Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1541

Sample form letter for circularizing “The Trojan Horse of Land Reform” to religious persons, followed by an alternative version of the same. Project not carried out.

Fall 1957

 

 

Dear Rev.________:

 

     Christian leftists make much of a supposed religious sanction for the seizure and distribution of private property by the political State. This religious argument, with special reference to land, has been never more concisely made than in the “Doctrinal Statement” of the Reverend Dr. McGlynn. This statement was approved and accepted by the highest Catholic authority, whereupon his excommunication was rescinded and he was reinstated in full.

     This attempt to justify on religious grounds the false notion of “the unearned increment” and the coercive authority of the State is of a piece with the communist argument for the confiscation of “surplus value.”

     Since man cannot live without land, all security, even life itself, depends on the manner of distributing /allocating?/ this “gift of God to man.”  Its distribution by the State — first plank in the Communist platform as set out in the notorious Manifesto of 1848 — is the foundation of all Communism. The fallacy should be exposed, the more especially since it has been officially, even though unwittingly, accepted by the Catholic Church.

     If the enclosed brochure appeals to you, we shall be glad to send you with our compliments a 20-page, definitive exposé of Henry George’s too-long influential argument against private property in land.

     Yours for Christian freedom, as practiced in non-coercive administration and distribution /allocation?/, whether of wealth or of land.

                        Sincerely yours,

SH/m

ENC: “Trojan Horse of Land Reform”

     Adv. Proof: “Progress & Poverty Reviewed”

______________________________

/Another version.

Project not carried out./

     Left-thinking “Christians” claim a religious sanction for the overthrow of private property.

     The most persuasive statement of their argument with respect to the nationalization of sites and resources of the land, was the “Doctrinal Statement” of the Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn, written before the turn of this century. Dr. McGlynn was at first excommunicated for his teaching, and then was received back into the Roman Catholic Church with full absolution on grounds that there was “nothing in the land philosophy preached by Dr. McGlynn that is contrary to the Christian faith or to Catholic doctrine.”

     Since the time of Dr. McGlynn’s vindication by the Roman Church, the United States Government has increased its control of land to more than a third of the area of the continental United States (Source — Department of Interior Bulletin ..), with­out anyone objecting and some earnestly approving this trend, even though land communism — nothing more or less than state control of sites and resources — was the first plank of the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

     All that men have, including life itself, comes from the ground. To give up this source of life to the state is to give up direction of our lives — to deny the individual the exercise of his free will and, thus, to destroy personal responsibility. How can we then be responsible to God and our fellow men?