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Liberty’s forgotten hero: Herbert Spencer.

AMONG THE MANY books possessed by my father, and which I eagerly tried to read, even though their content was often way beyond my youthful comprehension, was a small, fat hardback called First Principles, by a fellow called Herbert Spencer. I tried a number of times to get further than a couple of chapters into it and failed, and, to be quite honest, I won’t bother with it again.

Luckily, however, I didn’t abandon Spencer completely, even if it is only recently that I began to read other parts of his vast output. It’s not the work about social evolution and the survival of the fittest (the phrase coined by Spencer and mistakenly attributed to Darwin) that inspires me but the straightforward classical liberal, laissez-faire analysis of the politics of state and society. In particular I’m thinking of The Man Versus The State, both the essay of that title and the collection to which it gives its name, published in 1884.

I have yet to read a more clear and cogent description of the threats to individual liberty contained in what Spencer called “militant” society, ie, the closed, socialistic society advocated by the bien pensants of the current liberal left, in which the power of the state is remorselessly advanced as the only answer to any problem – as well as to problems that don’t exist.

Reading Spencer I also learned a couple of things I hadn’t known before and which sound a disturbingly contemporary note: one was the fact that up until the passing of the New Poor Law in 1833, a form of Working Tax Credit existed in rural areas, in a system by which working agricultural labourers had their incomes supplemented by local rates, to which, ironically, local farmers contributed a large amount. When the system was abolished, wages increased and unemployment decreased.

THE SECOND ITEM was in respect of “payment by results” to teachers, begun to provide a “stimulus”. This ended in physical and mental injury to the teachers, pressure on the “dull and weak children” and the development of a system of cramming. Sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? All that’s changed is the terminology.

It’s the startling contemporaneity of Spencer’s statements that impresses me, so here are a few points he raises in just one of his essays, “The Coming Slavery” to show why.

Society is to blame for everything that’s wrong: “The current assumption is that there should be no suffering, and that society is to blame for that which exists;” unemployment, deprivation, crime, all the phobias and -isms you can think of, it all boils down to society (code for “capitalism”). Nothing is anyone’s fault as an individual.

It should all be free: “what looks like a gratis benefit is not a gratis benefit”. If the government pays for it, it’s free, right? There’s always someone else whose wallet the state can dip its hand into, and the rich can always be squeezed a bit more, if need be. That’s “free”.

The law of unintended consequences, or “collateral issues”: legislators and their bureaucrats rarely think any policy through in relation to the world as lived in by ordinary human beings, hence bad but often predictable things happen. Prohibitions on alcohol, for instance, result in increased crime. Good intentions are not a good enough basis for legislation.

Legislation breeds legislation in a “voluminous flood”, as in “we have done this; why should we not do that?” Give the buggers an inch and they’re not only take a mile, they’ll also convert it to metric without asking you and double the amount while they’re at it. Let’s call it a sense of legislation entitlement.

If at first (or second or third attempt) legislation fails, then just apply “more stringent use of such agencies”, etc. This is the dogma of the madhouse, ie, repeating the same action with the same results in the hope that one day the results will be different.

The state as your mum and dad, ie, “the tacit assumption that Govt should step in whenever anything is not going right.” Every week you’ll hear the call in the media that “something must be done”, about one thing or another, ie, the state must do something because I’m too stupid/lacking in initiative/lazy/skint/irresponsible, etc.

The generation of entitlement culture: “the more numerous public instruments become, the more there is generated…the notion that everything is to be done for them, and nothing by them.” Society’s to blame, it’s not my responsibility, the government should give me more cash (because I’m worth it). See immediately previous point.

Politicians outbid each other in offering “free” stuff for votes: “Each seeks popularity by promising more than his opponent has promised.” Jam tomorrow and more jam the day after. And higher wages for the jam workers.

The encroaching power of the state inevitably leads to “State-socialism”, because you’ll have a situation where the state either owns everything or has complete control over everything via laws, regulation and tax.

“All socialism involves slavery”: the individual ends up working for “society”, ie, the state, whatever he does. The state then controls how much disposable income he has and what he can spend that income upon. There is no independence from the state.

“A little deliberate thought would show that under their [ie, the socialists’] proposed arrangements, their liberties must be surrendered in proportion as their material welfares were cared for.” No socialist ever worried about sacrificing liberty for a bit of bread and cheese. Particularly someone else’s liberty. And anyway, they’ll be getting jam tomorrow.

The inefficiency of bureaucracy: “It is assumed that officialdom will work as it is intended to work, which it never does.” Quite.

Spencer was also enough of a realist to know that the frailty of human nature would also add to this toxic mixture, creating “the despotism of a graduated and centralized officialdom”. Citizens of the former USSR could tell you about that.

It’s a pity that Spencer, who was by the end of the nineteenth century one of the most famous and successful of Victorian thinkers, should have been forgotten so quickly. It may be that his political message proved out of favour with the increasingly left wing tenor of intellectual life (despite being an agnostic and an anti-imperialist). His central message of individual liberty, individual responsibility, the need for a small state and advocacy of non-belligerent, laissez-faire capitalism is even more relevant today than 150 years ago.

People still read Marx and Engels as if there’s anything worth gleaning from them. After the disasters of the last century it should be clear there isn’t. They — and everyone else — would be better off with Spencer. He’s a better guide to reality than both of them.

Michael Blackburn.

Also in the Fortnightly: On ancestor worship and other peculiar beliefs by Herbert Spencer.

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