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Posted June 1, 2003

A Reader Excoriates
Herbert Spencer

Wirkman Virkkala

It is a fine thing to buy a new book, to crack open the pages and discover no sign of a previous reader, no pencil marks, no hi-lite shadings, no cigarette stench, no stains from past meals or sneezing fits.

But still, buying an old, used book has its pleasures too. One such pleasure is the discovery of the occasional commentary to the book supplied by the book's earlier reader. Most such comments demonstrate the reader's stupidity, but even in stupidity and absurdity there can be an element of charm.

Some time back I purchased Henry George's The Perplexed Philosopher, an attack on Herbert Spencer for abandoning land nationalization after the Social Statics's first edition went out of print.

The reader of the volume I purchased was, quite obviously, a Georgist. He believed passionately in land nationalization, or the Single Tax upon land rent, or somesuch.

In any case, at the end of this tattered old book is the following summary judgment, in cursive, still readable black ink:

What should it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Herbert Spencer! — Not for the gain of the whole world, but for the paltry, empty honor of the patronising fraternity of English Lords and landowners — and for membership in The Athenian Club and of The Liberty (?) and (Land) Property Defense League, of land grabbers — lost his own soul. Oh, what an inadequate, trifle of gain! — for so great a loss! Such a profitless ballance [sic] of account.
Truth, personal honor, exceptional intelligence — all prostituted. Oh, the shame and the pity of it!
— ESD, 1893

Spencer changed his mind on the ownership of land. He also never fully explained his reasoning for changing his mind. This irked Henry George, who agreed with Spencer's earlier position. (From what I can tell, Georgism is a slight reworking of the notions of Thomas Hodgskin, Spencer's mentor at The Economist, where Spencer worked as a young man.)

Now, it is not uncommon to find people complaining about the evolution of Spencer's thought. The British philosopher repudiated several notions from his first book, including:

1. The Right to Ignore the State — which he dispensed with for reasons of the free rider problem...
2. A thorough-going feminism — which he repudiated because he came to believe that sex roles have a stronger biological basis than he had earlier thought, and because he believed that women would never be politically obliged to make the sacrifices that men too ofter are, in political society (mainly: conscription; interestingly, Spencer believed that ultimately society would evolve to transcend intertribal/international conflict, and this issue — and much of the state — would become moot)...
3. Land nationalization — which he repudiated (I believe) for its socialism and unworkability, and (if I remember correctly) for generally giving the state too much power. (But, like I stated above, he never fully explained his reasoning, at least to Henry George's satisfaction.)
4. Deism — which bolstered the moral arguments in the first version of Social Statics; he came to believe deistic arguments were utterly unnecessary to his case (and they were; as Plato showed, appeals to deity in ethics are much less relevant than is commonly thought). In my opinion he evolved into a quasi-atheist (which he would never cop to; he had some weird, quasi-Kantian, rather mystical notion of The Unknowable that he regarded as the ultimate religious idea, and which he placed as the focus of a proper religious sentiment, somehow vitiating charges of atheism).

Herbert Spencer also never believed that what he called absolute ethics could move the bulk of mankind so long as social sentiment and custom were far removed from the ideals and rules imagined in philosophy and serious contemplation; most people made do with the ethical systems they have at hand, and their relative ethical ideas hold sway, and even possess no small authority.

Spencer went further, believing that ideas as such were not the ruling forces. Sentiments were. The moral philosopher might try to change the direction or speed the progress of a moral point of view, but his ideas alone would not and could not suffice. People acted as they do in their environment upon the impetus and direction of the incentives, disincentives, sentiments, fancies, and opportunities that define their selves and situations. For many philosophers, this is heresy. And yet it is one of Spencer's more endearing notions, and one reason I still read his writings; he was a sensible fellow, not nearly as rationalistic as he might seem at first blush.

Though Spencer underwent more of an intellectual Iliad than an odyssey (laying siege to two ideas — freedom and progress — from the beginning of his career), he did change his opinions. On near-anarchism, on feminism, and on deism, he did, anyway.

And that is the mark of a philosopher. If one never really changes one's mind during a career of thought, as writers as dissimilar as Mencken and Rand prided themselves upon, what honor can we offer them as thinkers? When you never change your mind, thinking can only seem as so much rationalization. (I, for one, honor Bertrand Russell more for his abandonment of Moore's metaethical position than for any of his great accomplishments in logic.)

So, what about Henry George and his followers? There aren't all that many left; the heyday of Georgism is past: but some still exist.

I readily confess to being dismissive of this bunch. They have now, I am told, incorporated elements of Austrian marginalism into a geo-Austrian synthesis. Perhaps their ideas are worth considering again. But my own experience with Georgists doesn't indicate that much has changed beyond dear old ESD's 110-year-old rant. Every time I actually confront a Georgist with my take on Georgism (usually, I admit, in response to their criticism of one of my lampoons of Georgism), the Georgist drops the dialectic and drops the conversation and drops the contact. In the midst of one email debate some time back, I asked my earnest Georgist critics about the labor theory that starts Progress and Poverty and upon which good ol' Henry founded his whole system. I mentioned that when I read that section, I thought it utter rubbish, simply bad economics. Have Georgists revised the labor theory? Or do they stick to the same old guns? No answer.

Of course, not every criticism need be answered. Or even addressed. I'm not offended if Georgists don't bother with me. But you may understand why I don't bother with them, either. They strike me as quaint ranters in the margins of old, musty books. If I'm wrong, too bad. In any case, I doubt, contra poor old ESD, that I'll lose my soul over it.

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