Demanding the Impossible. Peter Marshall
individuality and diversity as good in themselves, and encouraged eccentricity and different ‘experiments of living’.8
Making a distinction between self- and other-regarding actions, Mill argues that ‘self-protection’, either individual or collective, is the only legitimate reason for coercing anyone into doing something he or she does not want to do. People should only be interfered with when they intend definite harm or suffering to others; their own good does not offer sufficient grounds. We all have a right to be left alone: ‘Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.’9
Mill presents human beings as self-reliant and capable of responding to rational argument On these grounds, he opposed ‘a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.’10 All this is admirably libertarian.
Although Mill often appears almost anarchistic, ultimately he remains, like Humboldt, in the liberal camp. He advocated women’s suffrage and argued for proportional representation for minority voices. He was opposed to excessive regulation and centralization. He wanted to restrict government to the regulation of contracts and provision of public works. Yet in arguing his case for representative government, he called for plural voting in which the educated would have more votes than the ignorant. Above all, he followed Rousseau in arguing that ‘Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,’ thereby justifying colonial rule.11
It is Mill’s belief in the guiding role of an intellectual elite which prevents him from being regarded as an anarchist. He may have been a great libertarian in his defence of the freedoms of thought, expression and individuality, but he frequently stresses the need for intellectual authority rather than ‘intellectual anarchy’.12 He often pictured the happy society as one in which the people are voluntarily led by an elite of wise guardians. In the long run, the elitist in Mill gets the better of the democrat and the libertarian.
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer, a father of modern sociology, developed a very different organic and evolutionary philosophy from Mill’s, but he shared the same concern for individual freedom and fear of excessive government. In two classics of Victorian political thought, Social Statics (1851) and The Man versus The State (1884), he took up the defence of individuality and severely restricted the legitimate limits of the State. They were sufficiently libertarian to impress Kropotkin, who suggested that he had arrived at the same conclusions as Proudhon and Bakunin; and Emma Goldman, who thought that Spencer’s formulation of liberty was the most important on the subject.13
Spencer tried like his contemporary Social Darwinists to ground his moral and political beliefs in a philosophy of nature. He was one of the first to apply Darwin’s theory of natural evolution to social life and coined the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’. In his view, just as in nature the ‘fittest’ survive in the struggle for existence, so in society competition enables the best to emerge. But where Darwin defined the ‘fittest’ to be those most adapted to their environment, Spencer saw fitness in terms of the most successful individuals. The fittest societies are those of the fittest individuals.
At the same time, Spencer argued that societies operate like living organisms, growing more complex as their parts become more mutually dependent. Since they are inherently self-equilibrating, they need the struggles of their members for their further evolution. But where struggle took a military form in feudal society, Spencer would like to see the combination of competition and co-operation prevalent in industrial society take its place. In addition, he was confident that evolution operated as a kind of ‘invisible hand’ transforming private interest into the general good.14 The long term direction of evolution was from egotism to altruism. In the process, social life would achieve the greatest development of individuality together with the greatest degree of sociability.
Drawing on contemporary anthropology, Spencer argued like Kropotkin that societies originally regulated their affairs by custom. On the other hand, ‘Government is begotten of aggression and by aggression.’15 A state of war established the authority of a chief who eventually developed into a king. Subsequent history was the record of aggressive war between States, and of class war within States. While all progress has depended on the efforts of individuals to achieve their private ends, governments have always thwarted the growth of society and never been able to enhance it. Rather than establishing rights, as Bentham argued, governments have merely recognized existing claims, especially the claim to property. Spencer concludes from all this that the future function of true liberalism will be that of ‘putting a limit to the power of Parliaments’.16 Like Mill, but from his own evolutionary perspective, he prophesized ‘that form of society towards which we are progressing’ is ‘one in which government will be reduced to the smallest amount possible, and freedom increased to the greatest amount possible.’17
Spencer was equally critical of the socialism and liberalism of his day. He was hostile to representative government which he considered inferior to monarchical government because it results in the tyranny of the majority, the triumph of mediocrity, and inefficiency of administration. It is best only for securing justice, and worst for all other purposes.18 The power of parliaments should therefore be restricted: ‘The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments.’19
As for socialism, which he knew in its Marxist form via H. M. Hyndman, Spencer declared that ‘all socialism involves slavery’. The essence of slavery is to make everything a possession; under socialism the citizen becomes owned by the State:
Judge what must under such conditions become the despotism of a graduated and centralized officialism, holding in its hands the resources of the community, and having behind it whatever amount of force it finds requisite to carry out its decrees and maintain what it calls order. Well may Prince Bismarck display leanings towards State-socialism.20
Spencer considered existing societies to be of ‘the semi-militant semi-industrial type’, whereas genuine freedom could only exist in an industrial society based on voluntary co-operation and competition. The socialists however wanted to recreate a military society based on compulsory cooperation. If they got their way, the ultimate result would be like the rigid and tyrannical society of ancient Peru.21
Spencer’s criticisms of existing liberalism and socialism were made, like Mill’s, from the point of view of individual freedom. In his political theory, he consistently opposed what he called ‘Over-Legislation‘(1853), so much so that T. H. Huxley accused him of ‘Administrative Nihilism’.22 In reply, Spencer claimed that the term might apply to Humboldt, whom he had never read, but certainly not to him.23 Nevertheless, Spencer looked to a society in which laissez-faire, economic competition, voluntary co-operation, and the division of labour would ensure autonomy and general well-being.
But although Spencer pitches the individual against the State, he does not call for its abolition. As Kropotkin observed, he does not endorse all the conclusions about government which ought to be drawn from his system of philosophy.24