Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1905

Pencilings in the margin of page 28 of Sidney Hook, “Is Marxism Compatible with Christianity?” in Francis A. Henson, Henry P. Van Dusen and Sidney Hook, Christianity and Marxism; A Symposium (New York: Polemic Publishers, 1934)

 

 

 

 

 

Sidney Hook: “… it is a commonplace of political scientists and realistic historians that no social organization, about which we have knowledge, has ever existed without some organ of sovereignty; and every expression of sovereignty involves coercion — explicit or implicit. /Emphasis by S.H., with margin query “Saxon?”/

 

 

 … A Marxist may grant that coercion is intrinsically bad just as the infliction of any kind of pain, as such, upon human beings is bad. But that judgment does not imply that it is wrong to use coercion unless it can be shown that non-coercive methods can be taken which promise to be just as effective as the more direct ones. /Emphasis by Heath with margin query: “Coercion in an antisocial emergency or as a constant policy and practice?”/

 

 

… The Marxist justifies coercion only as an instrument of last resort, only as it has the sanction of a majority of the producing classes, and only as a measure of DEFENSE against the brutal onslaughts of minority groups, in power or out, who try to set the will of the great masses of the population at naught. /Emphasis by Heath with comment as follows: “Last resort against what? Against coercive government or against contractual freedom?”/