Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1522

Carbon of a letter from Heath to John M. Cullerton, 18 East Coflan Avenue, Roselle Park, New Jersey.

July 29, 1954

Dear Mr. Cullerton:

     My grandson and I have been telling each other that it has been a long time since we saw either you or Mr. Harrison — especially you since we had got so much better acquainted with you.

     Looking over your letter, it seems about all I gave you by way of reply was a bronchial cough in the face. I think I was expecting to see you the very next Sunday and perhaps have the privilege of talking with you about the very interesting matters that your last letter brought up. We were both there and looking for you and sorry you did not attend.

     Of course I do not know any of the details of the syndicalism which you refer to as being similar to the corporate community administration that I foresee. But if your Syndicate is capable of supporting itself and make enough profit to keep itself in a state of continuing growth, then I feel sure there is no fundamental difference between yours and mine — assuming, of course, there is no practice of force or fraud, politically or otherwise. Perhaps I should not say, “or otherwise”, because political force or fraud tends to grow on what it feeds on until it has no victim to destroy, whereas the force or fraud that may infect proprietary organizations naturally cures itself by eliminating those most infected and leaving the field to those of the greatest health.

     As an ultimate ideal, and disregarding the kind of means employed in hopes of attaining it, the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state is perfectly sound and attainable. But not it, only the very reverse of it, is attainable by the Marxian means. In the sense of employing force or fraud, without which no government can for a day exist, the best government is not the least government but no government at all. To many this is chimerical; this is because they know no alternative. They do not know the juridical distinction between the imperium and the proprium. In both there is exercise of authority, but /in the/ one it is brute power exercised by coercion, which destroys life, while in the other it is contractual power and serves life. They have never thought of the Golden Rule as a going (and a growing) concern when reciprocally applied as it is in all con­tractual affairs.

     The great and blessed beauty of proprietary administration is that when it manages to take over and civilize the public services and thereby liberate the entire productive system from the onus of coercive government it will have realized automatically and with little or no resistance all that is beautiful or glorious in the Marxian or any other ultimate Utopian ideal. The kind of administration of property and services that has brought us up out of the dark ages to where we now stand needs only to be comprehended and understood in its functional aspects, instead of being treated as a thing to be destroyed. The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. But so far as the heavenly rule of reciprocal service without coercion is employed, the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst, and as that employment grows so does our heavenly Kingdom grow — unto the perfect day.

     I am now at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, at the Tuckaway Inn with Spencer. We have been here the past week or so and enjoying it very much. But tomorrow he goes back to New York and I move into the theology dormitory to take, as auditor, a five-weeks course on “The Christian Doctrine of Man.” That is a doctrine I would like to talk with you about. But enough for now.

Cordially,

SH:m

Apropos of Gandhi, his Idea of production being over­emphasized is just another aspect of the Marxian proposition to level down. We cannot suffer from too much of anything that is beautiful but only from a deficiency of other beautiful things that may be requisite to balance the composition or design.