Book Reviews

ARE V lEW E R'S NOT E BOOK J 0 H N C HAM BE RLA I N THE ART OF COMMUNITY IT ISMANYYEARS since I met Spen cer Heath, a bearded gentleman (he'd be right in, style now) who had a delightfully free way of look ing at things. Among his many theories was one which made the landlord the center of an idealeco nomic and PQlitical-:---or maybe one should say apolitical- order. Mr. Heath's utopia was pre-N orman England, where, as his researches did much to prove, free men paid rent for productive land instead of taxes to unproductive politicians. It was Mr. Heath's contention that a landlord could sell, for market value, everything from police and fire protection to public utility services without plunging a com munity into serfdom. Naturally, Mr. Heath encount ered many doubters. His book, Cit adel, Market and Altar, didn't make many converts. The world has wagged on since Mr. Heath died, and those who refused to listen to his theories haven't noticeably ad vanced the cause of freedom or im proved the quality of our life.

Since· children aren't known for their pertinacity about carrying on the work of their fathers, a full generation has passed since Mr. 702 Heath started outlining his theo ries. Now a grandson of Mr. Heath, SpencerT. MacCallum, has mount ed his charger to advance the cause of. his .grandfather. Mr. MacCal lum's book, The Art of9ommunity (Institute for Humane Studies, Inc., P. O. Box 727, Menlo Park, Calif. 94025. $4.00 cloth, $2.00 pa per), is a legitimate extension of Citadel, Market and Altar, and it may be more convincing to the pragmatists among us simply be cause it proceeds by exploring cur rent trends to show how people un consciously turn to good theory when the practices resulting from bad theory have let them down. Mr. MacCallum is a trained an thropologist, which means that he can look at community organiza tion without blinking. He sees an "art of community" developing em pirically, spurred only by the ef forts of people to make profits by supplying services that states and municipalities have fumbled with so badly. To those who say that a community must be political in na ture, he offers hotels, shopping cen ters, industrial estates', real estate complexes such as Rockefeller Cen1970 THE ART OF COMMUNITY 703 ter, condominiums, marinas, sci ence research centers, and "new towns.'" Some of these combine in~ dividual private ownership with paying fees for the use of common lands or common services that are open to all participants in a' com munity venture. But the point' is tha.t one can buy protection or transportation or access to a swim ming pool or a playground without going through the often disap pointing rigmarole of politics·' to get it.

The basis of the "art of commu nity" is contract. Ordinarily one thinks of contract as .something that binds separate individuals. Mr. MacCallum is not against the individual ownership of homes or acreage, but the defect of such ownership is that it can't ordi narily provide for police and fire protection and public utilities with out bringing in the state. The atom ized private plot is at the mercy of "neighborhood effects" which the purchaser never bargained for. Ac cordingly he .may find himself abandoningsome of his own rights as a private owner by accepting zoning regulations, or by ,giving a right-of-way to a gas transmission company under threat of expropri ation by state invocation of eminent domain. Mr. MacCallum thinks in,.; dividuals could get better bargains by combining their units to form proprietary communities with centralplanning powers. The unrecon 8tructed individual will bridle at this suggestion,but Mr. MacCallum quite soothingly insists that mem bership in a proprietary commu nity must go by voluntary choice under contractual arrangements.

One need not be forced to do any thing; .if one doesn't like the deci sions of the proprietary authority, one can sell his own particular con domini urn, or· refuse' to renew his lease. Mr. MacCallum contrasts 'the downtown shopping centers in our congested cities with the new-style suburban shopping areas to make his points. The downtown mer chants may all agree that they need more parking space near them for automobiles. But· no .one of them v~ill willingly allow his own prop~ erty· 'to be condemned to provide parking space for the other mer chants in his association. Theyolit ieal arm must be called in fo bust a few recalcitrants so that others may benefit. Naturally, this creates bad blood or political corruption or both. Since politicians live to be re elected even more than they'live to serve the community, they will do n.ot what is aesthetically right but what is necessary to get the most votes the next time around.

In the suburban shopping center, the proprietor can make whatever decisions he wants, provided he doesn't break one of his contrac704 THE FREEMAN November tual promises. The proprietor sells a variety of services to those who like them well enough to make con tracts to pay forthem. The services can include parking, roads, light ing,· landscaped common areas, police and ·fire .protection, storm sewers, even sewage disposal. Mr. MacCallum offers some fas cinating. bits of history of a sort that doesn't .. usually get into the standard history texts. I'd like to know more about such characters as James B. Douglas, the pioneer of the Northga te "regional" shop ping center in Seattle, who first worked out the theory of the "cu mulative pulL" Douglas began by insisting on the "Noah's Ark Prin ciple" of supplying two competitors for every type of good that a shop ping center had to sell. (Today the rule is. obsolete; two are no longer adequate.) The'll there is EdwardH. Bouton of Baltimore, whose Roland Park development provided for orderly residential planning adjacent to a shopping center ..The pioneer of the industrial estate seems to have been Marshall Stevens, who built a ship canal from Liverpool to Man chester only to discover that the cotton millers, who had marriage ties with the cotton shippers of Liverpool, disdained to use' his waterway. To save his canal invest ment, Mr. Stevens prepared a large tract of land in Manchester for in..

dustrial .. use, putting in the streets and supplying the utilities. He leased the land to various indus .. trialists, .. thus creating Trafford Park, England's first proprietary industrial park~ ' In their own way such pioneers as Bouton, Douglas, .. and Stevens were practitioners of Leonard Read's. "anything that's peaceful" philosophy. They were communi .. tarians rather than individualists, but they did not bring in that en gine of compulsion, the state, to solve the problems of group living that they posed. It is hard to see the whole world being saved by the development of proprietary com.munities. Some people· want a more complete type of privacy than is to be· found in planned. estates of one type or an other. But the world could only benefit by a vast extension of. the sort of thing that engages Mr. Mac .. Callum's enthusiasm. As long as he sticks to contract as the binder in his "art of community," no individ ualist, whether· unreconstructed or not, can find fault with his theory.

His book on the proprietary com munity is stimulating, and even the most· obdurate live-alone-and-like it individualists among our de pleted tribe of voluntarists would do well to read and ponder Mr. MacCallum's conclusions. ~ the Freeman VOL. 20, NO. 12 • DECEMBER 1970 What You Don't Know Might Help You! Edmund A.. Opitz 707 Learning to live with liberty calls for faith and reliance upon a harmonious universe. Goose or Citizen? "Keep on supporting me and I'll not kill you." Some incentive! Graham Scott 725 Private Property,Public Purpose Henry Hazlitt 727 Saving and sound investment may be the most important benefit that the rich can confer on the poor. Uses of Ignorance George Hagedorn 740 Why persist in projecting our ignorance, to what is unknowable in principle? Throttlingth'e Railroads: 8. The Grip of the Unions Clarence B. Carson 743 How the government fostered the growth of labor unions and aided in their hamstringing the railroads.