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Spencer and the Liberal Idea of Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Richard P. Hiskes
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Extract

As the originator of the term, “survival of the fittest,” Herbert Spencer has come to symbolize the harsh excesses of the liberal state. This unflattering portrait emanates from two sources. First, Spencer's political ideas read like a handbook for doctrinaire libertarians: maximum liberty for the individual, unrestrained pursuit of self-interest, and minimum governmental interference. Second, Spencer's theory of social evolution in his eyes grants his political ideas scientific validity, but it also presents those ideas in a most inhumane and anticommunitarian light. And yet, in an obscure editorial in the Times, this apologist for only the “most fit” of evolutionary forms writes of the “horribly cruel practice of boiling lobsters alive.” Suggesting a more humane method of killing these primitive creatures, Spencer concludes true to form that “legislative coercion is not needful to enforce adoption of this method.” Rather, consumers of lobster should form a voluntary organization aimed at boycotting lobsters not treated according to his humanitarian proposal.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 1983 , pp. 595 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1983

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References

1 Spencer, Herbert, “An Inhumanity,” Various Fragments (New York & London, 1910), pp. 248–249.Google Scholar

2 Particularly noteworthy as a Spencerian critic was Spencer's contemporary Lester Ward, who in many works assailed Spencer's sociological theories. For a review of Ward's critique, see Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought (New York, 1944), chap. 4.Google Scholar

3 Huxley, T. H., Fortnightly Review, 16 (1871), 534Google Scholar. Cited in Simon, Walter M., “Herbert Spencer and the ‘Social Organism,’” Journal of the History of Ideas, 21 (1960), 294–299CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Spencer, of course, was aware of Huxley's criticism and responded to it specifically in a short essay entitled Specialized Administration. For a discussion of this exchange, and of the amendments to his notion of social organicism which Spencer made, see Nicholls, David, “Positive Liberty, 1880–1914,” American Political Science Review, 56 (03 1962), 114–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hiskes, Richard P., Community Without Coercion (Newark, 1982), chap. 2.Google Scholar

4 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York, 1979), pp. 32–33Google Scholar. Obviously, Nozick also voices objections to the notion of the social organism which rest on moral grounds rather than empirical.

5 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 80.

6 Spencer, Herbert, “The Social Organism,” The Man Versus the State, ed. Macrae, T. (Baltimore, 1969), p. 198.Google Scholar

7 Spencer, Herbert, The Study of Sociology (London, 1873), p. 59.Google Scholar

8 Spencer, Herbert, The Principles of Sociology (London, 1876), 1, pt. 2, p. 613.Google Scholar

9 Spencer, Herbert, Social Statics (New York, 1910), pp. 60Google Scholar; 366–67. See also Hofstadter's discussion of moral evolution of individuals, Social Darwinism, p. 39, passim.

10 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 17.

11 Ibid., p. 266. Spencer's use of the neutral-sounding term adaptation to describe the evolution of human conscience should not be interpreted as a retreat by Spencer from his oft-repeated assertion that evolution connotes and demands moral development. As stated before, this is a proof of Spencer's liberalism: a faith in the gradual moral improvement of the species through the natural interaction of evolutionary forces.

12 Ibid., p. 294.

13 Spencer, Herbert, First Principles, 6th ed. (London, 1904), p. 291Google Scholar. The term coherent heterogeneity in some ways sums up Spencer's emphases on both community and individuality. The community is coherent, or recognizable as a single unit, yet its individual components remain distinguishable and important. For an intriguing interpretation and update of this notion, and for a reading of its place in contemporary evolutionary theory, see Corning, Peter A., “A Synopsis of a General Theory of Politics” (Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1981).Google Scholar

14 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 396.

15 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 37.

16 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 408.

17 Spencer, Man Versus the State, p. 174. Spencer views self-interest in this regard in a curiously shortsighted fashion for a theorist of evolution. The interests to be maximized through voluntary cooperation are primarily economic and materialistic, though, as will become clear, altruism also plays an important role. Still, if it is too much to ask that he portray self-interest as reproductive fitness (inclusive or otherwise), it should not be too much to demand that incentives for cooperation should include long-range plans or goals. These seem to be sadly lacking as reasons for the initial motivation to cooperate voluntarily.

18 Ibid., p. 157. This is a common criticism of contract theory, and was even in Spencer's time. For a much ignored but trenchant version of this argument, and an application of it to the American Constitution, see Spooner, Lysander, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, reprinted by Ralph Myles Publishers, Inc., Colorado Springs, 1973.Google Scholar

19 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 35. This quotation also formulates the grounds upon which Spencer contends his view of social evolution is not harsh or cruel. As moral ideas and relationships evolve (always and ever to a higher plane of concern for others), outdated ideas of discrimination or abuse of others are exposed as anachronisms of such viciousness that to act according to them would result in the “continual searing of men's consciences.”

20 Wolff, Robert Paul, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston, 1968), chap. 5.Google Scholar

21 See, for example, Wolff, Poverty of Liberalism; Friedrich, Carl, ed., Community (Nomos II) (New York, 1959)Google Scholar; Gusfield, Joseph, Community (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Plant, Raymond, Community and Ideology (London, 1974)Google Scholar; and Richard P. Hiskes, Community Without Coercion.

22 See Nagel, Thomas, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar, for a discussion of this point. Nagel considers altruism in the conventional, normative mode, not in the more recent context of evolutionary theory. See also, Wolff, Poverty of Liberalism.

23 An optimism not shared by some political theorists who looked to Spencer tor intellectual inspiration such as William Graham Sumner, and other American Social Darwinists. See Hofstadter, Social Darwinism.

24 Spencer, “Evolutionary Ethics,” Various Fragments, p. 128.

25 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 60.

26 Spencer, “Social Evolution and Social Duty,” Various Fragments, pp. 133–34. Naturally, Spencer's conception of altruism is the conventional one: as a motivation and relationship of normative or moral nature. That he does not construe it as modern evolutionary theory does, for example, as Trivers's “reciprocal altruism” (“The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology [1971], pp. 35–54., is a primary point of distinction between Spencer's evolutionary theory and contemporary (also Darwin's) theories.

27 Spencer, “Evolutionary Ethics,” p. 124.

28 Spencer, “Social Evolution and Social Duty,” p. 132.

29 Spencer, “Evolutionary Ethics,” p. 123.

30 Ibid., p. 128. See note 19. It is certainly true that Spencer was mystified and not a little discouraged by the reception his ideas received. It is arguable that this negative reception is primarily founded upon misperceptions concerning his ideas. See for example Smith, George H., “Herbert Spencer's Theory of Causation,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 5 (Spring 1981), 113–152Google Scholar. and Smith, George H., “Liberty's Heritage: Will the Real Herbert Spencer Please Stand Up?” Libertarian Review (12 1978), 14–18.Google Scholar

31 Tawney, R. H., Equality (London, 1952), p. 186.Google Scholar

32 Spencer, “Evolutionary Ethics,” p. 126. Here Spencer turns the criticism usually aimed at his political views on those, such as Huxley, who refused to believe that freedom could coexist with community in the fullest sense. To find him attacking any form of laissez-faire is often held to be either contradictory, or at least surprising. The aim of this paper has been to point out the error in that assertion, one that is still unfortunately alive in contemporary political theory.