and power upon her barbarian terrain, nature herself forbade her Oriental extreme of sovereignty in these rugged lands. Slavery in these rugged lands was too inefficient, not sufficiently productive to maintain both power and population. No great king or con­quest toppled her throne, and it was circumstance, not barbarian arms that brought her low.

     The new principalities and little states that arose in Europe from the fifth century on inherited all the absolutist aspirations that brought their single predecessor down. They attempted conquest one upon another, but none could maintain both population and revenue with absolute power. Necessity forbade slavery after the manner of Rome. Moreover, people in rugged lands are by nature independent and self-reliant, not so tolerant to tribute nor blandished by largesses and public works. So the sovereignties of Europe, up until the present age of high technological pro­ductivity, have never been able to impose slavery except in some one or other of its, for the time, less destructive forms. Until the modern era serfdom was the most general, being more productive agriculturally than the absolute form. With development of commerce and industry both serfdom and free agriculture became relatively inefficient and were gradually “emancipated” into taxation and finally into the “security” of regimentation as great increase of physical productivity has been gained. But for a thousand years, these technological advances were not made and serfdom generally prevailed. Yet there was this dream of freedom, of the final worth and blessedness of all men in the world, a dream and hope that the heart and mind of ancient pagan man had never held.

     Through all the wars and conquests, alliances and subjections out of which the European powers of state arose, above the clash of rival arms a new star shown… The barbarian zest for freedom nurtured and kept alive the Galilean dream, while in the rugged European terrain, nature yielded her bounty only to hearts and hands not completely enslaved. In the long toilsome regrowth in an austerer clime after the Classic Fall the enslavement of men to governments was less rigid and complete. The pat­tern softened, kings were no longer gods. States were not accepted as absolutely supreme. Not slavery but society, though vaguely and even grotesquely dreamed, became the common aspiration of men.

     Having some degree of property in themselves, it became possible for large numbers of men to own other things, some of their own or others’ products wherewith they could serve one another in the golden rule of reciprocal exchange. Thus through property the right of free relationships slowly became the heritage of the generality of men. Especially among the maritime peoples of the Baltic and Adriatic lands it finally expanded into a general system of impersonal and universal exchange. This spiritual process of creating for and exchanging with one another laid the necessary material basis for that eventual revival of learning and the arts that marked the ending of the middle and the beginning of the modern age. The right of property gave men the right to contract, the unprecedented right to serve and to be served, each free from coercion and without sub­servience or domination from either side.

     Both official and private violence and fraud were destructive and still rife in the world, but this process of contract was new for the generality of men. It was practiced imperfectly as all new things are, but those popu­lations in which it best and most prevailed became richer and longer lived. In its beginnings there was more piracy than exchange, but piracy did not command the sovereign allegiance of men and the creative results of reciprocal exchange made it, even if unconsciously, bound to prevail. All things very new take on a semblance of their precedent old and so we are prone to mingle and confuse them in our minds with their very opposites which they eventually transcend and supersede.

     By the close of the nineteenth century, this new non-political kingdom of heaven had pervaded the whole Western world. In its forums men practiced the democracy of service——the only kind that does not pull its own house down. They pooled in public markets their contributions to the general welfare and by bidding and asking, a voting process, made peaceable resolve of their conflicting wishes and desires.

 

                                                     /Breaks off/