Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2738

Carbon of single page, author not identified (pencil notation by MacCallum: “Ingersoll?”

May 16, 1938

 

 

 

c  5/16/38—2   HOW MUCH ‘SHELL’ SHALL WE LEAVE THE LANDLORD?

SPENCER HEATH BEARS THE REPUTATION OF AN ‘ORIGINAL THINKER’: A RATHER DANGEROUS REPUTAtion even in libertarian democratic circles.    However, even our most dogmatic scientists are guilty of wide departures from conventional thought, so I think Mr. Heath should freely ‘express himself’ — or let others, for him. I am not authorized to publicize his views, but as near as I understand them, he believes, more liberally than the average Georgist, the doctrine of The Founder that ‘landlords should be left the shell, since we are to take the substance’.

 

 It is obvious that land must always have an owner and administrator. Shall that be the Government? Marx answers ‘yes’. But Georgists resent Marx. Yet the lay-question is persistent: — ‘if you tax away the value, as you threaten, who will want to own land?’ Our answer is ‘only those who have use for it’: which is satisfying to us momentarily. But it means that only land in use shall be privately owned, which leaves a vast heritage in the government — perhaps half or three-quarters in area: and this is always in flux always moving into use: toward production and commerce: and there will always be movements the other way.

 

 At all events, George saw — and expressed in detail — that land needed an adminis­trator: in fact he said frankly that it needed a landlord — and badly enough to ‘leave him a shell’. Now, so far as I have quoted Mr. Heath, there is nothing even original: so there must be more to the Heath idea, which has been so referred to quite widely: indeed the Heath Idea has led to reversal of teaching Authority in the GSSS.

 Apart from any personal question, it appears that George has, in this matter, as with many other phases of economics, left us, not a complete formula, but the correct outline of one: and as we approach — or hope we do — practical application, we find there is much for our ‘Modern Physiocrats’ to do in dis­covery exactly what we are to teach.

 The next stage of ‘Heathism’ might seem to be Shearmanism, Croasdaleism, and ____________, including that outlaw school of Fiscal Single Taxers. These — by and large — refused to worry about that margin between the amount needed for government and the yield of rent. They said if there is any, let that be the H.G. ‘Shell’ the landlord is welcome to. Heath seems to say this margin is crucial: it represents a system of management that will result in checking, correcting, and eventually making government as efficient as our private industry now is.

 And finally, any other doctrine it is alleged, would make a vicious circle, impossible in theory: — this year’s increments, collected by government, create more increment — and so on ad infinitum: or in reverse, corrupt government produces no increments, and absorbs all that are otherwise produced. Anyway, the questions of Avoidance of Communism or Land Nationalization and settlement of ‘How much is the shell?’ pose this subject, and force it to the front.