The Man vs. the State by Herbert Spencer
The Coming Slavery
The kinship of pity to love is shown, among other ways, in this, that it idealizes its
object.
Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions.
The feeling which vents itself in, poor fellow, on seeing one in agony, excludes the thought
of Bad Fellow, which might at another time arise. Naturally, then, if the wretched are
unknown or but vaguely known, all the demerits they may have are ignored, and thus it happens
that when the miseries of the poor are dilated upon, they are thought of as the miseries
of the deserving poor instead of being thought of as the miseries of the undeserving poor,
which in large measure they should be. Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets
and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be
all worthy souls, grievously wronged, and none of them are thought of as bearing the
penalties of their misdeeds.
On hailing a cab in a London street, it is surprising how frequently the door is officiously
opened by one who expects to get something for his trouble.
The surprise lessens after counting the many lounges about tavern doors, or after observing
the quickness with which the street performance or procession draws from neighbouring slums
and stable yards a group of idlers. Seeing how numerous they are in every small area,
it becomes manifest that tens of thousands of such swarm through London. They have no
work, you say. Say, rather, that they either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out
of it. They are simply good-for-nothings who in one way or other live on the good-for-somethings.
Is it natural that happiness should be the lot of such? Or is it natural that they should
bring unhappiness on themselves and those connected with them? Is it not manifest that
that there must exist in our midst an immense amount of misery which is a normal result
of misconduct and ought not to be dissociated from it. There is a notion, always more or
less prevalent, and just now vociferously expressed, that all social suffering is removable
and that it is the duty of somebody or other to remove it. Both these beliefs are false.
To separate pain from ill-doing is to fight against the constitution of things and will
will be followed by far more pain. Saving men from the natural penalties of dissolute
living eventually necessitates the infliction of artificial penalties on solitary cells,
on tread-wheels and by the lash. I suppose a dictum on which the current creed and the
creed of science are at one may be considered to have as high authority as can be found.
Well, the command, if any would not work, neither should the he eat, is simply a Christian
and enunciation of that universal law of nature under which life has reached its present height.
The law that a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must die.
The sole difference being that the law which is, in the one case, is to be artificially
enforced is, in the other case, a natural necessity.
And yet this particular tenet of their religion, which science so manifestly justifies, is
the one which Christians seem least inclined to accept.
The current assumption is that there should be no suffering, and that society is to blame
for that which exists.
But surely we are not without responsibilities, even when the suffering is that of the unworthy.
If the meaning of the word we be so expanded as to include with ourselves our ancestors
and especially our ancestral legislators, I agree.
I admit that those who made and modified and administered the old poor law were responsible
for producing an appalling amount of demoralization, which it will take more than one generation
to remove.
I admit, too, the partial responsibility of recent and present lawmakers for regulations
which have brought into being a permanent body of tramps who ramble from union to union,
and also their responsibility for maintaining a constant supply of felons by sending back
convicts into society under such conditions that they are almost compelled again to commit
Crimes.
Moreover, I admit that the philanthropic are not without their share of responsibility,
since that they may aid the offspring of the unworthy, they disadvantage the offspring
of the worthy through burdening their parents by increased local rates.
Nay, I even admit that these swarms of good-for-nothings, fostered and multiplied by public and private
agencies, have, by sundry mischievous meddlings, been made to suffer more than they would otherwise
have suffered. Are these the responsibilities meant? I suspect not. But now, leaving the
question of responsibilities however conceived, and considering only the evil itself, what
shall we say of its treatment? Let me begin with a fact. A late uncle of mine, the Reverend
Thomas Spencer, for some twenty years incumbent of Hinton Charterhouse near Bath, no sooner
Popper entered on his parish duties, then he proved himself anxious for the welfare
of the poor by establishing a school, a library, a clothing club and land allotments, besides
building some model cottages.
Moreover, up to 1833 he was a pauper's friend, always for the pauper against the overseer.
There presently came, however, the debates on the poor law, which impressed him with
the evils of the system then in force.
Though an ardent philanthropist, he was not a timid sentimentalist.
The result was that immediately the new Poor Law was passed, he proceeded to carry out
its provisions in his parish.
Almost universal opposition was encountered by him, not the poor only being his opponents,
but even the farmers on whom came the burden of heavy poor rates.
For, strange to say, their interests had become apparently identified with the maintenance
of this system which taxed them so largely.
The explanation is that there had grown up the practice of paying out of the rates a
part of the wages of each farm servant, make-wages as the sum was called.
And though the farmers contributed most of the fund from which make-wages were paid,
Yet, since all other rate-payers contributed, the farmers seemed to gain by this arrangement.
My uncle, however, not easily deterred, faced all this opposition and enforced the law.
The result was that in two years the rates were reduced from £700 a year to £200 a
year, while the conditions of the parish was greatly improved.
Those who had hitherto loitered at the corners of the streets or at the doors of the beer
So that out of a population of 800, only 15 had to be sent as incapable paupers to the
Bath Union, when that was formed, in place of the 100 who received outdoor relief a short
time before.
If it be said that the £25 telescope which, a few years after his parishioners presented
to my uncle marked the gratitude of the rate-payers only, then my reply is the fact that when
some years later still, having killed himself by overwork in pursuit of popular welfare,
he was taken to Hinton to be buried, the procession which followed him to the grave included not
the well-to-do only, but the poor.
Several motives have prompted this brief narrative.
One is the wish to prove that sympathy with the people and self-sacrificing efforts on
on their behalf do not necessarily imply approval of gratuitous aids. Another is the desire
to show that benefit may result not from the multiplication of artificial appliances to
mitigate distress, but contrary-wise from diminution of them. And a further purpose
I have in view is that of preparing the way for an analogy. Under another form, and in
a different sphere, we are now yearly extending a system which is identical in nature with
with the system of make-wages under the Poor Law.
Little as politicians recognize the fact, it is nevertheless demonstrable that these
various public appliances for working-class comfort, which they are supplying at the cost
of rate-payers, are intrinsically of the same nature as those which, in past times, treated
the farmer's man as half-labourer and half-porper.
In either case, the worker receives in return for what he does money wherewith to buy certain
and the things he wants. While, to procure the rest of them for him, money is furnished
out of a common fund raised by taxes. What matters it whether the things supplied by
ratepayers for nothing, instead of by the employer in payment, are of this kind or of
that kind? The principle is the same. For some's received, let us substitute the commodities
and benefits purchased and then see how the matter stands. In old poor law times the farmer
The farmer gave for work done the equivalent, say, of house rent, bread, clothes and fire,
while the ratepayers practically supplied the man and his family with their shoes, tea,
sugar, candles, a little bacon, etc.
The division is, of course, arbitrary, but unquestionably the farmer and the ratepayers
furnished these things between them.
At the present time, the artisan receives from his employer in wages the equivalent
of the consumable commodities he wants.
While from the public comes satisfaction for others of his needs and desires, at the cost
of rate-payers he has in some cases, and will presently have in more, a house at less than
its commercial value.
For of course when, as in Liverpool, a municipality spends nearly £200,000 in pulling down and
reconstructing low-cost dwellings, and is about to spend as much again, the implication
is that in some way the rate-payers supply the poor with more accommodation than the
The rents they pay would otherwise have bought. The artisan further receives from them in
schooling for his children much more than he pays for, and there is every probability
that he will presently receive it from them gratis. The ratepayers also satisfy what desire
he may have for books and newspapers and comfortable places to read them in. In some cases, too,
as in Manchester, gymnasia for his children of both sexes as well as recreation grounds
are provided. That is to say, he obtains from a fund raised by local taxes certain benefits
beyond those which the sum received for his labor enables him to purchase. The sole difference,
then, between this system and the old system of make-wages is between the kinds of satisfactions
obtained, and this difference does not in the least affect the nature of the arrangement.
Moreover, the two are pervaded by a substantially the same illusion. In the one case, as in
the other, what looks like a gratis benefit is not a gratis benefit. The amount which,
under the old poor law, the half-pauperized labour received from the parish to eke out
his weekly income was not really, as it appeared, a bonus, for it was accompanied by a substantially
equivalent decrease of his wages, as was quickly proved when the system was abolished and the
and the Wages Rose. Just so it is, with these seeming boons received by working people in
towns, I do not refer only to the fact that they are unaware as pay in part through the
raised rents of their dwellings when they are not actual rate-payers, but I refer to
the fact that the wages received by them are, like the wages of the farm-labourer, diminished
Read the accounts coming of late from Lancashire concerning the cotton strikes containing proofs, given by artisans themselves, that the margin of profit is so narrow that the less skillful manufacturers, as well as those with deficient capital, fail, and that the companies of cooperators who compete with them can rarely hold their own. And then, consider what is the implication respecting wages. Among the costs of the private sector,
The interests of production have to be reckoned taxes, general and local. If, as in our large towns, the local rates now amount to one-third of the rental or more, if the employer has to pay this, not on his private dwelling only, but on his business premises, factories, warehouses or the like, it results that the interest on his capital must be diminished by that amount, or the amount must be taken from the wages fund, or partly one and partly the other.
In business and in other businesses has the effect of so keeping down interest that while
some gain, others lose, and not a few are ruined, if capital not getting adequate interest
flows elsewhere and leaves labor unemployed, then it is manifest that the choice for the
artisan under such conditions lies between diminished amount of work and diminished rate
of payment for it.
Moreover, for kindred reasons these local burdens raise the costs of the things he consumes.
The charges made by distributors are, on the average, determined by the current rates of
interest on capital used in distributing businesses. And the extra costs of carrying on such businesses
have to be paid for by extra prices. So that as in the past the rural worker lost in one
in one way what he gained in another, so in the present does the urban worker, there being
too in both cases the loss entailed on him by the cost of administration and the waste
accompanying it.
But what has all this to do with the coming slavery? will perhaps be asked.
Nothing directly, but a good deal indirectly, as we shall see after yet another preliminary
section.
It is said that when railways were first opened in Spain, peasants standing on the tracks
were not infrequently run over, and that the blame fell on the engine drivers for not stopping,
rural experiences having yielded no conception of the momentum of a large mass moving at
a high velocity. The incident is recalled to me on contemplating the ideas of the so-called
practical politician into whose mind there enters no thought of such a thing as political
The Theory of Money and Credit
provided by Encouraging Population, when Mr. Pitt said,
Let us make relief in cases where there are a number of children a matter of right and honor,
instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt.
It was not expected that the poor rates would be quadrupled in fifty years,
that women with many bastards would be preferred as wives to modest women
because of their incomes from the parish,
Legislators who in 1833 voted £30,000 a year to aid in building schoolhouses never
supposed that the step they then took would lead to forced contributions local and general
now amounting to £6 million.
They did not intend to establish a principle that A should be made responsible for educating
B's offspring.
They did not dream of a compulsion which would deprive poor widows of the help of their elder
children, and still less did they dream that their successors, by requiring impoverished
parents to apply to boards of guardians to pay the fees which school boards would not
remit, would initiate a habit of applying to boards of guardians and so cause pauperization.
Neither did those who in 1834 passed an act regulating the labour of women and children
in certain factories, imagine that the system they were beginning would end in the restriction
and inspection of labour in all kinds of producing establishments where more than fifty people
are employed. Nor did they conceive that the inspection provided would grow to the extent
of requiring that before a young person is employed in a factory, authority must be given
by certifying surgeon who, by personal examination to which no limit is placed, has satisfied
himself that there is no incapacitating disease or bodily infirmity, his verdict determining
whether the young person shall earn wages or not. Even less, as I say, does the politician
who plumes himself on the practicalities of his aims conceive the indirect results which
follow the direct results of his measures. Thus, to take a case connected with one named
and above, it was not intended through the system of payment by results to do anything
more than give teachers an efficient stimulus. It was not supposed that in numerous cases
their health would give way under the stimulus. It was not expected that they would be led
to adopt a cramming system and to put undue pressure on dull and weak children, often
to their great injury. It was not foreseen that in many cases a bodily enfeeblement would
would be caused which no amount of grammar and geography can compensate for.
The licensing of public houses was simply for maintaining public order.
Those who devised it never imagined that there would result an organized interest powerfully
influencing elections in an unwholesome way.
Nor did it occur to the practical politicians who provided a compulsory load line for merchant
vessels that the pressure of ship owners' interests would habitually cause the putting
Legislators who, some forty years ago, by Act of Parliament, compelled railway companies
to supply cheap locomotion would have ridiculed the belief, had it been expressed, that eventually
would punish the companies which improved the supply, and yet this was the result to companies which began to carry third-class passengers by fast trains, since a penalty to the amount of the passenger duty was inflicted on them for every third-class passenger so carried.
To which instance concerning railways, I had a far more striking one disclosed by comparing the railway policies of England and France.
The lawmakers who provided for the ultimate lapsing of French railways to the State never
conceived the possibility that inferior travelling facilities would result, did not foresee that
reluctance to depreciate the value of property eventually coming to the State would negative
the authorisation of competing lines, and that in the absence of competing lines locomotion
would be relatively costly, slow and infrequent. For, as Sir Thomas Farrar has already shown,
The traveller in England has great advantages over the French traveller in the economy,
swiftness and frequency with which his journeys can be made.
But the practical politician, who in spite of such experiences repeated generation after
generation goes on thinking only of proximate results, naturally never thinks of results
still more remote, still more general, and still more important than those just exemplified.
To repeat the metaphor used above, he never asks whether the political momentum set up
by his measure, in some cases decreasing, but in other cases greatly increasing, will
or will not have the same general direction with other-like momenta, and whether it may
not join them in presently producing an aggregate energy working changes never thought of, dwelling
only on the effects of his particular stream of legislation and not observing how such
or to leave figures for a more literal statement, he is unconscious of the truth that he is helping to form a certain type of social organization, and that kindred measures affecting kindred changes of organization tend with ever-increasing force to make them better.
Until, passing a certain point, the proclivity towards it becomes irresistible.
Just as each society aims, when possible, to produce in other societies a structure
akin to its own, just as among the Greeks the Spartans and the Athenians struggled to
spread their respective political institutions, or as, at the time of the French Revolution,
the European absolute monarchies aimed to re-establish absolute monarchy in France while
While the republic encouraged the formation of other republics, so within every society
each species of structure tends to propagate itself.
Just as the system of voluntary cooperation by companies, associations, unions to achieve
business ends and other ends spreads throughout a community, so does the antagonistic system
of compulsory cooperation under state agencies spread, and the larger becomes its extension,
The more power of spreading it gets.
The question of questions for the politician should ever be,
what type of social structure am I intending to produce?
But this is a question he never entertains.
Hence we will entertain it for him.
Let us now observe the general course of recent changes
with the accompanying current of ideas and see where they are carrying us.
The blank form of an inquiry daily made is, We have already done this, why should we not
do that?
And the regard for precedents suggested by it is ever pushing on regulative legislation.
Having had brought within their sphere of operation more and more numerous businesses,
the acts restricting hours of employment and dictating the treatment of workers are now
to be made applicable to shops.
From inspecting lodging houses to limit to the number of occupants and enforce sanitary
conditions, we have passed to inspecting all houses below a certain rent in which there
are members of more than one family, and are now passing to a kindred inspection of all
small houses. The buying and working of telegraphs by the state is made a reason for urging that
the state should buy and work the railways. Supplying children with food for their minds
by public agency is being followed in some cases by supplying food for their bodies,
And after the practice has been made gradually more general, we may anticipate that the supply
now proposed to be made gratis in the one case will eventually be proposed to be made
gratis in the other.
The argument that good bodies as well as good minds are needful to make good citizens being
logically urged as the reason for the extension.
And then, avowedly proceeding on the precedents furnished by the church, the school and the
not precedent only prompts this spread, but also the necessity which arises for supplementing
ineffective measures and for dealing with the artificial easels continually caused.
Failure does not destroy faith in the agencies employed, but merely suggests more stringent
changes in the system.
Failure does not destroy faith in the agencies employed, but merely suggests more stringent
changes in the system.
Laws to check intemperance, beginning in early times and coming down to our own times, not having done what was expected, there come demands for more thoroughgoing laws, locally preventing the sale altogether, and here, as in America, there will doubtless be followed by demands that prevention shall be made universal.
All the many appliances for stamping out epidemic diseases not having succeeded in preventing
outbreaks of smallpox, fevers and the like, a further remedy is applied for in the shape
of police power to search houses for diseased persons and authority for medical officers
to examine anyone they think fit to see whether he is or she is suffering from an infectious
or contagious malady.
The habits of improvidence having for generations been cultivated by the poor law, and the improvident enabled to multiply, the evils produced by a compulsory charity are now proposed to be met by compulsory insurance.
The extension of this policy, causing extension of corresponding ideas, fosters everywhere the tacit assumption that government should step in whenever anything is not going right.
Surely you would not have this misery continue, exclaims someone, if you hint a demurrer to much that is now being said and done.
Observe what is implied by this exclamation. It takes for granted first that all suffering ought to be prevented, which is not true. Much of the suffering is curative and prevention of its prevention of a remedy.
In the second place it takes for granted that every evil can be removed, the truth being
that with the existing defects of human nature many evils can only be thrust out of one place
or form into another place or form, often being increased by the change. The exclamation
also implies the unhesitating belief, here especially concerning us, that evils of all
All kinds should be dealt with by the State. There does not occur the inquiry whether there
are at work other agencies capable of dealing with evils, and whether the evils in question
may not be among those which are best dealt with by these other agencies. And obviously,
the more numerous governmental interventions become, the more confirmed does this habit
of thought grow, and the more loud and perpetual the demands for intervention. Every extension
Extension of the regulative policy involves an addition to the regulative agents, a further
growth of officialism and an increasing power of the organization formed of officials. Take
a pair of scales with many shot in one and a few in the other. Lift shot after shot out
of the loaded scale and put it onto the unloaded scale. Presently you will produce a balance,
and if you go on the position of the scales will be reversed. Supposed the beam to be
The theory of money is to be unequally divided and let the likely loaded scale be at the end of the very long arm.
Then the transfer of each shot producing a much greater effect will far sooner bring about a change of position.
I used the figure to illustrate what results from transferring one individual after another from the regulated mass of the community to the regulating structures.
The transfer weakens the one and strengthens the other in a far greater degree than is
implied by the relative change of numbers. A comparatively small body of officials, coherent,
having common interests and acting under central authority, has an immense advantage over an
incoherent public which has no settled policy, and can be brought to act unitedly only under
strong provocation. Hence an organization of officials, once passing a certain stage
The age of growth becomes less and less resistible, as we shall see in the bureaucracies of the continent.
Not only does the power of resistance of the regulated part decrease in a geometrical ratio
as the regulating part increases, but the private interests of many in the regulated
part itself make the change of ratio still more rapid.
In every circle, conversations show that now, when the passing of competitive examinations
When a business renders them eligible for the public service, youth are being educated
in such ways that they may pass them and get employment under government. One consequence
is that men who might otherwise reprobate further growth of officialism are led to look
on it with tolerance, if not favorably, as offering possible careers for those dependent
on them and those related to them. Anyone who remembers the number of upper-class and
and middle-class families anxious to place their children, will see that no small encouragement
to the spread of legislative control is now coming from those who, but for the personal
interest thus arising, would be hostile to it.
This pressing desire for careers is enforced by the preference for careers which are thought
respectable.
Even should his salary be small, his occupation will be that of a gentleman, thinks the father,
The Prevalent Ambition with a Young Frenchman is to get some small official post in his locality, to rise thence to a place in the local centre of government, and finally to reach some head office in Paris.
And in Russia, where that University of State regulation which characterizes the militant
type of society has been carried furthest, we see this ambition pushed to its extreme.
Says Mr. Wallace, quoting a passage from a play,
All men, even shopkeepers and cobblers, aim at becoming officers, and the man who has
passed his whole life without official rank seems to be not a human being.
These various influences working from above downwards meet with an increasing response
of re-expectations and solicitations proceeding from below upwards.
The hard-worked and over-burdened who form the great majority, and still more the incapables
perpetually helped, who are ever led to look for more help, are ready supporters of schemes
which promise them this or the other benefit of State agency, and ready believers of those
Those who tell them that such benefits can be given, and ought to be given.
They listen with eager faith to all builders of political air castles, from Oxford graduates
down to Irish irreconcilables, and every additional tax-supported appliance for their welfare raises
hopes of further ones.
Indeed, the more numerous public instrumentalities become, the more is there generated in citizens
is the notion that everything is to be done for them and nothing by them.
Each generation is made less familiar with the attainment of desired ends by individual
actions or private combinations and more familiar with the attainment of them by governmental
agencies until, eventually, governmental agencies come to be thought of as the only available
agencies.
This result was well shown in the recent Trades Union Congress at Paris.
The English delegates reporting to their constituents said that between themselves and their foreign
colleagues, the point of difference was the extent to which the state should be asked
to protect labor, reference being thus made to the fact conspicuous in the reports of
the proceedings that the French delegates always invoked governmental power as the only
means of satisfying their wishes.
The diffusion of education has worked and will work still more in the same direction.
We must educate our masters, is the well-known saying of a liberal who opposed the last extension
of the franchise.
Yes, if the education were worthy to be so called, and were relevant to the political
enlightenment needed, much might be hoped from it.
But knowing rules of syntax, being able to add up correctly, having geographical information
and a memory stocked with the dates of kings' accessions and generals' victories, no more
More implies fitness to form political conclusions than acquirement of skill in drawing implies
correctness in telegraphing, or than ability to play cricket implies proficiency on the
violin.
Surely, rejoins someone, facility in reading opens the way to political knowledge.
Doubtless, but will the way be followed?
Table-talk proves that nine out of ten people read what amuses them rather than what instructs
that popular education results in an extensive reading of publications which foster pleasant illusions rather than those which insist on hard penalties is beyond question, says a mechanic writing in the Palm Al-Gazette of 3rd of December 1883,
That popular education results in an extensive reading of publications which foster pleasant
illusions rather than those which insist on hard penalties is beyond question, says a
mechanic writing in the Palme Al-Gazette of 3rd of December 1883, Improved education
instills the desire for culture. Culture instills the desire for many things as yet quite beyond
In the furious competition to which the present age is given up, they are utterly impossible to the poorer classes. Hence they are discontented with things as they are, and the more educated, the more discontented. Hence, too, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Morris are regarded as true prophets by many of us, and that the connection of cause and effect here alleged is a real one we may see clearly enough in the present state of Germany.
Excessed of electoral power, as are now the hot mass of those people who are thus led
to nurture sanguine anticipations of benefits to be obtained by social reorganization, it
results that whoever seeks their votes must at least refrain from exposing their mistaken
beliefs, even if he does not yield to the temptation to express agreement with them.
Every candidate for parliament is prompted to propose or support some new piece of ad
Capitandum Legislation. Nay, even the chiefs of parties, those anxious to retain office
and those to wrest it from them, severely aim to get adherence by outbidding one another.
Each seeks popularity by promising more than his opponent has promised, as we have lately
seen, and then, as divisions in Parliament show us, the traditional loyalty to leaders
overrides questions concerning the intrinsic propriety of proposed measures. Representatives
Communists are unconscious enough to vote for bills which they believe to be wrong
in principle because party needs and regard for the next election demand it, and thus
a vicious policy is strengthened even by those who see its viciousness.
Meanwhile, there goes on out of doors an act of propaganda to which all these influences
are ancillary.
Communistic theory is partially endorsed by one act of parliament after another, and tacitly
are being advocated more and more vociferously by popular leaders, and urged on by organized societies.
There is the movement for land nationalization which, aiming at a system of land tenure equitable in the abstract, is, as all the world knows, pressed by Mr. George and his friends with avowed disregard for the just claims of existing owners,
and as the basis of a scheme going more than halfway to state socialism.
Aiming at a system of land tenure equitable in the abstract is, as all the world knows, pressed by Mr George and his friends with avowed disregard for the just claims of existing owners, and as the basis of a scheme going more than halfway to state socialism.
And then there is the thoroughgoing democratic federation of Mr Hindman and his adherents.
We are told by them that the handful of marauders who now hold possession of the land have and can have no right save brute force against the tens of millions whom they wrong.
They exclaim against the shareholders who have been allowed to lay hands upon our great railway communications.
They condemn above all the active capitalist class, the loan mongers, the farmers, the mine exploiters, the contractors, the middlemen, the factory lords,
These, the modern slave-drivers, who exact more and yet more surplus value out of the wage slaves whom they employ, and they think it high time that trade should be removed from the control of individual greed.
It remains to point out that the tendencies thus variously displayed are being strengthened by press advocacy, daily more pronounced.
Journalists always cheery of saying that, which is distasteful to their readers, are
some of them going with the stream and adding to its force.
Legislative meddlings, which they would once have condemned, they now pass in silence if
they do not advocate them, and they speak of laissez-faire as an exploded doctrine.
People are no longer frightened at the thought of socialism, is a statement which meets us
one day.
On another day, a town which does not adopt the Free Libraries Act is sneered at as being
are being alarmed by a measure so moderately communistic.
And then, along with editorial assertions that this economic evolution is coming
and must be accepted,
there is prominence given to the contributions of its advocates.
Meanwhile, those who regard the recent course of legislation as disastrous
and see that its future course is likely to be still more disastrous
are being reduced to silence by the belief that it is useless to reason
See, then, the many concurrent causes which threaten continually to accelerate the transformation
now going on.
There is that spread of regulation caused by following precedents which become the more
authoritative the further the policy is carried.
There is that increasing need for administrative compulsions and restraints which results from
on the unforeseen evils and shortcomings of preceding compulsions and restraints.
Moreover, every additional state interference strengthens the tacit assumption that it is
the duty of the state to deal with all evils and secure all benefits.
Increasing power of a growing administrative organization is accompanied by decreasing
power of the rest of the society to resist its further growth and control.
The multiplication of careers opened by a developing bureaucracy tempts members of the
classes regulated by it to favour its extension as adding to the chances of safe and respectable
places for their relatives.
The people at large, led to look on benefits received through public agencies as gratis
benefits have their hopes continually excited by prospects of more.
A spreading education furthering the diffusion of pleasing errors rather than of stern truths
renders such hopes both stronger and more general. Worse still, such hopes are ministered
to by candidates for public choice to augment their chances of success, and leading statesmen
in pursuit of party ends bid for popular favor by countenancing them. Getting repeated justifications
from new laws harmonizing with their doctrines, political enthusiasts and unwise philanthropists
push their agitations with growing confidence and success.
Journalism ever responsive to popular opinion duly strengthens it by giving it voice, while
counter-opinion more and more discouraged finds little utterance.
Thus, influences of various kinds conspire to increase corporate action and decrease
individual action, and the changes being on all sides aided by schemers, each of whom
William thinks only of his pet plan, and not at all of the general reorganization which
his plan, joined with others such, are working out.
It is said that the French Revolution devours its own children.
Here, an analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely.
The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others
presently to be made, will by and by be all merged in state socialism, swallowed in the
and the vast wave which they have little by little raised.
But why is this change described as the clamming slavery?
Is a question which many will still ask.
The reply is simple.
Socialism always involves slavery.
What is essential to the idea of a slave?
We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another.
To be more than nominal, however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave's actions
A Control which is habitually for the benefit of the controller.
That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to
satisfy another's desires.
The relation admits of sundry gradations, remembering that originally the slave is a
prisoner whose life is at the mercy of his captor.
It suffices here to note that there is a harsh form of slavery in which, treated as an animal,
He has to expend his entire effort for his owner's advantage.
Under a system less harsh, though occupied chiefly in working for his owner, he is allowed
a short time in which to work for himself, and some ground on which to grow extra food.
A further amelioration gives him power to sell the produce of his plot and keep the
proceeds.
Then we come to the still moderated form, which commonly arises where, having been a
When a free man working on his own land, conquest turns him into what we distinguish as a serf,
and he has to give to his owner each year a fixed amount of labour or produce or both,
retaining the rest himself. Finally, in some cases, as in Russia before serfdom was abolished,
he is allowed to leave his owner's estate and work or trade for himself elsewhere under
the condition that he shall pay an annual sum. What is it which, in these cases, leads
It is as to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe, evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit.
If all the slave's labour is for his owner, the slavery is heavy, and if but little it is light.
Take now a further step. Suppose an owner dies and his estate, with its slaves, comes into the hands of trustees, or suppose the estate and everything on it be bought by a company. Is the condition of the slave any the better if the amount of his compulsory labour remains the same?
Suppose that for a company we substitute the community, does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great and the time left for himself is as small as before?
The essential question is, how much is he compelled to labor for the benefit other than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?
The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced
to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain. And it matters not whether his master
is a single person or a society. If without option he has to labor for that society and
receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave
Socialistic arrangements necessitate an enslavement of this kind, and towards such enslavement, many recent measures, and still more the measures advocated, are carrying us. Let us observe first their proximate effects, and then their ultimate effects.
The policy initiated by the Industrial Dwellings Act admits of development and will develop.
Where municipal bodies turn housebuilders, they inevitably lower the values of houses
otherwise built and check the supply of more. Every dictation respecting modes of building
and conveniences to be provided diminishes the builder's profits and prompts him to
to use his capital where the profit is not thus diminished.
So too the owner, already finding that small houses entail much labour and many losses,
already subject to troubles of inspection and interference and to consequent costs,
and having his property daily rendered a more undesirable investment, is prompted to sell.
And as buyers are for like reasons deterred, he has to sell at a loss.
And now these still multiplying regulations, ending, it may be, as Lord Gray proposes,
in one requiring the owner to maintain the salubrity of his houses by evicting dirty
tenants, and thus adding to his other responsibilities that of inspector of nuisances, must further
prompt sales and further deter purchases, so necessitating greater depreciation.
What must happen?
The multiplication of houses, and especially small houses, being increasingly checked,
there must come an increasing demand upon the local authority to make up for the deficient
supply.
More and more the municipal or kindred body will have to build houses, or to purchase
houses rendered unsaleable to private persons in the way shown, houses which, greatly lowered
in value as they must become, it will in many cases pay to buy rather than to build new
ones.
May, this process must work in a double way, since every entailed increase of local taxation
still further depreciates property. And when in towns this process has gone so far as to
make the local authority the chief owner of houses, there will be a good precedent for
publicly providing houses of the rural population, as proposed in the radical program and as
is urged by the Democratic Federation, which insists on the compulsory construction of healthy artisans and agricultural laborers' dwellings in proportion to the population.
Manifestly, the tendency of that which has been done, is being done, and is presently to be done, is to approach the socialistic ideal in which the community is sole house proprietor.
Such, too, must be the effect of the daily growing policy on the tenure and utilization
of land.
More numerous public benefits to be achieved by more numerous public agencies at the cost
of augmented public burdens must increasingly deduct from the returns on land, until, as
the depreciation in value becomes greater and greater, the resistance to change of tenure
becomes less and less.
Already, as everyone knows, there is in many places difficulty in obtaining tenants, even
at greatly reduced rents, and land of inferior fertility in some cases lies idle, or when
farmed by the owner is often farmed at a loss.
Clearly, the profit on capital invested in land is not such that taxes, local and general,
can be greatly raised to support extended public administrations without an absorption
and of it, which will prompt owners to sell and make the best of what reduced price they
can get by emigrating and buying land not subject to heavy burdens, as indeed some are
now doing.
This process carried far must have the result of throwing inferior land out of cultivation,
after which there will be raised more generally the demand made by Mr. Arch, who addressing
The Radical Association of Brighton lately, and contending that existing landlords do
not make their land adequately productive for the public benefit, said,
He should like the present government to pass a compulsory cultivation bill, an applauded
proposal which he justified by instancing compulsory vaccination, thus illustrating
the influence of precedent.
And this demand will be passed not only by the need for making the land productive, but
and also by the need for employing the rural population.
After the Government has extended the practice of hiring the unemployed to work on deserted
lands or lands acquired at nominal prices, there will be reached a stage whence there
is but a small further step to that arrangement which, in the programme of the Democratic
Federation, is to follow nationalisation of the land.
The organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on co-operative
of Principles.
To one who doubts whether such a revolution may be so reached, facts may be cited showing
its likelihood.
In Gaul during the decline of the Roman Empire, so numerous were the receivers in comparison
with the payers and so enormous the weight of taxation that the labourer broke down,
the plains became deserts, and woods grew where the plough had been.
In a human-like manner, when the French Revolution was approaching, the public burdens had become
such that many farms remained uncultivated and many were deserted. One quarter of the
soil was absolutely lying waste, and in some provinces one half was in heath.
Nor have we been without incidents of a kindred nature at home. Besides the fact that under
the poor law the rates had in some parishes risen to half the rental, and that in various
In these places farms were lying idle. There is the fact that in one case the rates had absorbed the whole proceeds of the soil.
At Cholesbury in Buckinghamshire in 1832, the poor rate suddenly ceased in consequence of the impossibility to continue its collection,
the landlords having given up their rents, the farmers their tenancies, and the clergyman his glebe and his ties.
The clergyman Mr. Jeston states that in October 1832 the parish officers threw up their books, and the poor assembled in a body before his door while he was in bed asking for advice and food.
Partly from his own small means, partly from the charity of neighbours, and partly by rates in aid imposed on the neighbouring parishes, they were for some time supported.
And the commissioners add that the benevolent rector recommends that the whole of the land
should be divided among the able-bodied paupers, hoping that after help afforded for two years
they might be able to maintain themselves.
These facts, giving colour to the prophecy made in Parliament that continuance of the
old poor law for another thirty years would throw the land out of cultivation, clearly
show that increase of public burdens may end in forced cultivation under public control.
Then again comes state ownership of railways.
Already this exists to a large extent on the continent.
Already we have had here a few years ago a loud advocacy of it.
And now the cry which was raised by sundry politicians and publicists is taken up afresh
by the Democratic Federation, which proposes state appropriation of railways with or without
but compensation. Evidently, pressure from above joined by pressure from below is likely
to affect this change dictated by the policy everywhere spreading, and with it must come
many attendant changes. For railway proprietors at first owners and workers of railways only
have become masters of numerous businesses directly or indirectly connected with railways,
and these will have to be purchased.
Already exclusive letter carrier, exclusive transmitter of telegrams, and on the way to
become exclusive carrier of parcels, the State will not only be exclusive carrier of passengers,
goods and minerals, but will add to its present various trades many other trades.
Even now, besides erecting its naval and military establishments and building harbours, docks,
and when the railways have been appropriated, with or without compensation, as the democratic federationists say, it will have to become locomotive engine builder, carriage maker, tarpaulin and grease manufacturer, passenger vessel owner, coal miner, stone quarry or omnidust proprietor, etc.
Army Clothier and Bootmaker, and when the railways have been appropriated, with or without compensation,
as the Democratic Federationists say, it will have to become locomotive engine-builder, carriage-maker,
tarpaulin and grease-manufacturer, passenger-vessel owner, coal-miner, stone-quarrier, omnidust-proprietor, etc.
Meanwhile, its local lieutenants, the municipal governments, already in many places supplier of water,
And when the State, directly or by proxy, has thus come into possession of or has established
numerous concerns for wholesale production and for wholesale distribution, there will
be good precedence for extending its function to retail distribution.
Following such an example, say, as is offered by the French government, which has long been
in a Retail Tobaconist. Even then, the changes made, the changes in progress and the changes
urged will carry us not only towards state ownership of land and dwellings and means
of communication, all to be administered and worked by state agents, but towards state
usurpation of all industries, the private forms of which, disadvantaged more and more
in competition with the state, which can arrange everything for its own convenience, will more
more and more die away, just as many voluntary schools have in presence of board schools,
and so will be brought about the desired ideal of the socialists.
And now, when there has been compassed this desired ideal, which practical politicians
are helping socialists to reach, and which is so tempting on that bright side which socialists
contemplate, what must be the accompanying shady side which they do not contemplate?
It is a matter of common remark, often made when a marriage is impending, that those possessed
by strong hopes habitually dwell on the promised pleasures and think nothing of the accompanying
pains.
A further exemplification of this truth is supplied by these political enthusiasts and
fanatical revolutionists, impressed with the miseries existing in our present social arrangements,
and not regarding these miseries as caused by the ill-working of a human nature, but
Partially adapted to a social state, they imagine them to be forthwith curable by this
or that rearrangement. Yet even did their plans succeed, it could only be by substituting
one kind of evil for another. A little deliberate thought would show that under their proposed
arrangements their liberties must be surrendered in proportion as their material welfare were
cared for.
For no form of cooperation, small or great, can be carried on without regulation and an
implied submission to the regulating agencies. Even one of their own organizations for effecting
social changes yields them proof. It is compelled to have its councils, its local and general
officers, its authoritative leaders, who must be obeyed under penalty of confusion and failure.
And the experience of those who are loudest in their advocacy of a new social order under
Under the paternal control of a government shows that even in private voluntarily formed
societies the power of the regulative organization becomes great, if not irresistible, often
indeed causing grumbling and restiveness amongst those controlled.
Trade unions which carry on a kind of industrial war in defense of workers' interests versus
employers' interests find that subordination, almost military in its strictness, is needful
to secure efficient action, for divided councils prove fatal to success, and even in bodies
of co-operators formed for carrying on manufacturing or distributing businesses and not needing
the obedience to leaders which is required where the aims are offensive or defensive
is still found that the administrative agency gains such supremacy that there arise complaints
Judge then what must happen when, instead of relatively small combinations to which men may belong or not as they please, we have a national combination in which each citizen finds himself incorporated, and from which he cannot separate himself without leaving the country.
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
orders. Well, may Prince Bismarck display leanings towards state socialism.
And then, after reorganizing, as they must if they think out their scheme, the power
possessed by the regulative agency and the new social system so temptingly pictured,
let its advocates ask themselves to what end this power must be used.
Not dwelling exclusively as they habitually do on the material well-being and the mental
gratifications to be provided for them by a beneficent administration, let them dwell
a little on the price to be paid.
The officials cannot create the needful supplies. They can but distribute among individuals
that which the individuals had joined to produce. If the public agency is required to provide
for them, it must reciprocally require them to furnish the means. There cannot be, as
under our existing system, agreement between employer and employed. This the scheme excludes.
There must in place of it be command by local authorities over workers and acceptance by
by the workers of that which the authorities assign to them.
And this, indeed, is the arrangement distinctly, but it would seem inadvertently, appointed
to by the members of the Democratic Federation.
For they propose that production should be carried on by agricultural and industrial
armies under state control, apparently not remembering that armies presuppose grades
of officers by whom obedience would have to be insisted upon, since otherwise neither
But the governing agency would be master, which he and others made and kept constantly in check, and one which would therefore would not control him or others more than was needful for the benefit of each and all.
To which reply the first rejoinder is that, even if so, each member of the community as
an individual would be a slave to the community as a whole.
Such a relation has habitually existed in militant communities, even under quasi-popular
forms of government.
In ancient Greece the accepted principle was that the citizen belonged neither to himself
nor to his family, but belonged to his city, the city being with the Greek equivalent to
of the Community.
And this doctrine proper to a state of constant warfare is a doctrine which socialism unawares
reintroduces into a state intended to be purely industrial.
The services of each will belong to the aggregate of all, and for these services such returns
will be given as the authorities think proper.
So that even if the administration is of the beneficent kind intended to be secured, slavery
A second rejoinder is that the administration will presently become not of the intended kind, and that the slavery will not be mild. The socialist's speculation is vitiated by an assumption, like that which vitiates the specializations of the practical politician. It is assumed that officialism will work as it is intended to work, which it never does. The machinery of communism is not the same as that of the socialists.
like existing social machinery, has to be framed out of existing human nature, and the defects of existing human nature will generate in the one the same evils as in the other.
The love of power, the selfishness, the injustice, the untruthfulness, which often in comparatively short times bring private organizations to disaster, will inevitably, where their effects accumulate from generation to generation, work evils far greater and far less remedyable.
Since, vast and complex, and possessed of all the resources, the administrative organizations,
once developed and consolidated, must become irresistible.
And if there needs proof that the periodic exercise of electoral power would fail to
prevent this, it suffices to instance the French government, which, purely popular in
origin and subject at short intervals to popular judgment, nevertheless tramples on the freedom
The final result would be a revival of despotism.
A disciplined army of civil officials, like an army of military officials, gives supreme
power to its head, a power which has often led to usurpation, as in medieval Europe and
and still more in Japan, nay, has thus so led among our neighbours within our own times.
The recent confessions of Monsieur de Maupin have shown how readily and constitutionally
head, elected and trusted by the whole people may, with the aid of a few unscrupulous confederates,
paralyse the representative body and make himself autocrat. That those who rose to power in
a socialistic organisation would not scruple to carry out the aims at all costs, we have
When we find that shareholders who, sometimes gaining but often losing, have made that the railway system by which national prosperity has been so greatly increased are spoken of by the Council of the Democratic Federation as having laid hands on the means of communication, we may infer that those who directed a socialistic administration might interpret with extreme perversity the claims of individuals and classes under their control.
And when, further, we find members of this same council urging that the state should take possession of the railways, with or without compensation, we may suspect that the heads of the ideal society desired would be but little deterred by considerations of equity from pursuing whatever policy they thought needful, a policy which would always be one identified with their own supremacy.
It would need but a war with an adjacent society or some internal discontent demanding forcible
suppression to at once transform a socialistic administration into a grinding tyranny like
that of ancient Peru, under which the mass of the people, controlled by grades of officials
and leading lives that were inspected out of doors and indoors, laboured for the support
of the organization which regulated them, and were left with but a bare subsistence
for Themselves, and then would be completely revived under a different form, that regime
of status, that system of compulsory cooperation, the decaying tradition of which is represented
by the old Tourism, and towards which the new Tourism is carrying us back.
But we shall be on our guard against all that, we shall take precautions to ward off such
Disasters, will doubtless say the enthusiasts. Be they practical politicians with their new
regulative measures, or communists with their schemes for reorganizing labor, their reply
is ever the same. It is true that plans of kindred nature have, from unforeseen causes
or adverse accidents or the misdeeds of those concerned, been brought to failure, but this
This time we shall profit by past experiences and succeed.
There seems no getting people to accept the truth, which nevertheless is conspicuous enough
that the welfare of a society and the justice of its arrangements are at bottom dependent
on the characters of its members, and that improvement in neither can take place without
that improvement in character which results from carrying on peaceful industry under the
and the restraints imposed by an orderly social life.
The belief not only of the socialists but also of those so-called liberals who are diligently
preparing the way for them is that by due skill an ill-working humanity may be framed
into well-working institutions.
It is a delusion.
The defective nature of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatever social
structure they are arranged into.
There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of lead and instincts.
Two replies by socialists to the foregoing article have appeared since its publication.
Socialism and Slavery by H. M. Hindman and Herbert Spencer on Socialism by Frank Fairman.
Notice of them here must be limited to saying that, as usual with antagonists, they ascribe
and Catallactics. But I am quite unconscious of any such change as he alleges. Looking
with a lenient eye upon the irregularities of those whose lives are hard by no means
involves tolerance of good for nothings.