Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1315

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Ely Culbertson, 16A East 62nd Street, New York City

December 4, 1940

Dear Sir:

As a fellow aspirant to an understanding of the structure of society and its vital processes, I am moved by your recent publicity (in Mercury Magazine) to communicate to you something of my own contributions to the Science of Society.

    Current authorities in this field today reflect precisely the same subjective and emotional attitude that the professors of physics and the other natural sciences took in the days of Galileo. They regard the phenomenon as essentially evil; their problem one of salvation, not of solution; their technique (if any) that of escape (or attack), not that of adventure and discovery. They are in bondage to their hopes and fears. They deny that the social world has any discoverable order and process, as the natural world has and, thus, deny to themselves the possibility as well as all the thrills and joys of discovery and understanding. They insist that the methods and measurements common to the natural sciences cannot be applied and thus deny that there ever can be, in any proper sense, any Science of Society. My own convictions run counter to all this.

    I believe that men, who alone find law and process in the natural world, can find yet more of rational processes and relationships in the social world of which they themselves are the sole constituent and structural parts.

     But I find that all discovery, in whatever field, must have the free and non-compulsive motivation of a scientific curiosity, of vision and inspiration, of belief in a beauty beyond, in something new to be achieved and enjoyed, not something old and oppressive to escape or destroy.

     For mere maintenance of life men have no choice; they do what they must do or die. All the advancement of man comes from his realm of partial freedom in which alone there is any choice, any alternatives for him to choose. In this realm alone rises quality and value and beauty; elsewhere these things cannot be conceived, much less attained. Some of my reflections in this field have been printed under the caption, “The Inspiration of Beauty,” copy of which I enclose.

     Having the necessary inspiration, positive and constructive motivation, it is still necessary to find some method of approach already employed in the natural sciences and capable of being applied to the social field. This is found in the “Energy Concept of Population” which I have outlined very briefly in mimeographed form. It has been commended by high authority as the “most promising method of social analysis” that has been suggested thus far.

    As you will observe, the qualitative aspect of social action arises directly out of a purely quantitative approach and under the basic formula proposed, it is only necessary to know the average numbers and duration of the lives in a society to derive a definite coefficient for its possible sociological capacity.

    The next step is to employ this basic method for the examination of the social institution that seems most basic to any socially organized life, namely, pro­perty in land, the object being to ascertain in what manner (if any) this institution practices those relationships of measured cooperation and service by contract, exchange and consent by which the members can enlarge and extend each others’ lives. This analysis has been made and put in printed form under the title, “Private Property in Land Explained.” You will note that the exchange function or process is taken as the key to the validity of this institution, and that this is the same fundamental quality and value in the “Energy Concept of Population.” Every society seems thus to arise out of the nomadic state by the establishment of contractual and exchange relations among its members with respect to the possession and use of its natural environment.

    I feel that all social institutions may well be interpreted and appraised in terms of their contribution to this basic social function, namely, voluntary exchange of energy in service forms. This building up and mutual enhancement of each other’s life and power by the social units and groups is what gives the population power to recreate (reorganize) its environment, and thus the power to govern and determine, indirectly, its own evolution.

     This analysis of property in land sheds a flood of light upon the actual and potential functions of those members whom the society has told off to give social or exchange administration of its sites and resources. It discloses the essential business and service relationship between the land owners of a community and those who occupy it in all respects similar to the position of the landlord in a hotel or other indoor community. This relationship being discovered and made known, it only remains for the land-owning interests, acting in concert, to enlarge the scope of their services in the direction of greatest needs of their communities, and thus receive for such services, the highest recompense and rewards. This application of social science may be called properly “Social Engineering.” I have dealt with this in two small booklets under the general title, “Real Estate, How to Raise and Restore Its Income and Value.” The first of these is a brief synopsis of what follows extensively in the second. It is in the form of questions addressed to land owners for the purpose of making them aware of their relationship to the general economy and how they can best profit by it. The second is a broader discussion of the same under the subtitle, “The Administration of Property as Community Services.”

     I am sending you these various papers, etc. under a belief that you have the same earnest desire that I have to discover and make known the basic structure of social or community life and its mode of operation, so that the practical men, who own and administer the community property, may have the guidance of a rational Science of Society to extend their community services to their communities’ greatest and direst needs, namely, the liberation of production and exchange of services under the freedom of private and voluntary contractual engagements and relationships. My own interest in these matters is purely artistic and scientific without any commercial or similar ends for myself in view.

     I shall be pleased to have your acknowledgement and comments, and as much information as you feel disposed to give regarding your own thoughts, your aims and their realization.

Very truly yours,

 

SH:ML

Enc.