Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3179

Typed copy of form letter of transmittal to the legal profession to accompany copies of Progress and Poverty Reviewed

No date

 

A great merit of our judicial system is that its most exemplary judges almost invariably have a high respect for property rights. That is, the rights of persons to have property and thereby to have the capacity for making contracts, for without property in one’s self and one’s possessions the practice of contract can­not be carried on and the affairs of men are limited to coercion and other irrational processes and relationships.

In contrast with this, the general public seems rather disposed to decry property rights as being prejudicial to human freedom. This no doubt springs from the historical fact that until the modern era those who held large property acquired it by force or coercion or other means whereby a few becoming rich necessarily deepened the poverty of the poor. This is the histori­cal foundation of the concepts of “unearned income” and “unearned increment,” since until very modern times any large income or large increment was necessarily unearned.

There is, however, a profound difference between the administration of property and the administration of government. The one rests on free contract and in­volves equality of service; the other is based on coer­cion and involves inequality and ex-propriation. The notion that “property is theft” rests on lack of distinction between contract and coercion; and the fal­lacy of “unearned increment” rests on confusion between income (property, services or goods) obtained by con­tract and exchange and that obtained by expropriation, fraud or force.

The imputation of “unearned increment” to persons who hold and distribute property exclusively by contract alone, and without resort to fraud or force, and the wide acceptance of this fallacy by the English classical economists and their successors is probably the greatest present-day obstacle to evolutionary social advance.

With this in mind we are sending you herewith our basic examination and review of the land communist dialectic as set out in Progress and Poverty by Henry George. We hope our Review will receive your judicial examina­tion and possibly evoke some judicious comment from you — particularly with reference to the non-critical para­graphs beginning on page 21.

With great respect we remain,

Sincerely yours,

                                  Director

SH:m

Enc: P&PR with Supplementary Discussion, ad copy.