Herbert Spencer

 As I mentioned before I do think it is important to read, or at least read about, people with whom you do not agree with. The important thing is to work out why you disagree. Then you not only have arguments against that point of view, but you may also have refined your own position.

It seems unlikely that these days, many people will have heard of Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903), but he was a very well known, appreciated, and widely read political philosopher in the Nineteenth Century. His life was actually fairly unremarkable, except for his writings. He lived in an England which was rapidly industrializing, and in which scientific ideas, particularly about evolution, were becoming widely disseminated and discussed.

The interest in Spencer’s writing seems to come mostly from the political right in the United States. One of his key ideas is that of ‘small government’, that is, that government should only undertake those activities which provide minimal standards of justice and peace for the citizens of a country. Immediately, I suspect, most of us liberal post-moderns detect a problem here, in that what these minimal standards might be is a matter of dispute. What exactly, is the government’s role in, say, healthcare, the administration of justice and control of the market, let alone ensuring that no-one actually starves.

Spencer actually seemed to believe that society evolved from ancient anarchy, through agrarian city-state, into feudalism and thence to industrialism. This latter, the emerging -ism of Spencer’s age, was the highest point and, Spencer believed, required the minimum of government intervention. Everything within an industrial society is determined by private contract. Thus, I agree to provide my labour in exchange for a fair day's pay.

We can immediately observe another hole in Spencer’s idea. Why should someone agree to pay me a fair day's pay? If I am in need, I will work for less than that just to provide something. The playing field is not as level as Spencer seems to imagine. Even in a job-rich market, my own situation may not enable me to obtain a fair days pay for my labour. Furthermore, in Spencer’s world, important aspects of employment, such as health and safety rules, may not be covered. If it is up to me and the private contract I sign with an employer, then things like expensive equipment to keep the workforce safe may well be ignored. I need a job; the longer-term impact on my health may not be paramount in my mind, or, indeed, anything I have thought about.

Even in Victorian times, government did act to preserve people’s health and wellbeing. Children were prevented from working from a young age, and, eventually, education was made compulsory. Sewage systems were improved and working conditions were also made better for many workers. This is not to say, of course, that most employers were actively trying to harm their workforces, but many were trying to maximise profit. Human nature is such that maximising profit is going to harm someone, often the workers, and now, we are painfully aware (even if we do not seem to want to do much about it) of the environment. The role of government is bigger now than it was under Victoria; the world is more complex and we have at least perceived that it is much more interlinked than Spencer’s generation thought.

Spencer, essentially, had hope in progress. Technological progress had brought about the modern industrial society, with its opportunities for raising people’s standards of living if they were hard-working and diligent. Moral progress, such that those with power (e.g. employers) would not misuse that power for their own gain, seems to have been rather assumed. The whole age seemed to be buoyed up by the idea that human progress would make the world perfect. In a sense, this is a reflection of Marx, of course.

The problem with human progress is that it is all too human. We are finite and are possibilities are also limited. We cannot see the big picture; too often we act for our short term interests, whatever they might be. It is possible to argue that the idea of progress, which began with the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, or possibly with the Ancient Greeks, died on the battlefield of The Somme. If not there, then perhaps the concept of industry saying the world should have expired with the Concentration Camps and Gulags of the Twentieth Century, let alone the prospect of nuclear and environmental catastrophe.

Spencer, therefore, is mostly out of fashion. The activities of governments in the 1930s and subsequently, of using public finance to get economies going and provide employment, are the antitheses of Spencer’s small-government ideas. That does not mean they have entirely gone away, of course. Classical liberalism is alive and well in the views of F. A. Von Hayek, at least, and his ideas are influential, at least in a section of the right-wing political spectrum. The problem is, it seems to me, that classical liberalism of Spencer’s brand fails to deal with humanity as it is.

If we place a theological cast over anthropology, we find the idea of sin and, perhaps most pointedly, original sin. As noted above, even the most secular atheist has to accept that we are finite beings with a limited viewpoint and knowledge. This is also what the concept of sin implies: we act in partial ignorance for our own limited aims, which are themselves not necessarily in fact for our own good. This should give us pause for thought in considering Spencer’s views. His ignoring of the structures of power inherent in an industrial society seems to me to doom his project to failure. The employer can call the shots unless the workers have some protection from the government, union, society, or (the most unreliable of all) the benevolence of the said employer.

Except with a smallish slice of thinkers, Spencer’s ideas are out of fashion. Perhaps it is an important activity, however, to engage at least a little with them. Firstly, they are a right-wing equivalent of Marx, it seems to me, bourne out of a rapidly industrialising ‘age of progress’. As such they are of historical interest but also, secondly something of a warning as to how political philosophy can, ultimately, albeit accidentally, justify all sorts of abuse of the well-being of our fellow humans and our planet.