Not a Social Darwinist: Herbert Spencer

It is common to read that Herbert Spencer was a "social Darwinist," or even the founder of "social Darwinism" - such assertions are frequent various history books. But some careful scholars question such assertions. David Weinstein, for example, writes that Spencer was not a social Darwinist. In so doing, Weinstein is contradicting those who call Spencer a social Darwinist. He accuses them of misreading Spencer: G.E. Moore, Richard Hofstadter, Andrew Carnegie, William Graham Sumner, etc.

One bit of evidence given by those who see Spencer as a social Darwinist is his use of the phrase "survival of the fittest." The phrase does indeed occur in his writings, two times at least. But what Spencer meant by it needs to be examined. Weinstein points out that Spencer stated that "fittest" and "best" are not equivalent. This is one bit of distance, then, between Spencer and social Darwinism. Spencer wrote:

The beneficial results of the survival of the fittest, prove to be immeasurably greater than those above indicated. The process of "natural selection," as Mr. Darwin called it, cooperating with a tendency to variation and to inheritance of variations, he has shown to be a chief cause (though not, I believe, the sole cause) of that evolution through which all living things, beginning with the lowest and diverging and rediverging as they evolved, have reached their present degrees of organization and adaptation to their modes of life. So familiar has this truth become that some apology seems needed for naming it. And yet, strange to say, now that this truth is recognized by most cultivated people — now that the beneficent working of the survival of the fittest has been so impressed on them that, much more than people in past times, they might be expected to hesitate before neutralizing its action — now more than ever before in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further survival of the unfittest!

Passages such as the one above can make Spencer seem like a social Darwinist. But some careful reading might prevent us from leaping to that conclusion. Spencer takes the concept of evolution from the biological to the sociological, but in this way: that it is not individuals who compete in the "survival of the fittest," but rather competing social structures - competing societies. In this, then, he parts ways from the typical social Darwinist. This is clear also in the following passage:

Thus by survival of the fittest, the militant type of society becomes characterized by profound confidence in the governing power, joined with a loyalty causing submission to it in all matters whatever. And there must tend to be established among those who speculate about political affairs in a militant society, a theory giving form to the needful ideas and feelings; accompanied by assertions that the law-giver if not divine in nature is divinely directed, and that unlimited obedience to him is divinely ordered.

We see both that Spencer is writing of competition between societies, not individuals, and that he is not asserting that "fittest" means "best" - in some cases, the survivor is a society with which Spencer finds fault.

Spencer certainly does dabble in Darwinism and evolution. He sees various forms of society developing over time. But this does not automatically place him among the hard-hearted social Darwinists. Spencer also dabbled in utilitarianism. David Weinstein writes:

One should not underestimate what “rational” utilitarianism implied for Spencer metaethically. In identifying himself as a “rational” utilitarian, Spencer distanced himself decidedly from social Darwinism, showing why Moore's infamous judgment was misplaced. Responding to T.H. Huxley's accusation that he conflated good with “survival of the fittest,” Spencer insisted that “fittest” and “best” were not equivalent. He agreed with Huxley that though ethics can be evolutionarily explained, ethics nevertheless preempts normal struggle for existence with the arrival of humans. Humans invest evolution with an “ethical check,” making human evolution qualitatively different from non-human evolution. “Rational” utilitarianism constitutes the most advanced form of “ethical check[ing]” insofar as it specifies the “equitable limits to his [the individual's] activities, and of the restraints which must be imposed upon him” in his interactions with others (Spencer, vol. I, 1901: 125–28). In short, once we begin systematizing our inchoate utilitarian intuitions with the principle of equal freedom and its derivative moral rights, we begin “check[ing]” evolutionary struggle for survival with unprecedented skill and subtlety. We self-consciously invest our utilitarianism with stringent liberal principles in order to advance our well-being as never before.

For Spencer, then, his utilitarianism and his liberalism mean that humans intervene in the Darwinist process and override it. Society is precisely where Darwinism stops and is replaced by deliberate and conscious human decision. Weinstein continues:

Not only was Spencer less than a “social Darwinist” as we have come to understand social Darwinism, but he was also less unambiguously libertarian as some, such as Eric Mack and Tibor Machan, have made him out to be. Not only his underlying utilitarianism but also the distinction, which he never forswears, between “rights properly so-called” and “political” rights, makes it problematic to read him as what we would call a ‘libertarian’.

Both utilitarianism and libertarianism can be, but are not necessarily, fertile ground for social Darwinism. This is perhaps one reason that readers have understood Spencer to be a social Darwinist when maybe he is not. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that some of Spencer's "survival of the fittest" rhetoric is not about individuals competing with each other for existence, and not even about societies competing with each other, but rather about forms of society competing with each other. He writes about one or more primitive types of society, but more central to his thought is a later phase of development in which a "military" society gives way to an "industrial" society. His use of these words is peculiar and we need to understand what me meant by them; it is easy to misunderstand Spencer on this point if we proceed with our everyday definitions of 'military' and 'industrial' which are not quite the same as his definitions.

By a military society, Spencer seems to mean a highly-structured society - even more, an authoritarian one, which exerts relatively more control over the individual - and this, of course, is that against which Spenser's libertarian instincts arise. To be sure, Weinstein's caution about labeling Spencer as a libertarian is well-noted; but if not a libertarian, than a classical liberal will react against the authoritarian control which Spencer calls a 'military' society. Such a society need not, for Spencer, take the form of arms and war; it could be a peacetime society with little or no organized army. Frederick Copleston writes about Spencer:

Spencer does not deny that the militant type of society had an essential role to play in the process of evolution considered as a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive. But he maintains that though inter-social conflict was necessary for the formation and growth of societies, the development of civilization renders war increasingly unnecessary. The militant type of society thus becomes an anachronism, and a transition is required to what Spencer calls the industrial type of society. This does not mean that the struggle for existence ceases. But it changes its form, becoming 'the industrial struggle for existence', in which that society is best fitted to survive which produces 'the largest number of the best individuals — individuals best adapted for life in the industrial state'. In this way Spencer tries to avoid the accusation that when he has arrived at the concept of the industrial type of society, he abandons the ideas of the struggle for existence and of the survival of the fittest.

By an industrial society, Spencer is thinking not of factories, labor unions, and eight-hour shifts on assembly lines. Rather he is thinking of being 'industrious' and creative. He emphasizes the notion of liberty - the freedom to create, invent, or produce. Copleston continues:

It would be a great mistake to suppose that by the industrial type of society Spencer means simply a society in which the citizens are occupied, exclusively or predominantly, in the economic life of production and distribution. For an industrial society in this narrow sense would be compatible with a thoroughgoing regulation of labour by the State. And it is precisely this element of compulsion which Spencer is concerned to exclude. On the economic level, he is referring to a society dominated by the principle of laissez-faire. Hence in his view socialist and communist States would be very far from exemplifying the essence of the industrial type of society. The function of the State is to maintain individual freedom and rights, and to adjudicate, when necessary, between conflicting claims. It is not the business of the State to interfere positively with the lives and conduct of the citizens, except when interference is required for the maintenance of internal peace.

His emphasis on freedom, in the sense of not only an economic free market, but a more generalized attitude of laissez-faire in the non-economic aspects of society, can leave Spencer seeming like a libertarian or social Darwinist. But his understanding of freedom also includes an active role for society to defend the freedom of the individual. This would seem a departure from Darwinism, inasmuch as those who might not survive, or whose freedom might not survive, without intervention are rescued by intervention. As Copleston writes:

In other words, in the ideal type of industrial society, as Spencer interprets the term, emphasis is shifted from the totality, the society as a whole, to its members considered as individuals. 'Under the industrial regime the citizen's individuality, instead of being sacrificed by the society, has to be defended by the society. Defence of his individuality becomes the society's essential duty.' That is to say, the cardinal function of the State becomes that of equitably adjusting conflicting claims between individual citizens and preventing the infringement of one man's liberty by another.

While Spencer's condemnation of labor laws (designed to protect workers), governmental poor relief, government schools, and government sanitation can make him seem like the most miserly of hard-hearted social Darwinists, this perception of him must be moderated in view of his belief that such benefits can not only be achieved, but better achieved, by voluntary associations in the private sector.

Obviously, in this resolute attack on 'the coming slavery' Spencer could not appeal simply to the automatic working-out of any law of evolution. His words are clearly inspired by a passionate conviction in the value of individual liberty and initiative, a conviction which reflected the character and temperament of a man who had never at any period of his life been inclined to bow before constituted authority simply because it was authority. And it is a notorious fact that Spencer carried his attack on what he regarded as encroachments by the State on private liberty to the extent of condemning factory legislation, sanitary inspection by government officials, State management of the Post Office, poor relief by the State and State education. Needless to say, he did not condemn reform as such or charitable relief work or the running of hospitals and schools. But his insistence was always on voluntary organization of such projects, as opposed to State action, management and control. In short, his ideal was that of a society in which, as he put it, the individual would be everything and the State nothing, in contrast with the militant type of society in which the State is everything and the individual nothing.

If the reader refers to Spencer's detailed and stinging critique of legislation, it will be remembered that Spenser demonstrated that legislation is not only useless, but harmful. Legislation designed to make travel safer caused more deaths on passenger ships. Regulation intended to improve public sanitation increased total fatalities from contagious disease. So what seems prima facie as humane legislation is in reality harmful to the vulnerable, to the ones whom it is intended to help: the poor, the physically disabled, the widows, orphans, foreigners, etc. Spencer is highlighting the sometimes counterintuitive reality of legislation: regulations enacted to help the poor often actually hurt the poor. Far from heartless, Spencer is ensuring that the individual will not "be ruthlessly sacrificed" to some abstract socialist formulation of "the common good," as Copleston formulates it:

At the same time Spencer's hostility to social legislation which nowadays is taken for granted by the vast majority of citizens in Great Britain should not blind us to the fact that he, like Mill, saw the dangers of bureaucracy and of any exaltation of the power and functions of the State which tends to stifle individual liberty and originality. To the present writer at any rate it seems that concern with the common good leads to an approval of State action to a degree far beyond what Spencer was prepared to endorse. But it should never be forgotten that the common good is not something entirely different from the good of the individual. And Spencer was doubtless quite right in thinking that it is for the good both of individuals and of society in general that citizens should be able to develop themselves freely and show initiative. We may well think that it is the business of the State to create and maintain the conditions in which individuals can develop themselves, and that this demands, for example, that the State should provide for all the means of education according to the individual's capacity for profiting by it. But once we accept the principle that the State should concern itself with positively creating and maintaining the conditions which will make it possible for every individual to lead a decent human life in accordance with his or her capacities, we expose ourselves to the danger of subsequently forgetting that the common good is not an abstract entity to which the concrete interests of individuals have to be ruthlessly sacrificed. And Spencer's attitude, in spite of its eccentric exaggerations, can serve to remind us that the State exists for man and not man for the State. Further, the State is but one form of social organization: it is not the only legitimate form of society. And Spencer certainly understood this fact.

Spencer seems to moderate his Darwinistic tendencies, at least in Copleston's formulation. Survival of the fittest is moderated by survival of the deserving. Human intervention overrides the raw Darwinistic process.

As has already been indicated, Spencer's political views were partly the expression of factual judgments, connected with his interpretation of the general movement of evolution, and partly an expression of judgments of value. For example, his assertion that what he calls the industrial type of society possesses a greater survival value than other types was partly equivalent to a prediction that it would in fact survive, in virtue of the trend of evolution. But it was also partly a judgment that the industrial type of society deserved to survive, because of its intrinsic value. Indeed, it is dear enough that with Spencer a positive evaluation of personal liberty was the really determining factor in his view of modern society. It is also clear that if a man is resolved that, as far as depends on him, the type of society which respects individual freedom and initiative will survive, this resolution is based primarily on a judgment of value rather than on any theory about the automatic working-out of a law of evolution.

Writing at a time before informed doubts had been formulated against Darwinism, Spencer embraced his own nuanced version of evolution. In so doing, he took biological evolution as a foundational fact, while seeing that significantly different interpretations of evolution a subject for serious inquiry. Thus, while he spent energy fine-tuning the details of evolutionary process, he considered it unnecessary to take pains examining the foundation of evolution itself. Had he lived a century later - he died in 1903 - he might have answered some of the questions posed by the Miller-Urey experiment's failure to generate signs of life, or discoveries made by Francis Collins in the course of the Human Genome Project. In any case, Spencer was unaware of the arguments which would erode faith in Darwinism.

Believing as he did, Spencer's confidence in Darwinism in general allowed him to assume that only the details of evolution needed to be worked out, given that the broad principle of it was, in his mind, solidly established. He noted the difference between individual beings competing existence for existence, versus species completing with each other for existence. Like the complexities which arise when one attempts to calculate utility, competing calculations regarding survival arise if Darwinism is taken as foundational. Conflicts between the survival of the individual being and the survival of the species are but one form of these complexities. Spencer hoped, however, to find in this tangle of intricacies a route which would allow compassion and humane action to find a home within an evolutionary process. As Copleston puts it,

Conduct in general, including that of animals, consists of acts adjusted to ends. And the higher we proceed in the scale of evolution, the clearer evidence do we find of purposeful actions directed to the good either of the individual or of the species. But we also find that teleological activity of this kind forms part of the struggle for existence between different individuals of the same species and between different species. That is to say, one creature tries to preserve itself at the expense of another, and one species maintains itself by preying on another.

Far from social Darwinism, Spencer thought that a evolutionary process would finally lead to a society in which altruism was normative. Instead of survival of the fittest, Spencer hoped to see the fittest working to ensure the survival of everyone else.

This type of purposeful conduct, in which the weaker goes to the wall, is for Spencer imperfectly evolved conduct. In perfectly evolved conduct, ethical conduct in the proper sense, antagonisms between rival groups and between individual members of one group will have been replaced by co-operation and mutual aid. Perfectly evolved conduct, however, can be achieved only in proportion as militant societies give place to permanently peaceful societies. In other words it cannot be achieved in a stable manner except in the perfectly evolved society, in which alone can the clash between egoism and altruism be overcome and transcended.

One of Spencer's flaws is his failure to anticipate more precisely the objection which would arise when some readers attempted to accuse him of social Darwinism. Although he seems to have anticipated this objection to a small extent, perhaps the ad hominem features of the times and places in which he did his writing prevented him from foreseeing such counterargument.

On the way toward a final society - and here Spencer, who otherwise seems soberly realistic, sounds a bit utopian - in which the competition for survival ceases and in which each individual is ultimately in secure situation with no need to struggle for existence, society develops sympathy, empathy, and cooperation. Jack Kaminsky summarizes Spencer thus:

Similarly, feelings of sociality and sympathy developed in human beings because in the struggle for survival men came to recognize that human cooperation is necessary, and the pleasures that accrue to the feeling of sociality were the rewards that guaranteed the continuation of such cooperation.

Spencer's version of evolution takes a turn which is either a brilliant intellectual move, or a self-destructive internal contradiction: he makes the engine of evolution - competition for survival, struggle for existence - into the force which will dismantle itself, when the end of the Darwinistic process is reached and there is no more competition or struggle. The midpoint in this development is precisely society's introduction of sympathy, empathy, and cooperation. Kamisky puts it this way:

The development of the feelings of sociality and sympathy led to the emergence of a new kind on entity, society, which is the subject of sociology and ethics.

Spencer thought that conscious deliberation occurred only in individuals and is not to be attributed to a group. He also thought that society existed for the benefit of its members, not the other way around.

For this reason, Spencer opposed all forms of socialism and was a firm believer in laissez-faire. In fact, he argued that if socialism were ever to arise in a state, it would lead to a very strict despotism.

Although one form of society replaced another in a form of "survival of the fittest," this struggle for existence, in Spencer's thought, did not apply in the same way to the individual. This may be a feature of his thought which protects him from the allegation of social Darwinism. Jack Kaminsky continues:

Even though Spencer believed that all societies must eventually die because of some external or internal disturbance, he was not a pessimist. He maintained that Western civilization, at least, was just entering its most mature stage of development. Sympathy and understanding were increasing. Nations were becoming less prone to resort to war in order to settle their differences. Freedom of speech, religion, and the press were being guaranteed. Society was no longer as rigidly stratified, and men could more easily move up the social ladder. Even representative government was gradual becoming universal. In fact, Spencer believed that with the proper indoctrination a society of the very highest order could continue for a long time.

In Spencer's version of utilitarianism, the concept of 'duty' is used to combine long-run utility with short-run utility in calculating the total utility, or pleasure, of any contemplated act. Spencer thought that short-run calculations came naturally to primitive man, while long-run duties were an artifact of society which represents progress. Kaminsky writes:

This account of duty also gives Spencer what he believes is a means of eliminating the traditional contradiction between egoism and altruism. At first men were primarily interested in themselves, as was necessary in a world where men could scarcely keep themselves alive. In fact, even in a more advance society, egoism serves some good, since the person who is very often healthier than others, and is, therefore, better able to care for others. But, in any case, egoism became modified by the recognition, that, if we wish to attain the objects that can afford us pleasure, we ought to help others because they in turn, will help us. Thus, according to Spencer, egoism and altruism are mutually compatible. We are concerned with the welfare of others because their welfare affects our own.

Spencer believed that the evolution of forms of society would result in a structure in which the interests of each member were protected by the other members. He may have been wrong, but again, this belief can be offered in the course of defending him against the accusation of social Darwinism. Kaminsky concludes:

Spencer’s social and ethical theories have also been challenged. His laissez-faire doctrines are simply not defensible in a world as highly industrialized as ours. Spencer believed that an industrial society would foster self-reliant, humane, and individualistic human beings, but he ignored the brutalities and injustices that could arise in such societies unless appropriate controls were introduced.

While Herbert Spencer's critique of legislative government is brilliant - and devastating - , his thought also contains serious flaws. One of his failures was his naive and enthusiastic acceptance of Darwinism, without seeing any of the serious objections which would eventually be raised against evolution. Another failure was an overly optimistic assessment of human nature: that the imperfections in human nature could be worked out by means of societal evolution. Finally, Spencer failed to anticipate the stinging assertion by his critics that he might be a social Darwinist; Spencer could have easily defended himself preemptively against such charges, by merely shifting emphasis and tone in his writing: we have shown that the elements are already present in his thought - it required merely balance to accentuate them.

The Great Political Superstition: Herbert Spencer

Having identified legislation as a largely problematic process - legislation presented perhaps with good intentions routinely yields unanticipated consequences and is implemented by a bureaucracy which is necessarily woodenly literal in its application of such legislation, because mechanical interpretation inevitably manifests itself in such officialdom, despite deliberate attempts to give it a human or humane touch - Herbert Spencer proceeds to examine the question of why the citizenry is repeatedly drawn to the legislative process. Why do voters continue to look to this institution which continually produces not only ineffectual, but even harmful results?

If Spencer thought of human society as analogous to a biological organism - which he seems to have - then he might be characterized as viewing humanity as having an instinctive or reflexive tendency to locate authority and sovereignty somewhere. Having worked its way out of an age of monarchy, society merely shifted the locus of royal power from the king to the parliament. More generally, this might reveal a human tendency to follow - a tendency to assign a leadership role, to a monarch or to a legislature, and having made that assignment, to adopt a rather passive role of following, rather than subjecting king or parliament to extended continuous critique.

The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.

Many - most? - humans tend to exert their critical faculties as infrequently as possible. Having assigned authority to a representative body, people for the most part patiently and obediently follow that body's dictates. Yet the will of the majority should be subject to scrutiny no less than the will of an absolute monarch. The notion, largely from Locke, that a government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed does not imply either the justice of that government's actions or that such government should be unlimited in power and ambition.

The divine right of parliaments means the divine right of majorities. The fundamental assumption made by legislators and people alike, is that a majority has powers which have no bounds. This is the current theory which all accept without proof as a self-evident truth. Nevertheless, criticism will, I think, show that this current theory requires a radical modification.

Spencer had rejected an offer to study at Cambridge, and so lacked any form of university training. After being taught mathematics, physics, and Latin by family members, the remainder of his intellectual formation was largely the result of his own independent reading. His family's views were 'nonconformist' and 'dissenting' in the strictly theological sense of those terms. While Spencer himself later adopted a principled agnosticism, his family's views made it easy for him to move toward anti-statist and free-market views. He formulates a critique of legislation along these lines: if the sovereignty lies with governed, how can the government claim to create rights and distributed them to the governed?

Mark, now, what happens when we put these two doctrines together. The sovereign people jointly appoint representatives, and so create a government; the government thus created, creates rights; and then, having created rights, it confers them on the separate members of the sovereign people by which it was itself created. Here is a marvellous piece of political legerdemain!

Involved in approving any piece of legislation, Spencer argues, is an attempted utilitarian calculation. Inasmuch as any bit of legislation will reduce utility, either by taxation or by regulation, the legislative body is apparently asserting the proposition that any such reduction will be offset, and more than offset, by an alleged increase in utility in some other way. This, then, brings with it a the whole host of questions and objections which can be, and are, raised against any utilitarian scheme: how does one measure utility? Which units of measure does one use? How does one compare relative amounts of utility? etc. Spencer himself is not against utilitarianism; indeed, he is probably espousing some form of it. But he is questioning the legislature's ability to competently dabble in utilitarian calculations.

Reduced to its lowest terms, every proposal to interfere with citizens' activities further than by enforcing their mutual limitations, is a proposal to improve life by breaking through the fundamental conditions to life. When some are prevented from buying beer that others may be prevented from getting drunk, those who make the law assume that more good than evil will result from interference with the normal relation between conduct and consequences, alike in the few ill-regulated and the many well-regulated. A government which takes fractions of the incomes of multitudinous people, for the purpose of sending to the colonies some who have not prospered here, or for building better industrial dwellings, or for making public libraries and public museums, etc., takes for granted that, not only proximately but ultimately, increased general happiness will result from transgressing the essential requirement to general happiness — the requirement that each shall enjoy all those means to happiness which his actions, carried on without aggression, have brought him.

With J.S. Mill, Spencer saw a tension within governments founded on majority rule. Such government represented progress in the general notion of liberty, allowing elections and placing sovereign power into the possession of the voters. However, the potential danger resulting was the possibility of a "tyranny of the majority" in phrased popularized, but not coined, by J.S. Mill. In such governments, the majority could elect representatives, or approve acts in direct referenda, which curtail freedom for some or all of the citizens. While both Spencer and Mill saw this danger, they responded differently to it. Spencer thought that reducing liberty would always reduce utility, and therefore would endorse no, or very few, restrictions on freedom; his understanding of utilitarianism was such that any reduction in freedom was necessarily a systematic reduction in utility. Spencer, therefore, stays closer than to Mill to the core tradition of classical liberalism in the sense of Locke, while yet departing in some respects from Locke. Mill, on the other hand, was more willing to allow limits on freedom, positing that some such limits might actually increase utility. Whether or not Spencer was a libertarian depends on one's definition of 'libertarian' but Spencer did write that

The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of Parliaments.

Although Spencer challenges the ability of the government to create rights, he nevertheless acknowledges a sort of procedural difference between “rights properly so-called” and “political” rights. This is necessary, he seems to think, because of the fact that humans are not perfect. In this, his sober appraisal of human nature allows for a practicality in his political philosophy, corresponding to his rejection of those who would based political philosophy on hypothetical speculations.

Over-Legislation: Herbert Spencer

Of the nine children born to his parents, Herbert Spencer was the only one to live to adulthood. Even in an era of higher infant mortality - he was born in 1820 - this was a statistical outlier. Spencer's father was a teacher and dabbled in Methodism and Quakerism. It was perhaps also from his father that Spencer gained an acquaintance with the thought of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Spencer's father was, in any case, in that category which Anglican theologians label 'nonconformist' or 'dissenter' - from his father, Spencer got an individualistic, antiestablishment, and anticlerical streak. Herbert Spencer would consistently maintain the balance, rejecting both atheism and organized religion, and asserting a principled agnosticism.

His political and social views were perhaps shaped by his early training as a civil engineer and his work for the railroad. He had a strong distaste for any purely speculative system of politics or government: this is evident in, e.g., his analysis of passenger ship safety. He demonstrates quantitatively how legislation fails to protect passengers onboard, even when the precise purpose of the legislation is such protection.

The cause of repeatedly succumbing to the illusory hope that legislation can fix social problems, or other types of problems, even when anti-poverty legislation increases poverty, even when health legislation increases disease, is a type of intellectual arrogance. Spencer specifies this conceit:

There is a great want of this practical humility in our political conduct. Though we have less self-confidence than our ancestors, who did not hesitate to organize in law their judgments on all subjects whatever, we have yet far too much. Though we have ceased to assume the infallibility of our theological beliefs and so ceased to enact them, we have not ceased to enact hosts of other beliefs of an equally doubtful kind. Though we no longer presume to coerce men for their spiritual good, we still think ourselves called upon to coerce them for their material good: not seeing that the one is as useless and as unwarrantable as the other. Innumerable failures seem, so far, powerless to teach this.

Anticipating an objection - an objection which would argue that if legislation is folly, then it should be allowed and ignored, permitting foolish legislators to delude themselves, and permitting reasonable men to go about society's business while disregarding the legislature - Spencer shows, in his analysis, that legislation is not merely useless, but rather that it is also harmful. Ignoring legislation is not the solution, because the legislation will still be causing harm: legislation to provide economic opportunity in terms of housing instead decreased the quality of housing; legislation designed to make travel safer instead increased the spread of disease aboard ships; legislation designed to reduce the number of deaths in shipwrecks instead increased that number; legislation designed to improve public sanitation instead triggered the spread of contagious disease.

“Well; let the State fail. It can but do its best. If it succeed, so much the better: if it do not, where is the harm? Surely it is wiser to act, and take the chance of success, than to do nothing.” To this plea the rejoinder is that, unfortunately, the results of legislative intervention are not only negatively bad, but often positively so. Acts of Parliament do not simply fail; they frequently make worse. The familiar truth that persecution aids rather than hinders proscribed doctrines — a truth lately afresh illustrated by the forbidden work of Gervinus — is a part of the general truth that legislation often does indirectly, the reverse of that which it directly aims to do. Thus has it been with the Metropolitan Buildings’ Act. As was lately agreed unanimously by the delegates from all the parishes in London, and as was stated by them to Sir William Molesworth, this act “has encouraged bad building, and has been the means of covering the suburbs of the metropolis with thousands of wretched hovels, which are a disgrace to a civilized country.” Thus, also, has it been in provincial towns. The Nottingham Inclosure Act of 1845, by prescribing the structure of the houses to be built, and the extent of yard or garden to be allotted to each, has rendered it impossible to build working-class dwellings at such moderate rents as to compete with existing ones. It is estimated that, as a consequence, 10,000 of the population are debarred from the new homes they would otherwise have, and are forced to live crowded together in miserable places unfit for human habitation; and so, in its anxiety to insure healthy accommodation for artisans, the law has entailed on them still worse accommodation than before. Thus, too, has it been with the Passengers’ Act. The terrible fevers which arose in the Australian emigrant ships a few months since, causing in the Bourneuf 83 deaths, in the Wanota 39 deaths, in the Marco Polo 53 deaths, and in the Ticonderoga 104 deaths, arose in vessels sent out by the government; and arose in consequence of the close packing which the Passengers’ Act authorizes. Thus, moreover, has it been with the safeguards provided by the Mercantile Marine Act. The examinations devised for insuring the efficiency of captains, have had the effect of certifying the superficially-clever and unpractised men, and, as we are told by a shipowner, rejecting many of the long-tried and most trustworthy: the general result being that the ratio of shipwrecks has increased. Thus also has it happened with Boards of Health, which have, in sundry cases, exacerbated the evils to be removed; as, for instance, at Croydon, where, according to the official report, the measures of the sanitary authorities produced an epidemic, which attacked 1600 people and killed 70. Thus again has it been with the Joint Stock Companies Registration Act. As was shown by Mr. James Wilson, in his late motion for a select committee on life-assurance associations, this measure, passed in 1844 to guard the public against bubble schemes, actually facilitated the rascalities of 1845 and subsequent years. The legislative sanction, devised as a guarantee of genuineness, and supposed by the people to be such, clever adventurers have without difficulty obtained for the most worthless projects. Having obtained it, an amount of public confidence has followed which they could never otherwise have gained. In this way literally hundreds of sham enterprises that would not else have seen the light, have been fostered into being; and thousands of families have been ruined who would never have been so but for legislative efforts to make them more secure.

One of the factors which dooms legislation to uselessness, and to causing unintended but very real harm, is sheer complexity. Whether in economics or in healthcare, any action will have myriads of unforeseeable and unpredictable consequences: unforeseeable and unpredictable in practice, because of complexity. In hypothetical models, cause and effect behave in mechanistic and mathematical ways. In practical situations, there are too many variables, and variables of which nobody is aware, and so hypothetical models do not serve. The causes for the problems which we wish to solve, and the effects of our proposed solutions, are part of web of cause and effect which is infinite, or nearly so, and which contains links of which we are unaware.

Moreover, when these topical remedies applied by statesmen do not exacerbate the evils they were meant to cure, they constantly induce collateral evils; and these often graver than the original ones. It is the vice of this empirical school of politicians that they never look beyond proximate causes and immediate effects. In common with the uneducated masses they habitually regard each phenomenon as involving but one antecedent and one consequent. They do not bear in mind that each phenomenon is a link in an infinite series — is the result of myriads of preceding phenomena, and will have a share in producing myriads of succeeding ones. Hence they overlook the fact that, in disturbing any natural chain of sequences, they are not only modifying the result next in succession, but all the future results into which this will enter as a part cause. The serial genesis of phenomena, and the interaction of each series upon every other series, produces a complexity utterly beyond human grasp. Even in the simplest cases this is so.

There are two parts to Spencer's question: first, of what the government is capable; second, how those capabilities are directed. First, the government is perhaps capable of effecting in some cases a salutary change; second, however, the government's capabilities are set into motion and directed by a process which is political, i.e., which has to do with human ambition, human machinations, and desires based upon perceptions. Anyone who closely watches any legislative body for any length of time, who observes how proposals and bills are brought forth, how they are discussed and examined, and how individual legislators cast their votes, will understand the difference between neat theories of government and the messy business of legislation in reality. To assume that legislators will proceed rationally, calculating the utility of proposals logically, is folly.

But the thing to be discussed is, not so much whether, by any amount of intelligence, it is possible for a government to work out the various ends consigned to it, as whether its fulfilment of them is probable. It is less a question of can than a question of will. Granting the absolute competence of the State, let us consider what hope there is of getting from it satisfactory performance. Let us look at the moving force by which the legislative machine is worked, and then inquire whether this force is thus employed as economically as it would otherwise be.

Herbert Spencer formed his thought under the influence of his practical experience. He began studying engineering, which at that time was a practical course of study in the manner of an apprenticeship and which was not conducted at universities, in 1837, working for Charles Fox on the London and Birmingham Railway. This railway, and railways in general, were in those days still new things. Various practical problems arose frequently, demanding solutions, and the technology was being continually refined and improved. Spencer saw that this did not happen by means of hypothetical speculations. He also saw that this progress was driven by clear goals, motives, and desires. The focus created by a distinctly-framed objective, i.e., to provide efficient and quick railway transportation which generated profits for shareholders, provided the impetus for the railway's technological progress. Legislatures, by contrast, are ever diffuse and divided among themselves, rarely sharing such a crystalized objective, and more often deliberately divided, as representatives are sometimes elected precisely because they oppose the views and plans of other legislators.

Manifestly, as desire of some kind is the invariable stimulus to action in the individual, every social agency, of what nature soever, must have some aggregate of desires for its motive power. Men in their collective capacity can exhibit no result but what has its origin in some appetite, feeling, or taste common among them. Did not they like meat, there could be no cattle-graziers, no Smithfield, no distributing organization of butchers. Operas, Philharmonic Societies, song-books, and street organ-boys, have all been called into being by our love of music.

From a lack of focus arises a lack of speed. This, however, should not be repaired by desiring a quicker and more efficient and more unified government: that would only cause the legislature to be more skilled at removing the individual's freedom. Rather than lamenting the government's inefficiency and lethargy, it is much better simply not to assign tasks to the government, and rather let the organs of society, which tend to be more effective, address those problems.

Officialism is habitually slow. When non-governmental agencies are dilatory, the public has its remedy: it ceases to employ them and soon finds quicker ones. Under this discipline all private bodies are taught promptness.

Legislation requires application and interpretation. If, however, there is no clear goal in the mind of the bureaucrat - no goal other than mechanistically applying and interpreting regulations - then the process becomes woodenly literal and is oblivious to nonsensical applications which will inevitably arise. Perhaps the legislators had some purpose in mind as they created the regulation, but the bureaucrat has merely the text of the regulation in his possession, not the grand thoughts of the legislators.

Again, officialism is stupid. Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. But it is quite otherwise in State-organizations. Here, as every one knows, birth, age, back-stairs intrigue, and sycophancy, determine the selections rather than merit.

The legislators who make regulations, and the bureaucrats who enforce them, have no motive for careful stewardship of public funds - their own welfare will not benefit from responsible management of funds, nor will it be harmed by negligent use of the same.

A further characteristic of officialism is its extravagance.

Private enterprise is driven, by competing to offer both the lowest prices to consumers and the highest returns to investors, to efficiently use capital. No such drive informs the actions of government.

These public agencies are subject to no such influence as that which obliges private enterprise to be economical. Traders and mercantile bodies succeed by serving society cheaply. Such of them as cannot do this are continually supplanted by those who can. They cannot saddle the nation with the results of their extravagance, and so are prevented from being extravagant.

Creativity and improvisation are the fruit of goal-oriented behavior. Scientific discovery and technological inventions arise in the minds, and in the workshops, of people who are working toward some clear objective. Yet the lack of a clear objective is often the defining characteristic of governmental offices. Hence the lack of inventiveness, and a tendency to inertia, is essential to government.

The unadaptiveness of officialism is another of its vices. Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand — unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances through its ordained routine at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.

Corruption and dishonesty is part of the human condition - the fact that humans are by nature imperfect. It is important to acknowledge this aspect of human nature, because only then can one begin to perhaps manage it. Although greed, or the love of money, is a root of all evil, it is also true that the responsible management of money is an impetus toward diligence and productivity. As government fails to value money, fails to understand its responsibilities as steward of the public wealth, so it fails to derive from money the beneficial motivations, and is left only with greed and corruption. Government must ever fail to fully execute its responsibility as steward of the public wealth, because it is depersonalized: decisions made by legislators corporately, not individually, over money which neither belongs to them, nor for the misuse of which they will in any way be held accountable. Of the mountains of money squandered, of the territories driven into debt and poverty, by the actions of its legislators - in which of them have the legislators faced consequences for their foolishness?

How invariably officialism becomes corrupt every one knows. Exposed to no such antiseptic as free competition — not dependent for existence, as private unendowed organizations are, on the maintenance of a vigorous vitality; all law-made agencies fall into an inert, over-fed state, from which to disease is a short step. Salaries flow in irrespective of the activity with which duty is performed; continue after duty wholly ceases; become rich prizes for the idle well born; and prompt to perjury, to bribery, to simony.

Accusing mindless legislatures of operating impractically and relying on hypothetical and speculative models, Spencer wished to protect himself from the same charge. His first major book, Social Statistics, published in 1851, not only offered a structure for evidence by which Spencer hoped to support his views, but also offered a structure for an entire branch of this academic discipline.

To all which broad contrasts add this, that while private bodies are enterprising and progressive, public bodies are unchanging, and, indeed, obstructive. That officialism should be inventive nobody expects. That it should go out of its easy mechanical routine to introduce improvements, and this at a considerable expense of thought and application, without the prospect of profit, is not to be supposed. But it is not simply stationary; it resists every amendment either in itself or in anything with which it deals.

Herbert Spencer proposes that one compare, on the one hand, the behavior of organizations formed by legislation, to, on the other hand, purpose-driven organizations formed by the right of free association among citizens who gathered themselves around some goal or objective.

Between these law-made agencies and the spontaneously formed ones, who then can hesitate? The one class are slow, stupid, extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt, and obstructive: can any point out in the other, vices that balance these? It is true that trade has its dishonesties, speculation its follies. These are evils inevitably entailed by the existing imperfections of humanity. It is equally true, however, that these imperfections of humanity are shared by State-functionaries; and that being unchecked in them by the same stern discipline, they grow to far worse results.

Although he makes a strong argument for the uselessness and danger of legislation, Spencer does not consistently make equally strong arguments for the humane benefits which arise from "spontaneously formed agencies" - indeed, he has been accused of being a "social Darwinist," a charge against which he has been defended by some scholars, notably David Weinstein. Far from being a social Darwinist, Spencer sees that his program of reducing legislation would free the humanitarian aspects of society to energize charitable activity.

If, however, we would duly appreciate the contrast between the artificial modes and the natural modes of achieving social desiderata, we must look not only at the vices of the one but at the virtues of the other. These are many and important. Consider first how immediately every private enterprise is dependent on the need for it; and how impossible it is for it to continue if there be no need. Daily are new trades and new companies established. If they subserve some existing public want, they take root and grow. If they do not, they die of inanition.

Spencer notes that free private associations are, in his jargon, "exogenous," meaning that they are called into being, formed, and directed by external circumstances and conditions; while legislatively-formed agencies are "endogenous," meaning that they are instituted by legislation, at best an indirect response to some external reality, and not by a direct response to some condition or circumstance. The need for food in a growing town is met by private decisions to create bakeries and grocery stores; they will grow, shrink, or pass out of existence as the need for food in the town changes. But a governmentally-formed institution will grow or shrink independently of the need which is intended to meet.

Were there space, much more might be said upon the superiority of what naturalists would call the exogenous order of institutions over the endogenous one. But, from the point of view indicated, the further contrasts between their characteristics will be sufficiently visible.

The successes of free private enterprise are powerfully manifest: one need only mention the names of great corporations and businesses. Likewise, the responsiveness of the free enterprise system is powerfully seen as each of those businesses has in the past, or will one day in the future, pass out of existence. Consider the names: IBM, United States Steel, General Motors, Western Union, Apple Computers, Microsoft, etc. Each of those giants began as a small decision among a small group of people; the growth, based upon external conditions, multiplies that small seed many times.

By contrast, governmental programs are announced to the world as a panacea and a cure for sundry social ills. Yet, as time passes, each is inevitably exposed to be considerably less than what it was announced to be. Whether or not it continues to exist, however, bears no direct relationship to any measurement of its success or failure.

Hence then the fact, that while the one order of means is ever failing, making worse, or producing more evils than it cures, the other order of means is ever succeeding, ever improving. Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private effort daily achieves results that astound the world.

There is an irrational sentiment, almost akin to religious faith, which motivates the public to look to the next governmental program to cure the ills of the moment, despite the long trail of similar programs which have failed miserably in the past. It is perhaps some deep hope in human nature which flies in the face of all empirical understanding - a hope which rises ever again - a hope that this government program will succeed, where a nearly infinite number of other government programs have failed. That there is no significant difference between the latest proposal and the long list of failed proposals should, but does not, alert the public to the vanity of this hope.

This strong faith in State-agencies is, however, accompanied by so weak a faith in natural agencies (the two being antagonistic), that, spite of past experience, it will by many be thought absurd to rest in the conviction that existing social needs will be spontaneously met, though we cannot say how they will be met. Nevertheless, illustrations exactly to the point are now transpiring before their eyes.

Every bit of time, money, and energy directed into a futile enterprise is at the same time wanting in some beneficial enterprise. Resources flowing into a legislatively-instituted undertaking are not available to an activity which might have humane and salutary effects among society.

To the immense positive evils entailed by over-legislation have to be added the equally great negative evils — evils which, notwithstanding their greatness, are scarcely at all recognized, even by the far-seeing. While the State does those things which it ought not to do, as an inevitable consequence, it leaves undone those things which it ought to do. Time and activity being limited, it necessarily follows that legislators’ sins of commission entail sins of omission. Mischievous meddling involves disastrous neglect; and until statesmen are ubiquitous and omnipotent, must ever do so. In the very nature of things an agency employed for two purposes must fulfil both imperfectly; partly because, while fulfilling the one it cannot be fulfilling the other, and partly because its adaptation to both ends implies incomplete fitness for either.

The illusion of legislative effectiveness has this consequence: that people are misled into discussing the various options currently being introduced, into contemplating revisions of what has been enacted, or speculating about what might be drafted and proposed - instead of dismissing the entire notion of legislation as helpful. Citizens are seduced into analyzing competing proposals, past proposals, and future proposals - instead of simply defunding and rendering the legislature as impotent, because it can be of no use.

See here, then, the proximate cause of our legal abominations. We drop the substance in our efforts to catch shadows. While our firesides, and clubs, and taverns are filled with talk about corn-law questions, and church questions, and education questions, and poor-law questions — all of them raised by over-legislation — the justice question gets scarcely any attention; and we daily submit to be oppressed, cheated, robbed.

While Herbert Spencer is not naive enough to believe that we can proceed without any government whatsoever, or that we should embrace some form of anarchism, he is realistic enough to see legislation as a source, perhaps the largest single source, of misery among people.

How vast then is the negative evil which, in addition to the positive evils before enumerated, this meddling policy entails on us! How many are the grievances men bear, from which they would otherwise be free! Who is there that has not submitted to injuries rather than run the risk of heavy law-costs? Who is there that has not abandoned just claims rather than “throw good money after bad?” Who is there that has not paid unjust demands rather than withstand the threat of an action?

To which extent Spencer was a Darwinist is not clear, but it is certain that he saw social institutions as, in some sense, evolving - responding to changing conditions by reorganizing themselves. He saw legislation as an ossifying effect, hindering progress by reducing the flexibility of social institutions.

See then how this vicious policy complicates itself. Not only does meddling legislation fail to cure the evils it aims at; not only does it make many evils worse; not only does it create new evils greater than the old; but while doing this it entails on men the oppressions, robberies, ruin, which flow from the non-administration of justice. And not only to the positive evils does it add this vast negative one, but this again, by fostering many social abuses that would not else exist, furnishes occasions for more meddlings which again act and re-act in the same way. And thus as ever, “things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”

Herbert Spencer manifests his thought as complex: rejecting both atheism and organized religion, he presents himself as a principled agnostic; embracing some form of evolutionary theory, he rejects social Darwinism; accused of social Darwinism, he sees instead a humane aspect to a society freed from excessive legislation and freed to charitable altruism. In any case, he sets forth an insightful critique of legislation and regulation.

The Sins of Legislators: Herbert Spencer

If, in some segments of his prose, Herbert Spencer reveals his similarity to Edmund Burke and Metternich, in other segments he reveals his intellectual kinship with Thomas Paine. The following passage is an example:

Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.

Spencer goes on to the make the point that there are certain types of behavior, which elicit demands for punishment from the public if they are committed by ordinary citizens, but which seem to be happily tolerated if they are committed by legislators. Imagine if someone took millions, or even billions, of dollars, with the promise that they would be used to reduce poverty, or reduce the use of illegal drugs, or create world peace. After using - shall we say, squandering - that enormous amount of money, no measurable progress has been made toward the stated goal. This is routinely the case with legislators.

If I pay someone a sum of money to paint my house, or fix my car, or mow my lawn, and he fails to do the job, I demand my money back - with the threat of small claims court, if need be. But when the legislature has spent a far greater sum of money, and failed to improve healthcare or education, the voters seemingly accept this as inevitable and just, and listen as the legislators explain how they now need even more money for this cause or for some other cause. Spencer notes:

We measure the responsibilities of legislators for mischiefs they may do, in a much more lenient fashion. In most cases, so far from thinking of them as deserving punishment for causing disasters by laws ignorantly enacted, we scarcely think of them as deserving reprobation.

The only significant qualification required to become a member of the legislature is that one have persuaded or cajoled a sufficient number of voters. There is no educational requirement, and no required amount of experience of any kind. Thus it is possible, and thus it has happened, that individuals with no particular knowledge and no particular experience have found themselves drafting legislation dealing with the most complex technical sciences, with the most intricate diplomatic treaties, and with the most multifaceted economic principles. Where the decisions are the most crucial, we allow the least qualified to make them. Consider which qualifications we seek in a surgeon, in a lawyer, in an engineer. Yet we seek no such discriminator among our legislators. We pay the price, in both money and in misery, with their bad decisions.

And yet the mischiefs wrought by uninstructed lawmaking, enormous in their amount as compared with those caused by uninstructed medical treatment, are conspicuous to all who do but glance over its history.

Going back at least to Plato and Socrates, the pattern of paternal thinking has shaped considerations of government. If one accepts the analogy of government as parent - the essence of paternalistic politics - then it is a logical next step to view the combination of citizens and government as a family; from this point, the ethical principles which govern families are applied to governments. Such folly and madness, however, requires that the voters ignore the many obvious and significant differences which distinguish the family from the government. Given that large numbers of them have, in fact, been content to ignore those differences, the familial discourse which has invaded political rhetoric has bent the thinking of many. A child expects, rightly so, his parents to clothe and feed him; by extension, should he expect the government to clothe and feed him? Common sense tells us that parents love children and are committed to them; a government does not, and cannot, love its citizens - to be sure, there are at least four different types of love, as the philosophers have analyzed them with Greek vocabulary - a government is capable of no type of love. If a government is capable of "being committed to" a person, it is only so in an utterly different sense of the phrase than in the case of parents. Parental commitment is unconditional and self-sacrificing; a government's relation to the individual is conditional and the government will not, and should not, sacrifice for the interests of an individual.

The intrusion of family-ethics into the ethics of the State, instead of being regarded as socially injurious, is more and more demanded as the only efficient means to social benefit. So far has this delusion now gone, that it vitiates the beliefs of those who might, more than all others, be thought safe from it.

Herbert Spencer has clearly stated the major flaws in much of modern legislation. Although he wrote in England in the second half of the nineteenth century, his texts are useful for understanding America at the start of the twenty-first century.

From Freedom to Bondage: Herbert Spencer

Well-meant recommendations can lead us into political disaster; this axiom has manifested itself often enough in history that one need not plead its case. Herbert Spencer, demonstrating his intellectual affinity with Metternich and Edmund Burke, warns us against panaceas, despite the good intentions with which they may be offered. There is nothing so dangerous as the adjective 'sweeping' placed in front of the noun 'reform' - the desire to fix society's problems by quick and epic action is a sure recipe for disaster. The truly beneficial changes, history shows, are achieved gradually and organically, adjustments to institutions which themselves arose in the slow process of accumulated wisdom.

History is filled with demagogues whose speeches end with the pronouncement, "we must do something, and we must do it now!" Not only do such leaders demand change like lightening and thunder, but they hold out the promise of a utopian paradise, if only the crowd will comply with their demand for sudden revision of institutions and practices. If such demagogues survive the inevitable collapse of their plans, their response is to explain that still further and more radical changes are needed, and then all will be well. Herbert Spencer explains these twin evils, sudden change and utopian expectations:

A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies. “If you will but do this, the mischief will be prevented.” “Adopt my plan and the suffering will disappear.” “The corruption will unquestionably be cured by enforcing this measure.” Everywhere one meets with beliefs, expressed or implied, of these kinds. They are all ill-founded. It is possible to remove causes which intensify the evils; it is possible to change the evils from one form into another; and it is possible, and very common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts made to prevent them; but anything like immediate cure is impossible. In the course of thousands of years mankind have, by multiplication, been forced out of that original savage state in which small numbers supported themselves on wild food, into the civilized state in which the food required for supporting great numbers can be got only by continuous labour. The nature required for this last mode of life is widely different from the nature required for the first; and long-continued pains have to be passed through in re-moulding the one into the other. Misery has necessarily to be borne by a constitution out of harmony with its conditions; and a constitution inherited from primitive men is out of harmony with the conditions imposed on existing men. Hence it is impossible to establish forthwith a satisfactory social state. No such nature as that which has filled Europe with millions of armed men, here eager for conquest and there for revenge — no such nature as that which prompts the nations called Christian to vie with one another in filibustering expeditions all over the world, regardless of the claims of aborigines, while their tens of thousands of priests of the religion of love look on approvingly — no such nature as that which, in dealing with weaker races, goes beyond the primitive rule of life for life, and for one life takes many lives — no such nature, I say, can, by any device, be framed into a harmonious community. The root of all well-ordered social action is a sentiment of justice, which at once insists on personal freedom and is solicitous for the like freedom of others; and there at present exists but a very inadequate amount of this sentiment.

Spencer examines the analogy between adjusting purely material systems, like chemical equations or machines made of steel, and proposed reforms to human society. In the case of something as objective as gears and cogs, one imagines that outcomes are predictable and reliable. Yet patents are issued by the dozen for devices which fail, and scrapyards are filled with worthless prototypes. How much more complicated, then, to tinker with human relations and the institutions of civilization? How can one confidently expect miraculous results from hypotheses constructed on speculation? Yet that is the essence of many proposed reforms.

What, then, shall we say of these schemes which have to do not with dead matters and forces, but with complex living organisms working in ways less readily foreseen, and which involve the cooperation of multitudes of such organisms? Even the units out of which this re-arranged body politic is to be formed are often incomprehensible. Everyone is from time to time surprised by others’ behaviour, and even by the deeds of relatives who are best known to him. Seeing, then, how uncertainly anyone can foresee the actions of an individual, how can he with any certainty foresee the operation of a social structure? He proceeds on the assumption that all concerned will judge rightly and act fairly — will think as they ought to think, and act as they ought to act; and he assumes this regardless of the daily experiences which show him that men do neither the one nor the other, and forgetting that the complaints he makes against the existing system show his belief to be that men have neither the wisdom nor the rectitude which his plan requires them to have.

A clear example is provided by the French Revolution. New forms of government and of society were designed in the abstract purity of thought, without any practical experience. These bizarre arrangements, repugnant to ordinary human sensibilities, had to be enforced with bloody and cruel imposition. When such plans failed, their designers were sent to guillotine, and the next wave of would-be social engineers came forth with what they held to be not only a better, but the best plan, oblivious of the predictability which would bring them, too, to the guillotine. Thus radical attempts to fix injustice finally create more injustice.

Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results; and paper social systems similarly affect those who have contemplated the available evidence. How little the men who wrought the French revolution and were chiefly concerned in setting up the new governmental apparatus, dreamt that one of the early actions of this apparatus would be to behead them all!

When "paper constitutions" are purely abstract hypotheses, they are worthless, or nearly so. But when they are the fruit of accumulated experience - when they are produced by the wisdom of several generations - then they are distilled from empirical data, and are the blossom of a tradition which does not enslave, but which rather organically grows. The word 'tradition' in the most pejorative sense can be thought to refer to that which binds and restricts with a mechanistic legalism from the past. But in the best sense, the word 'tradition' is both a vital seed and a fertile ground, bringing forth innovation in a process which incorporates the wisdom of the past and the opportunities of the future.

In this light we see, then, how a magnificent flower of liberty, which resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in the passage of the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution, in the neglected fact that women were given the right to vote in American States and territories starting in 1869, and in the passage of the 19th amendment which confirmed that practice decades later, - we see how this flower blossomed, rooted as it was in the Magna Carta of 1215, in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and in the Declaration of Independence of 1776. These liberties did not suddenly burst forth ex nihilo, but rather grew. Their durability, in contrast to the fleeting nightmare which was the French Revolution, manifests the stability of their rootedness.

When legislation is proposed as "urgent," one must hesitate. No passage of a new education policy, energy policy, fiscal policy, or other proposal is so pressing that it is to be viewed as an emergency. In real life, real people are constantly making numerous decisions in real time. This ensures a responsive and timely way to adjust to circumstances when speedy responses are needed. A legislature is not real life, its members are functioning as parliamentarians, not as individual private citizens, and its legislations cannot be, and do not need to be, in real time. Haste makes waste. Legislation passed in haste is soon regretted.

The Coming Slavery: Herbert Spencer

Born in England in 1820, Herbert Spencer has gotten both attention and controversy since the publication of his first book in 1850. Seen by some as a villain, responsible for the pernicious set of views bundled together under the title 'Social Darwinism,' he is seen by others as a liberal or libertarian hero. Both the condemnation and the praise may be a bit off target. Far from the heartlessness suggested by the label of Social Darwinism, Spencer advocated altruism as a duty; while a 'liberal' is the classical Lockean sense, he was certainly not a socialist, but rather advocated for a laissez-faire type of free-market economy.

One of his more famous books is actually a compilation of independently-written essays, packaged together under the title The Man Versus the State. Spencer had written each of the essays previously, and had published each of them separately in periodicals. Their juxtaposition as single book is therefore somewhat misleading, and in fact, various editions of the book contain different sets of essays, so that one may find two quite different books if one obtains two different editions of The Man Versus the State.

It is worth stressing that the word 'liberal' has meant very different things, even mutually exclusive things, over the course of time. Recall that Adam Smith, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill were all understood as liberals, yet represented very different lines of thought, and that all three of them, in addition to differing from each other, differ greatly from twenty-first century American politicians who are liberals; those American politicians, in turn, differ from British liberal politicians of the same era.

Spencer proposed that, as the atoms from which society is constructed, individuals of good character would form societies which promoted justice and welfare. If the individuals did not have good character, the society would not, and could not, enjoy justice and welfare. Good character, in turn, results from social structures, not from governmental institutions or regulations. Spencer viewed those proposals, advanced by socialists and liberals during the second half of the nineteenth century, as vain and useless illusions. Legislation would not improve the character of the individual human, and without such character, society will not improve. Spencer wrote:

There seems no getting people to accept the truth, which nevertheless is conspicuous enough, that the welfare of a society and the justice of its arrangements are at bottom dependent on the characters of its members; and that improvement in neither can take place without that improvement in character which results from carrying on peaceful industry under the restraints imposed by an orderly social life. The belief, not only of the socialists but also of those so-called Liberals who are diligently preparing the way for them, is that by due skill an ill-working humanity may be framed into well-working institutions. It is a delusion. The defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts.

Note that Spencer, although himself a liberal in one sense of the word, is opposing those who are calling themselves liberal in a different sense of the word, and who have used that word in fact as the name of their political party. Spencer sees that if the socialist trend succeeds in creating the command economy, the state ownership of property, and the regulatory bureaucracy it desires, that personal freedom will disappear along with the right of ownership.

The larger the regulatory apparatus, the more power is directed to the leaders of government, instead of to the voters. This creates the opportunity and the temptation for such leaders to amass more power to themselves, instead of protecting the individual voter's powers. As the complexity of the bureaucracy increases, any sort of senatorial discussion becomes ensnared in endless details, among which can hide plots for centralizing power in the hands of a sort of oligarchy among the government's technocrats - whereby the 'technology' in 'technocrat' is not confined to electronics and physical machinery, but rather includes also the techniques of manipulating complex legislative and bureaucratic processes.

The urge to nationalization - to the government's confiscation and ownership of property, with minimal or no compensation to the rightful owners - will become irresistible, inasmuch as such ownership would finalize control over means of production, of transportation, and of communication. In the mind of the socialist, this would allow the government to make more "progress" in terms of redesigning the economy - hence the term 'progressive' - redesigning the economy in ways which are allegedly better for everyone, but in ways which would inevitably limit and reduce individual liberty. In the name of getting a bit closer to some imagined utopia, personal freedom is sacrificed: but in the process, one has gotten closer to nothing, because the socialist paradise does not exist; or rather, one has gotten closer to the next governmental demand for the citizen to surrender yet one more bit of his liberty.

The concrete example, in Spencer's case, is the railroad system in Britain. Developed, funded, and built entirely with private-sector funds, it had materially benefitted everyone. One need not ride the train, or send freight by means of it, to enjoy the economic benefits which it bestowed upon England. Yet the socialists demanded that the government should seize the railroads, and exclusively own and operate them.

Although the nationalization of the railroads had not yet happened when he wrote, Spencer foresaw that the socialists would look for crucial points in time, when the crisis of the moment would cause the public, which otherwise retained a bit of wisdom, to consent to nationalization. After Spencer's time, the British government did indeed go on a streak of nationalizing various industries, using wars and economic downturns as those moments to attack. In 1916, the beverage industry was nationalized; in 1942, the electrical generating utilities; and in 1948, the railroads.

A disciplined army of civil officials, like an army of military officials, gives supreme power to its head — a power which has often led to usurpation, as in medieval Europe and still more in Japan — nay, has thus so led among our neighbours, within our own times. The recent confessions of M. de Maupas have shown how readily a constitutional head, elected and trusted by the whole people, may, with the aid of a few unscrupulous confederates, paralyse the representative body and make himself autocrat. That those who rose to power in a socialistic organization would not scruple to carry out their aims at all costs, we have good reason for concluding. When we find that shareholders who, sometimes gaining but often losing, have made that railway-system by which national prosperity has been so greatly increased, are spoken of by the council of the Democratic Federation as having "laid hands" on the means of communication, we may infer that those who directed a socialistic administration might interpret with extreme perversity the claims of individuals and classes under their control. And when, further, we find members of this same council urging that the State should take possession of the railways, "with or without compensation," we may suspect that the heads of the ideal society desired, would be but little deterred by considerations of equity from pursuing whatever policy they thought needful: a policy which would always be one identified with their own supremacy. It would need but a war with an adjacent society, or some internal discontent demanding forcible suppression, to at once transform a socialistic administration into a grinding tyranny like that of ancient Peru; under which the mass of the people, controlled by grades of officials, and leading lives that were inspected out-of-doors and in-doors, laboured for the support of the organization which regulated them, and were left with but a bare subsistence for themselves. And then would be completely revived, under a different form, that régime of status — that system of compulsory cooperation.

Spencer accurately predicted the aggressiveness with which the government would seize private property. He would have been encouraged to learn that, starting in 1993, the railways began to be privatized; the British government sold them off in bits. The was done under the leadership of Prime Minister John Major of the Conservative Party, who was following the pattern set by his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher. Perhaps most surprisingly, Major's privatization of the railroads was continued by his successor from the Labor Party, Tony Blair. Thus the Labor Party that nationalized the trains in 1948 under the leadership of Clement Attlee would be the same Labor Party that finished the privatization process between 1997 and 2003 under Tony Blair.