Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1523

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Richard T. Hall, 177 St. Botolph Street, Boston 15, Massachusetts.

July 31, 1954

Dear Mr. Hall:

     You are quite right in asking why land owners should do more than they do now — i.e. more than dis­tribute the sites and resources impartially and into the hands of the most productive users who thus enrich the common market. It is into this common market that, along with the contributions of others, they contri­bute their distributive services in exchange for which they draw out, as rent, the equivalent of what they put in.

     Why should they do more than distribute? Because, like all free enterprisers, their only way to get more is to do or give more. And the reason they cannot at present do more is because they lack the necessary or­ganization for it — just as the numerous owners of any business organization could only primitively serve their customers or clientele until they became so organized as to give them highly elaborated services. When, as society evolves, land owners become so organized as to perform further services, such as protection and other common facilities, then as they do more they will receive more, the same as any other persons who practice the Golden Rule of service by contract and exchange.

     It is because government is increasingly despoiling capital and labor that land owners, as a whole, are re­ceiving less and less for their distributive services and their rents and values are in constant decline. Witness the plight of land owners in New York City and in the whole of England where the free functioning of capital and labor is most regulated and taxed. The more that exchange is inhibited — the market despoiled — the less services and goods are performed and produced, the less the demand for and distribution of land, and its value declines. Conversely, as wealth is less confiscated the greater the demand for land, and where the greatest of other values are produced there and there only is the highest rent, price and value of land.

     When the public services of communities are admin­istered by the organized community owners, then the public investments will earn as much income as the private; for capital both new and old will flow into the one or the other accordingly as it can best serve and thereby most earn.

     The illustration in your second paragraph pre-supposes governmental restriction in the ownership of land, hence monopoly by those permitted to own it. But so long as there is a margin of cultivation and beyond, capital and labor have ample recourse to nature without paying rent. The fact that they choose to pay rent is proof that distribution by land owners is worth all it costs — and more, for were it otherwise capital and labor would flee the centers of population and inhabit the desert fringes instead.

     The first part of your paragraph 3 is wonderful. As you say, all value is socially created — it is what (in the bargaining process) the other fellow gives in exchange — not the fact of having produced the thing (or service) in question or merely being owner of it. And what he receives in exchange is a value created by the social act of his opposite number in relinquishing it to him. But these two acts can be equal and just only when performed in accordance with and under the terms of a voluntary contract. The contract must have subject matter — property or services — on both sides, and unless it is property, i.e. recognized as such by the common custom of Society, there can be no performance of the contract. The social process cannot prevail and only the political or coercive remains. Ownership of things does not arise from things being created or produced, but only from the fact that in a Society they are, by common consent treated as property and so can be subject-matters of contract and thereby equally and equitably exchanged. Privilege is the abrogation of a people’s property in themselves or their peaceably acquired or maintained possessions. Property is the foundation of contract (freedom) and Society’s device for insuring the equities of equal exchange. And property in land is nature’s device whereby the advantages, both natural and artificial, inherent in or appurtenant to sites or locations can be allocated to the most produc­tive users by consent of all (real democracy) and coercion of none, while the distributing agency receives out of other services and goods, the market (contractual) value of the distributive services contributed by it

     Your fourth paragraph suggests your choice of the supposedly lesser evil, local as against distant poli­ticians, in preference to the positive good that nature has ordained even before our awakening to it. But are local government authorities less corrupt than the Federal or the Imperial? Are the officers of state more venal than the denizens of local city halls? Pilate less virtuous than the local authorities whose blood-thirst­iness he so weakly tried to tame? Of course they confis­cate entirely the property of owners who do not or cannot comply with their encroaching demands. And often they do sell to a new owner whom they can victimize in turn.

     It is, as you say, for non-payment of their demands that the authorities, both local and general, now confiscate, and ever increasingly, both buildings and lands. The proceeds of their confiscations are consumed and des­troyed. Even the land, if any value remains, is sold by the government to obtain services and goods that can be consumed or destroyed; but, more often, and histori­cally, the confiscated lands are assigned to political supporters of the party in control who ravish the land.

     Under the Henry George plan, or any other political device, the increasing exactions and expenses of govern­ment would still come out of the products of industry. And, if all other assessments could be discontinued, the increasing seizure would necessarily be made in the guise of revenue from the land, with capital and labor helpless to resist.

     And, without any landlord to guide the land into the most productive users’ hands, the government’s power over capital and labor would be most drastic and direct. No title would be respected, even at the “margin,” and the penalty for any non-compliance with conditions or controls could be not only confiscation but total exclusion from the land as well. For there would be no such competition between political administrators as Henry acknowledged to obtain between land owners when he said, the land, “is in the hands of too many different persons to permit the price which can be obtained for its use to be fixed by mere caprice or desire.” (Progress & Poverty, p. 167) Government confiscation of property and control of industry is the great and growing evil now. No wonder the communists are plotting to cut in on it and work it to the limit, as they notoriously do.

     Your letter has been quite stimulating. I appre­ciate its inquiring spirit and trust you will continue, as Henry George urged, to seek “the laws which are a part of that system or arrangement which constitutes the social organism as distinguished from the body politic or State” (Science of Political Economy, p. 428).

Sincerely,

SH:m