Herbert Spencer Readings – Part 2

[Two readings: From Herbert Spencer, “The Right to Ignore the State”; and from Ronald F. Cooney, “Herbert Spencer: Apostle of Freedom.”]

The Right to Ignore the State

by Herbert Spencer (1802-1903)

Herbert Spencer was an incredible prophet and a magnificent defender of laissez-faire. Among his numerous works is The Man Versus The State, first published in 1884. That book launched one of the most spirited attacks on statism ever written. He ridiculed the idea that government intervention of any kind "will work as it is intended to work, which it never does." He drew on his tremendous knowledge of history, citing one dramatic case after another of price controls, usury laws, slum clearance laws, and myriad other laws which, touted as compassionate policies, intensified human misery. Below is one of his essays that explores the principles of self-government, which Henry David Thoreau defended in his seminal essay, Civil Disobedience.

[beginning selection]

The Right to Ignore the State

1. The Right to Voluntary Outlawry

As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state—to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying toward its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment—a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.

2. The Immorality of the State

"No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blackstone¹, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty, that is, less government, as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil; but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters, are instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is in the abstract wrong. The state employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognize it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law can give no countenance to any thing growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law. Wherefore, legislative authority can never be ethical – it must always be conventional merely.

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From:

“Herbert Spencer: Apostle of Freedom by Ronald F. Cooney

http://www.libertyhaven.com/thinkers/herberspencer/herbertspencer.html

[…]Other Interventions Deplored

Finally, Spencer says the State has no right to educate, to satisfy the mental needs of the population, any more than it has the right to satisfy the population's physical needs through State-run charities. The State may not colonize, since this violates the rights of native peoples, nor can it shoulder the burden for public health, except, interestingly enough, in matters of air and water pollution. Last of all, State action in currency arrangements and postal services are both forbidden as transgressions of the individual's freedom of association and action.

The views which Spencer enunciated in Social Statics changed little throughout the remaining fifty years of his life. The same unwavering devotion to individual liberty, the same unflagging espousal of freedom that marked that book can be found in The Man vs. The State, Spencer's second important work of political philosophy.

Although the ultimate intent of The Man vs. The State is the same as Social Statics, the approach is somewhat different. Spencer always referred to himself as a liberal and to his philosophy of government as liberalism. He was speaking, of course, of classical liberalism, of the liberalism exemplified by men like John Locke. About 1860, liberalism of the type that Locke represented underwent a fundamental change. No longer content with merely overseeing a negative government which allowed a broad area for personal freedom, the Liberal party in England forsook its guiding ideals to wholly embrace State intervention. Spencer himself never wearied of pointing out to these "new" liberals how far they had strayed from true liberalism, and how greatly their notion of liberalism differed from his own. A sizable part of the lesson he read to the liberals of his time, that the so called liberals of the present would do well to ponder, is The Man vs. The State.

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