The Political Ethics of Herbert Spencer

Ward, Lester F. 1894. The Political Ethics of Herbert Spencer. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 4: 90-127.

The works of Mr. Spencer are so universally read that there is little occasion for explaining their contents, and, indeed, any proper review of even the latest would probably be a work of supererogation. It will be more profitable, after briefly indicating what parts it is proposed specially to consider, to bring the various topics treated in these parts together into a somewhat logical order, analyze and discuss their general bearings, and set forth such considerations, conclusions, and natural corollaries, as seem to grow out of the tout ensemble. In a word, an analytical or critical, rather than an expositional form of treatment seems to be demanded. (Ward 1894: 91)

Only a decade later nobody read Spencer.

That all these works come within the scope of ethics, as Mr. Spencer understands it, is shown by the fact that his "Justice" is so large an extent a mere revision and repetition in substance of the "Social Statics." (Ward 1894: 93)

Phraseology.

All are of course acquaintant with the general character of Mr. Spencer's ethics as set forth in the "Data of Ethics," the doctrine that happiness is the end of action, and the argument that this will ultimately be attained through altruistic action becoming that which yields the greatest happiness, the most egoistic. (Ward 1894: 93)

No we're not, at least not since the 1920s. This logic looks utterly bizarre. Is it bespectacled mathematical genius Russell Crowe in a pub solving the equations of getting every lad there laid again?

To the "Data of Ethics," as originally published, is now added a rediscovered chapter in the form of an appendix, entitled, "The Conciliation," although this is also the title of Chapter XIV, which covers much the same ground and may have been an attempt to supply the lost one. This "conciliation" is the reconciliation between egoism and altruism, and it is here extended to society as a collective unit and illustrated by reference to those animals, such as bees, which have acquired social natures and become almost [|] perfectly adapted to a social state. Their purely altruistic actions have come to be prompted by instincts, and are therefore the only ones that can satisfy their desires; and he draws the conclusion that human society may one day be so perfect that a purely hedonistic activity will be consistent with the highest good of the community. (Ward 1894: 93-94)

Sounds like something I should take a look at if I can find it. This is the exact topic discussed by Trotter ad nauseam with honey bee examples of course. The ending I like because it might be epigraphic to a discussion of the age of leisure.

It is surprising that a mind so logical could have failed to see that ethics is not an independent science at all, that it relates to a theoretically transient state of society, which, as he himself shows, is to pass away so soon as egoistic and altruistic actions shall have become mutually adjusted, that the "conciliation" is simply the disappearance of altruism with the supremacy of innocent egoism in which happiness alone consists. (Ward 1894: 94)

The transience of the theoretical state of society is illustrated by the variety of collective nouns employed in the discussion of such matters - herd, group, collective, mass, mob, horde, pack, public, etc. It is difficult to compare various observations if there's confusion as to the scope of the socium.

The other reflection that naturally arises from this view of ethics is that social insects, whose perfect organization society is to imitate, have reached the extreme stage of typical socialism, as pictured by the most unequivocal advocates of that social condition. Individuality is here utterly lost, and all the members of the society are reduced to the dead level of equality, while over the whole swarm the "queen," as the specialized representative of the uniform collective will, rigns supreme without the need of exercising the slightest authority. The social machine is complete and automatic. (Ward 1894: 95)

Concerning the will to power of the leader. The automatic machine remark sets the point of contention for the critique of mechanization. Humans are not drones.

Its perusal is well calculated to enable the reader to penetrate the conventionalities of his own time and to distinguish, as few persons can do, between conduct which is intrinsically moral or immoral and that which is so only because the prevailing code approves or condemns it. The various ideas that have prevailed in the past, and now prevail, among different peoples relative to justice, generosity, humanity, veracity, obedience, industry, temperance, chastity, etc., are set forth in the clear and orderly manner that characterizes all of Mr. Spencer's writings of this class, and are supported by all the authority that he is able to summon. The unreliability of these sources of information has caused much of his sociological work to be severely criticised, if not entirely rejected, and it is this perhaps that has brought forth in the present case the following disclaimer:

"Not all travelers are to be trusted. Some are bad observers, some are biased by creed or custom, some by personal likings or dislikings; and all have but imperfect opportunities of getting at the truth. Similarly with historians. Very little of what they narrate is from immediate observation. The greater part of it comes through channels [|] which color, and obscure, and distort; while everywhere party feeling religious bigotry, and the sentiment of patriotism, cause exaggerations and suppressions. Testimonies concerning moral traits are hence liable to perversion."

In the "Ethics of Individual Life" are tretaed the subjects of activity, rest, nutrition, stimulation, culture, amusements, marriage, and parenthood. Trite subjects these, and difficult to raise above the commonplace, yet, conceived as filling each its appropriate niche in a great world scheme, he has succeeded in rendering them quite palatable, while throughout the chapters one finds the spice of originality and breadth of conception lending an unexpected flavor. (Ward 1894: 96-97)

The first instance must be what "savage and civilized alike" is attempting to do. The second concerns the unreliability of both informant and ethnographer's observations. I could do with "rest"; reading about it, that is. The last instance is called "spin", making a derivative work original and unexpected.

No better example could be given than is furnished by his treatment of "stimulation," in which he rightly condemns the excesses that are committed in the supposed performance duty, which society usually approves because the acts are displeasurable, reserving its condemnation for those excesses which are in themselves enjoyable, apparently on the principle that "the damnable thing in the misconduct is the production of pleasure by it." (Ward 1894: 97)

On duty see how throughout the Western world it is agreed to be agreeable, and how it can be pleasurable and satisfying to abuse another's duty and enjoy being disagreeable.

"Here, again, there is occasion for the self-restraint which sympathy prompts." (Spencer; in Ward 1894: 98)

No context necessary.

That it cannot be done by single individuals actuated by a multitude of vague, conflicting, and whimsical motives, all must concede. It can be done to a limited extent by large associtainos with enlightened officers. The larger such associations are the less personal will be their action, and hence the more successful. The most impersonal of all organizations is the State, and while much even here depends upon the character of the officers, the danger that unworthy or illegitimate influences will control their action is here at its minimum. (Ward 1894: 100)

Phraseology descriptive of Malinowski's hodgepodge. With the impersonality of the State I take the same issue I did with Trotter's greatest social unit, the nation. Wouldn't humanity as a whole or a global community be a more impersonal and better safeguarded against unworthy and illegitimate influences?

Mr. Spencer early espoused the doctrine of an analogy at least between society and a living organism, propounded twelve years earlier by Comte (de disclaims all acquaintance with Comte at that date), and although he has variously qualified it under the spur of criticism, he still adheres to its substance in so far as to treat society as under the absolute dominion of the same class of laws that govern the physiological economy of living creatures. (Ward 1894: 103)

What is organicism?

Finally, it would have behooved him to point out that this natural process of organic development was still going on in society as it has gone on in biology, and that a stage would be ultimately reached in which a supreme center of social consciousness, or social ego, would exist, having full control of the hierarchy of subordinate centers and of the individual members of society. (Ward 1894: 104)

Kollektiivne MINA.

Nothing, it will be observed, is here said about the "progressing" subordination of all the parts to the whole, which he above all others has shown to be the characteristic mark of organic progress from lower to higher types of development. (Ward 1894: 104b)

The functionalist trap. Clearly, there must be a hierarchy of dominant and subordinated functions. The nature of the relationships constituting the domination and subordination relationships on the other hand is left unclear. It's nearly always completely heuristic, this hierarchy-of-functions view of things.

Mr. Spencer escaped the consequences of his own doctrine in two ways. First, he early denied the strict analogy between society and an organism, laying special stress upon [|] the fact that society is a mere abstraction, and not a conscious individual, capable of feeling. In this he is, of course, literally speaking, right, and the corollary he feels drawn that there is no object is working for the good of society conceived as a conscious being, but that society exists for the individual and not the individual for society, is eminently sound. Still it cannot be denied that a sort of consciousness can be properly predicated of that body of individuals whom society, by whatever method, appoints to preside over, control, and regulate its operations. In other words, government, which as Mr. Spencer admits always rudely represents society, changing with it and corresponding to it in character and quality, may be properly regarded as the supreme center of social consciousness, often feebly integrated, and little capable of directing affairs, but still the homologue of the developing brain of animal organisms. And it is further true that with the progress that has taken place in government, from the more autocratic and despotic to the more democratic and representative forms, the degree of integration has strengthened, so that in the apparently weak and flexible democracies of to-day there is really a far more firm and compact social state than in the stiff autocracies of former ages, when there were, so to speak, no nerve currents permeating society and keeping every part in communication with the great social center. So that the progress in social integration is substantially parallel with that which has gone on in organic life. (Ward 1894: 104-105)

The abstract nature of society is Malinowski's contention with Durkheim. Trotter, on the other hand, demonstrates the responsiveness of the human animal toward the voice and suggestions of the herd, by means of which the herd tradition (qua culture or custom) regulates conduct. In this pseudo-Lotmanian manner, culture is the developing brain of society. Abstract, yeah. It can be made a little bit more concrete by examining the nerve currents of society, i.e. communication technologies that have transformed many of N. Tesla's mad visions into mundane realities.

In the second place, Mr. Spencer has escaped the consequences of his doctrine by failing, purposely or otherwise, to recognize that the analogy holds good only in its psychic aspects. His comparisons are with purely physiological functions. He repeats his analogies with the organs of nutrition, circulation, respiration, and reproduction, but rarely mentions the nervous system in that connection. (Ward 1894: 105)

A valid point. Nowhere have I seen the likes of Trotter and Freud going as far as Hobbesian Leviathan.

"The prosperity of a species is best subserved when among adults each experiences the good and evil results of his own nature and consequent conduct. In a gregarious species fulfillment of this need implies that the individuals shall not so interfere with one another as to prevent the receipt by each of the benefits which his actions naturally bring to him, or transfer to others the evils which his actions naturally brings. This, which is the ultimate law of species life as qualified by social conditions, it is the business of the social aggregate, or incorporated body of citizens, to maintain."

In this passage it is made clear that the general self-adjusting law of nature is held to apply to society, and man is duly advised that nature is to be imitated. (Ward 1894: 107)

Spencer, thus, can be counted on to be a stern anchor in the discourse about man's gregarious nature, or the defining characteristics of the social animal. Here, that is altruism, or perhaps even the expanded egoism version of it. This self-adjustment is implied in Malinowski's discussion of reciprocity.

This last, and much more in the same vein, is said under the head of "Sanitary Supervision" by municipalities and other governing agencies, as an argument against it, and against all public acts arising out of sympathy for the unfortunate, which action, he declares, "defeats its own end. It favors the multiplication of those worst fitted for existence, and, by consequence, hinders the multiplication of those best fitted for existence - leaving, as it does, less room for them." (Ward 1894: 109)

Are you really going to help those bums? an American Christian asks of her mayor who plans to give the homeless cheap apartments as a cost estimate visa vis the price of having them out on the street and frequently admitted to the hospital.

This doctrine, laid down in his "Social Statics" in 1850, he retains in the abridgment and reaffirms in his later writings. After quoting extensively from the early work and reapplying the doctrine of natural selection to society, he adds [...] (Ward 1894: 109)

Expanding my vocabulary. Malinowski reapplies his critique of collective mind, quotes Trotter extensively and abridges the ideas of Barton and Mahaffy.

The arch offender in this line is, of course, government, which to him is scarcely a natural product. While recognizing it as such in his cooler moments, his animus against it is so strong as to make him treat it as something apart from the general scheme of society, a sort of interloper or parasite, that has foisted itself upon society and is using it for its own ends. In his eyes government consists of a group of ill-disposed individuals, "politicians," who have in one way or another worked themselves into power, and whose object is to deprive the people of their liberty, property, or happiness. This is expressed in such passages as this:

"'Thus much of your work shall be devoted, not to your own purposes, but to our purposes,' say the authorities to the citizens; and to whatever extent this is carried, to that extent the citizens become slaves of the government."

Or, again:

"Public departments, all of them regimented after the militant fashion, all supported by taxes forcibly taken, and severally responsible [|] to their heads, mostly appointed for party reasons, are not immediately dependent for their means of living and growing on those whom they are designed to benefit.

These utterances clearly show that in his mind there is no bond of mutuality between the government and the citizen; that with him the former is an outside power working against the latter and for itself alone, and he declares that:

"Government, begotten of aggression and by aggression, ever continues to betray its original nature by its aggressiveness."

(Ward 1894: 110-111)

Animus, antipathy, straw-man. In Malinowski, the collective mind is that something apart, something unnecessary. Working oneself into power is acting upon the will to power? Not establishing shared purposes is one of the characteristics of phatic communion - it is in a sense a subversion of suggestion, a reactionary technique. There is, that is, no bond of mutuality between an monologuing public speaker and his impatient listeners.

As already remarked, what seems chiefly to trouble him is the attempt on the part of government to "interfere," "meddle" and "tamper" with the laws of nature, which he variously designates as "the normal working of things," "the contitution of things," "the order of Nature," "causal relations," etc., laying, of course, great stress on the law of supply and demand and the laws of trade and commerce in general. Whenever he speaks of the natural forces of society it is in this sense, for, adhering to the biological point of view, he can, of course, perceived no other social force than the struggle for existence, that is, the mere life-force. The true social forces and psychic and therefore ignored. (Ward 1894: 111)

Orderly concurrence of aptitudes goes by many, many names.

It is the result of the "interference" of the psychic with the vital law. All human institutions are in the same case. Animals [|] have no institutions. Looking deeper we perceive that it is this that characterizes all art. Everything artificial is a product of the psychic force and results from interference with "the constitution of things." "The normal working of things" would never produce tools, weapons, clothing, or shelter. It is the essence of invention and artificial construction to "meddle" with "causal relations." But all this is just as "natural" and "normal" as are the purely psychical or vital processes. It simply takes place in a different department of natural forces. It is the psychic process, the work of mental agencies. (Ward 1894: 111-112)

Reading stuff like this solidifies the thought that Peirce must have been an avid student of Spencer. This is substantially the same discussion as that going on about semiosis and causality in biosemiotics. The interpreter, the semiotic subject, interferes or meddles with the causal world. That is a very basic statement of free will, with as noticeable an arbitrium (basis in mere opinion) as in any other.

As has been intimated, Mr. Spencer recognizes the efficacy of these interferences with nature, as he is pleased to call them. He is right in denying that there is any power that can take from, or add to, the actual force in the universe. To a great degree, too, the organic force of the world is incapable of increase or diminution, and even that part of it that belongs to society is practically a fixed quantity. Only by commuting it into some other form of force can its volume be changed. But all this is beside the point. The interferences of which he complains are not attempts to create or destroy the forces of society. They are attempts to direct them. This is easily done. The arts are all the result of the intelligent direction of natural forces and the properties of substances into ways and shapes that are useful to man. In the domestication of animals and the cultivation of vegetables the same is done for the higher class of forces displayed by living things. Government and all other social institutions aplly the same principles to the laws of human action. They are all successful in proportion to the degree of intelligence, i.e., of the understanding of those forces and properties, with which they are condicted. Mr. Spencer would not discourage art, he would not decry agriculture, he does not attack any other human institution except government. (Ward 1894: 112)

Made me think of the art of conversation and, if considered in light of the conversation of greeting, it is might be the artifice and conventionality of formulae that make them effective - a variation on the theme of recognition - and reveal language as a social force that can be consciously directed.

He has himself admitted that all governments, even the rudest, reflect the state of society over which they hold sway. But in an enlightened social state, such as that of England, Western Europe, and the United States, there is a close bond of union between society and [|] the government. Whether they call themselves monarchies or republics, they are all in fact impure democracies, and the legislators and principal administrative officers are chosen by the people, or change with the changes in the popular voice. Such governments are controlled, after their selection as much as in their selection, by the wishes of their constituents. They are watched and warned and urged and petitioned, and their continuance depends upon their obedience. Rarely, indeed, do they dare to disobey the known will of the people. (Ward 1894: 114-115)

Something of a complement to the unreflective nature of PC in the soap-box scenario. The bond of union between society and government could equally well be perfuctory: the government does not listen to the society and goes about its propaganda, and society does not listen to the government, and goes about its fruitless protest and dissention.

Because new countries will protect their infant industries, he lectures them in the following style:

"While the one party has habitually ignored, the other party has habitually failed to emphasize, the truth that this so-called protection always involves aggression; and that the name aggressionist ought to be substituted for the name protectionist."

(Ward 1894: 117)

A concise explanation of the public outcry about building a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

He goes to the absurd length of maintaining that one of the chief duties of government is to mould and modify character. He says:

"There is indeed one faculty, or rather combination of faculties, for whose short-comings the State, as far as in it lies, may advantageously compensate - that, namely, by which society is made possible. It is clear that any being whose constitution is to be moulded into fitness for new conditions of existence, must be placed under those conditions. This granted, it follows that as man has been, and is still, deficient in those feelings which prevent the recurring antagonisms of individuals and their consequent disunion, some artificial agency is required by which theirunion may be maintained. Only by the process of adaptation itself, can be produced that character which makes social equilibrium spontaneous. And hence, while this process is going on, an instrumentality must be employed, firstly, to bind men into the social state, and secondly, to check all conduct endangering the eistence of that state. Such an instrumentality we have in a government."

In another place he says that "the end which the statesman should keep in view as higher thn all other ends in the formation of character." (Ward 1894: 123)

Social union meets its antonym: disunion. Notice the distinct scent of mechanization in the spontaneous nature of social equilibrium. Violent impulses would be conduct that endangers the social state.