Spencer Heath (January 3, 1876,Vienna, Virginia – October 6, 1963,Leesburg, Virginia) was an Americanengineer,attorney,inventor,manufacturer,horticulturist,poet,philosopher of science andsocial thinker.[1] A dissenter from the prevailingGeorgist views, he pioneered the theory of proprietary governance and community in his bookCitadel, Market and Altar.[2] His grandson,Spencer Heath MacCallum, popularized and expounded on his ideas, most notably in his bookThe Art of Community.[3][4]
Heath graduated from the Corcoran Scientific School inWashington, D.C., studyingelectrical andmechanical engineering. While working for theNavy Department he earned law degrees at National University Law School. In 1898 he married Johanna Maria Holm, asuffragist and friend ofSusan B. Anthony. They had three daughters.
As apatent lawyer and engineeringconsultant his clients includedSimon Lake, inventor of the even-keel-submerging submarine, andEmile Berliner, inventor of the flat-disk phonograph record. Heath helped Berliner design and build the firstrotary engine blades used inhelicopters.[5] Heath founded theAmerican Propeller Manufacturing Company in 1909 and developed and first mass-producedairplanepropellers, including 70 percent of the propellers used by Americans inWorld War I. In 1922 he demonstrated the first engine-powered andcontrolled, variable and reversible pitch propeller.[3]
In 1929 he sold his patents and facilities toBendix Aviation Corporation[5] and retired to work on projects in horticulture and the natural and social sciences,[2][6] including research with the aim of establishing the basis for an authentic natural science of society.[5]
His articles on aeronautical engineering were published by the Journal of the American Society of Naval Engineers, the Journal of theFranklin Institute and other technical journals.International Who's Who listed him in 1947-1949 and Who's Who in the East in 1948-1951.[5]
Around 1898, attracted by theGeorgists' free-trade stance, Spencer Heath became recording secretary for the Chicago Single Tax Club and participated in the movement for 40 years. He assisted in the formation of theHenry George School of Social Science in New York City and conducted public seminars there on community organization in the early 1930s.[5] School DirectorFrank Chodorov later fired him for straying from the Georgist line.[3] Heath had rejected the Georgist antipathy toward landlords and had come to believe that society only could outgrow its subservience to the state through a particular use of land. In 1936, he self-published his views in a monograph entitled "Politics versus Proprietorship." It was the first statement of the proprietary community principle.[6] In 1952,The Freeman published Heath’s polemic “Progress and Poverty Reviewed”, a critique ofHenry George's tax argument.[5]
Heath completed his major work,Citadel, Market and Altar, in 1946, publishing it through his Science of Society Foundation, Inc. in 1957. In a review of the bookManas journal wrote:
Mr. Heath returns to the socio-economic relationships of pre-Norman England for the foundation of an ideal society which will combine freedom and justice. This is a serious book with carefully worked-out plans and precise definitions. Mr. Heath's notion of ownership is very like Gandhi's conception of the stewardship of wealth: “In its Anglo-Saxon meaning, now only dimly realized, to own was to owe. Ownership was inclusive of others, not exclusive. What was owned, chiefly land, was held in trust, as it were.”[7]
Heath wrote:
To obviate the essential tyranny (coercion) of political administration the proprietary authority, suitably organized, must extend its jurisdiction, and thus its revenues, by itself supplying police and other community services without coercion, out of its own revenues and properties, and thus raise its own values and voluntary incomes.[2]
The model for Heathiananarchism[original research?] is proprietary communities, multi-tenant properties such as hotels, shopping centers, industrial parks, and apartment buildings. Multi-tenant properties are the opposite of traditional real-estate developments; the developers would lease the homes rather than sell them, and thus be responsible for providing community services to maintain rental income and land value.[2][5]
Murray Rothbard based much of his criticism of Henry George on Spencer Heath’s writings. These in turn have influenced manylibertarians.[2] He also mentioned Heath’s views on community a number of times in his bookMan, Economy, and State.[8]
Heath's system has been the model forintentional community and "new country" projects such as Werner K. Stiefel’s 1970s motel community and “Atlantis” projects.[9]
Heath's grandsonSpencer Heath MacCallum held Heath’s papers in the Heather Foundation, of which MacCullum was director.[10] Heath was good friends with, and exchangedfree market insights with,alternative monetary theoristE. C. Riegel whose papers also are held by the Foundation.[11]
Spencer MacCallum built upon and promoted his grandfather's ideas of proprietary community in his 1970 bookletThe Art of Community and many articles, including "The Enterprise of Community: Market Competition, Land, and Environment" (2003)[12] and "Looking Back and Forward" (which describes the influence of his grandfather)[3] and "From Upstate New York to the Horn of Africa" (2005).[6]
Heath's views on rent were discussed inJohn Chamberlain's 1959 book,The Roots of Capitalism[13] and Gus Dizerega’s year 2000 bookPersuasion, Power, and Polity: A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization.[14] His views on community were discussed inJohn McClaughrey's 1995 article “Private Idahoes” inReason Magazine,[15] a chapter of the 2001 bookCity and Country, called "The Completely Decentralized City: The Case for Benefits Based Public Finance"[16] and Gabriel Joseph Roth's 2006 book,Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads.[17]
Heath's system differs from the standardanarcho-capitalistprivate defense agency (PDA) model. Heath himself eschewed the term, and did not refer to himself as an anarchist. The PDA model envisions competing security agencies in the same geographical area rather than a proprietary zone.
Citing Spencer MacCallum, economist Edward Stringham discusses how a system composed of many proprietary communities would encourage landlords to provide police in a way that their tenants value most, even if there were one provider of law in a given area. Stringham contrasts that vision with one that focuses on having multiple law enforcement agencies.[18]
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