Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3163

Typed material by Heath

No date

The state is the only evil that has any considerable duration, for it is the only evil that people psychologically tolerate. All gang wars, all organizations to commit crimes, are no sooner exposed than they are destroyed by the state. For it alone has the authority of mass psychology, an acknow­ledged claim on the loyalty, the patriotism, even the lives of masses of men. It enjoys a monopoly of violence, of war, and through jealousy of lesser and less publicly authorized agencies of harm, it is swift to destroy them. It tolerates no lesser rivals. And even its greater rivals, the other acknowledged sovereignties of the world, it tolerates only tentatively, if at all, during the intervals between their open international wars.

What mankind unconsciously yearns for, and into which it is unconsciously evolving, is organi­zation based upon contract and cooperation instead of coercion, conflict and war. Such organization is the human organic life form called Society that is slowly developing and is bound eventually to transcend and render obsolete the political state.

This, of course, is the development of freedom through the only relationship in which men are mutually equal and free, namely, the contractual, and has nothing whatever to do with the mass psychology of political collectivism in any of its forms.

“But patriotism is exploited by the state and yet does not necessarily mean loyalty to the party in power, but to the land, and culture.”

Remember that patriotism is a Dr. Jeykle and a Mr. Hyde. In its positive aspect, it’s Dr. Jeykle; in its negative aspect, it’s Mr. Hyde. In unintelligent and irra­tional thinking, these two contrary concepts are treated as one, just as the creator of Jeykle and Hyde treated them as being, although impossibly, still combined. The patriotism that defends freedom is Dr. Jeykle, but the patriotism that supports aggression is Mr. Hyde.