The Man vs the State, with six essays on Government, Society and Freedom, by Herbert Spencer
The edition used, Man vs the State, with six essays on Government, Society and Freedom, edited by Eric Mack, and with an introduction by Albert J. Nock
This volume contains the four essays that Spencer published as The Man vs. the State in 1884, as well as five essays added by later publishers.
In addition, it provides The Proper Sphere of Government, an important early essay by Spencer.
Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution
of the principle of compulsory cooperation, the statist principle, for the individualist
principle of voluntary cooperation. His theme is that there is in society that beautiful
self-adjusting principle which will keep all its elements in equilibrium, the attempt to
To regulate all the actions of a community by legislation will entail little else but
misery and compulsion.
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The Man v. the State by Herbert Spencer was originally published in 1884 by Williams and
Norgate, London and Edinburgh.
The book consisted of four articles which had been published in Contemporary Review
for February, April, May, June and July of 1884. For collection in book form, Spencer
added a preface and a postscript. In 1892, the book was reissued with the edition of
a few notes in reply to criticism of the first edition. This Liberty Fund edition contains
The Man vs. the State was maintained in print for many years in various editions. In 1892,
an edition was issued in the United States by D. Appleton and Company. In 1940, one was
issued in Great Britain as part of the Thinker's Library. Two editions have circulated in the
in the United States in the last forty years. In 1940, Caxton Printers Limited of Caldwell, Idaho, issued an edition with an introduction by Albert J. Nock. In this edition, two more essays, Over Legislation and From Freedom to Bondage, were added to the original four.
In 1969, Penguin Books issued an edition with an introduction by Donald McCrae. In this
edition, From Freedom to Bondage was also included along with three other essays, The
Social Organism, Representative Government, What Is It Good For?, and Specialized Administration.
For this Liberty Fund edition, we have included the introduction by Nock. In addition, we
We have printed in a separate section the five essays included in either the Caxton
or Penguin editions. Following in the tradition of these earlier publishers, we have also added
an essay, The Proper Sphere of Government, which has not, to our knowledge, been reprinted
in any book for over one hundred years. Data on original publication are provided at the
The beginning of each essay.