Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1494

Letter to Thomas Wilcox, 715 West Second Street, Los Angeles 12, California

November 3, 1953

Dear Mr. Wilcox:

I wish to thank you for your interesting letter of October 24 with chapter headings from manuscripts that you have written. These are exceedingly interesting to me. The field you have covered is immensely important. But of course I cannot have any very clear idea as to how you have treated it – whether you have made any impor­tant discoveries not previously known or what valuable conclusions you may have come to. I infer from your refer­ence to Maitland, Stubbs, and Kemble that you have studied Saxon social origins in which there was no sovereign poli­tical power, local or general, but only proprietary instead of political administration of community services and affairs. Your reference to Lloyd Morgan suggests that you are well informed in the field of emergent evolution as applied to social evolution.

It is my own discovery that primitive nomads emerged from their condition only by the establishment of pro­prietorship, property in land. The proprietor gave the common community services in exchange for rent as the value of the services incident to the property and its posses­sion. This system in England led to the great Renaissance in the time of Alfred only to be destroyed by the Norman conquest which established political and coercive adminis­tration by taxation and war in place of the original proprietary and contractual. Political sovereignties have always been indigenous to easy-living lands where men could live under tribute and taxation or other forms of slavery and yet not be destroyed. A return to proprietary administration of outdoor communities such as cities and towns organized by their owners in the same manner as a hotel community will be the future salvation of society from domination by taxation and war.

I am happy to believe you have been thinking and writing along similar lines.

Under the title, Citadel, Market and Altar, I have outlined in systematic form my discoveries of the nature of society (apart from sovereignties) and the way in which it is evolving in the direction of full development and normal functioning in the same manner as does a child in his process of becoming adult and achieving what we call “perfect health.” As you may surmise, I find the same difficulty as you describe when it comes to interesting publishers in a manuscript of this kind – a book that is 100% expository and creative. Meantime I have sought to attract attention by exposing some of the basic fal­lacies that have corrupted social thinking for the last century or two. I am sending you some of this negative material in which I have attempted to incorporate some constructive ideas, especially on pages 20-22 and in the printed folder entitled, “Why the Henry George Idea Does Not Prevail.” As to obtaining a publisher I am in much the same circumstance that you are – rather needing help than able to give any.

If you would care to send one or both of your manu­scripts to me just for my personal pleasure of examining them and should send them by express, charges collect, I would be glad to study them for a while and then return them, paying express charges myself both ways. I am re­ferring to your manuscripts, Gentile Origins of Political Society and your Cosmic Papers.

Very truly yours,