of profit. The limbs, glands, or other members of an animal are
developed by exercise. But in order “that any organ in a living being
may grow by exercise, there needs to be a due supply of blood.” All
action implies waste; blood brings the materials for repair; and before
there can be growth, the quantity of blood supplied must be more than
is requisite for repair.
“In a society it is the same. If to some district which elaborates
for the community particular commodities--say the woolens of
Yorkshire--there comes an augmented demand; and if in fulfillment
of this demand, a certain expenditure and wear and tear of the
manufacturing organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the
extra quantity of woolens sent away there comes back only such quantity
of commodities as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of
life and machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be
growth, the commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient
for these ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the
growth be rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs
we call profit, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a
living body.”
This is “physiological” political economy with a vengeance and shows to
what straits bourgeois apologists are reduced to find a justification
of that exploitation of labor which is the only source of profit. In
concluding this point Spencer seems to satirize his own position and
at the same time gives something that looks very much like a socialist
explanation of panics. He says: “And if in the body politic some part
has been stimulated into great productivity, and afterwards can not get
paid for all its produce, certain of its members become bankrupt, and
it decreases in size.”
The truth of the whole matter is that Spencer is wholly at sea the
moment he touches political economy, and in place of some elementary
knowledge on that subject, we have the obsolete theories of the
Manchester School proclaimed in the name of physiology.
Then follows a series of very ingenious comparisons. Following Liebig,
he compares coins to blood corpuscles calling the later blood-discs to
enhance the analogy and concludes: “throughout extensive divisions of
the lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in societies
of low civilization, there is no money.”
Then the development of blood vessels in lower animals is compared
to the development of roads in primitive societies; their greater
perfection in higher animals comparing with the railroads which more
effectively convey food stuffs to the centers of population. Amid much
that is fantastic and tedious, he says: “And in railways we also see,
for the first time in the social organism, a system of double channels
conveying currents in opposite directions as do the arteries and veins
of a well-developed animal.”
“We come at length,” says Spencer, “to the nervous system.” This is
by far the most interesting item in Spencer’s catalogue, because it
is here that the evolutionary philosopher and the Manchester School
politician come into open contradiction.
“We have now to compare the appliances by which a society as a whole,
is regulated, with those by which the movements of an individual
creature are regulated.”
Beginning with the nervous systems of lower animals he discovers
their inferiority to lie in the absence of a controlling center. The
lower Annulosa is composed of a series of ring-like segments. Each
ring has its own nerve ganglia linked by connecting nerves, but “very
incompletely dependent on any general controlling power. Hence it
results that when the body is cut in two, the hinder part continues to
move forward under the propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when
the chain of ganglia has been divided without severing the body, the
hind limbs may be seen trying to propel the body in one direction,
while the fore limbs are trying to propel it in another.”
As we move up in the animal world the nervous system culminates in
a centralized brain, and similarly as society becomes more complex,
government appears.
And now the great apostle of the non-interference of government with
the life of society is driven into the glaring contradiction of
contending that the highest animal organization is that in which the
brain, which he compares to government in society, interferes and
controls most effectively.
“Strange as the assertion will be thought,” he says, “our Houses of
Parliament discharge, in the social economy, functions which are in
sundry respects comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses
in a vertebrate animal.” Strange indeed! Especially to Mr. Spencer’s
disciples.
Then Mr. Spencer discovers that the kind of brain activity displayed by
the highest animals best compares with that form of government called
“representative.”
He says: “It is the nature of those great and latest-developed ganglia
which distinguish the higher animals, to interpret and combine the
multiplied and varied impressions conveyed to them from all parts of
the system, and to regulate the actions in such a way as duly to regard
them all; so it is in the nature of those great and latest-developed
legislative bodies which distinguish the most advanced societies, to
interpret and combine the wishes of all classes and localities and to
make laws in harmony with the general wants.”
It would seem from this that, a society whose government represents
only the interests of a handful of the community while the great
majority are uncared for, is suffering from social paralysis.
Before we pass to the next chapter where we shall examine the position
presented in “The Man Versus The State” we will observe one break in
Spencer’s analogy which he fails to notice.
When the brain of an animal is wrecked the animal dies; it has no
choice. But when the brain of a society fails to represent the
interests of the mass of the people who compose that society, or when
the social brain runs amuck and invites disaster, society may take its
choice, it may elect to die or--it may get a new brain.
IX.
SPENCER’S INDIVIDUALISM.
Individualism is dead.
As a theory, it has gone with Stahl’s “Phlogiston,” Cuvier’s
“Cataclysms,” and Goethe’s “Theory of Colors” to the museum of history.
The revolution in philosophy, which covers the nineteenth century and
reaches back into the closing decades of the eighteenth, has met and
overthrown it at every point. Today it lingers in the world of thought
a reminiscence of a prior stage of social development, as the imperfect
remnant of the “third eyelid” remains in our bodies a surviving
rudiment, a legacy that links us with our extinct ancestors of the
silurian age.
The greatest name ever thrown into the scales for Individualism and
against Socialism is that of Herbert Spencer. He has the reputation of
having been the greatest Individualist of all times.
Many people, including Socialists, who are not familiar with the works
of Spencer wonder how it comes to pass that the great evolutionary
philosopher could defend a theory so obsolete and anti-evolutionary as
Individualism. With this problem solved, Individualism is practically
disposed of--at least, its greatest prop is gone.
All careful students of the works of the “Synthetic” philosopher,
eventually recognize the dual personality of Mr. Spencer; the “Dr.
Jekyll” of evolution, and the “Mr. Hyde” of Individualism.
The last chapter dealt mainly with the former; this chapter will treat
chiefly of the latter.
Mr. Spencer’s chief utterances against what he conceived to be
Socialism and in favor of Individualism are to be found in a volume
of four essays entitled, “The Man Versus the State.” In this book
Mr. Spencer complains bitterly of the rapid extension of government
interference in the England of his day. He declares these “Acts of
Parliament” to be a greater and greater restriction of the individual
rights of the citizen.
Here are a few of the Acts which Spencer denounced: An Act directing
the Board of Trade to record the draught of sea-going vessels leaving
port, and another to fix the number of life-boats and the life-saving
appliances such vessels should carry. An Act making illegal a mine
with a single shaft: The inspection of white lead works to compel the
owners to provide overalls, respirators, baths, acidulated drinks,
etc., for the workmen: Providing for the inspection of gas works:
Making compulsory regulations for extinguishing fires in London;
Taxing the locality for local drainage; That bake-houses should have
a periodical lime washing, and a cleaning with soap and hot water at
least once in six months; To secure decent lodgings for persons picking
fruit and vegetables for public consumption; To provide free compulsory
education and public schools; The Public Libraries Act; All the Factory
Acts limiting child labor or enforcing the protection of dangerous
machinery; The Preservation of Seabirds Act; The establishment of
state telegraphy; Proposals to feed children; Government endowment of
scientific research; etc.
All these measures, and many others of similar nature, excited the
indignation of the greatest prophet of Individualism because, forsooth,
they modified somebody’s right to do as he pleased about something.
Luckily for England, Mr. Spencer and a handful of his individualist
disciples stood alone, while the electorate carried these laws through
their highest tribunals.
One can imagine the “joy of living” in an individualist arcadia
fashioned after Mr. Spencer’s own heart. A working man would be able to
take up the occupation of a sailor. He could embark on the rotten old
tub of some greedy shipowner, insured for many times its value, loaded
to the gunwales and sure to sink when it got out of sight of land to
where the water was a little rougher than plate glass. Of course he
would be living under a system of “voluntary co-operation” and “freedom
of contract” and if he didn’t wish to go to sea he could stay at
home and--starve. There would be very little work in port unloading
ships, as so many of them would never return to be unloaded. When the
insurance money was paid the shipowner could give a banquet and hold
forth on the individual right of the sailor to get drowned in the
interests of commerce without the government meddling about life boats
and other expensive and nonsensical appliances.
If he preferred to work on “terra firma” he might get a job in a mine
with only one shaft which in case of firedamp would be converted into a
furnace. Then as there would be no way to get out, no socialistically
inclined person would be able to dispute his individual right to stay
in. If he preferred the white lead industry he might “get in” there,
and there being no respirators, baths, or acidulated drinks he could
be a physical wreck in a year and a corpse in two. Or he might try the
gasworks and, there being no inspectors, there would be nothing to
interfere with his individual right to be asphyxiated in an oven or
roasted in a retort.
As wages would be small, unions not being individualist institutions,
he might get a cheap room in the top of an hotel without fire escapes,
in a town with no fire engines. He could live cheaply on bread from
bakehouses that never knew lime washings and had not seen hot water
or soap for over six months, and eat fruit and vegetables handled by
people who were not troubled with decent, let alone sanitary, lodgings.
He would have the liberty to stay at manual labor as there would
be no public schools or libraries to assist him to qualify for any
profession such as, for instance, journalism. This would, no doubt, be
a blessing in disguise, for if he became a writer, instead of following
the brilliant example of Mr. Spencer, he might misuse his powers to
the detriment of the race by advocating the limitation, or even the
abolition, of child labor. If he married he might be at liberty to sew
on his own buttons, his wife having left her fingers among the cogs of
uncovered machinery.
Such would be the social heaven, operated on the principles of
the “Manchester” school of politics, which mark the high-water of
Individualism, and of which Herbert Spencer was the chief apostle.
Compare this attitude of mind with that of the Utopian Socialist,
Robert Owen, over whom Spencer had the advantage of the lapse of a
period of seventy years. In 1815 Owen convened a large number of cotton
manufacturers at Glasgow, Scotland, to consider the state of the
cotton trade which was then in great distress. To that conference he
presented two proposals; one to help the masters, the other to benefit
the workers. The first was that they should petition parliament for
the repeal of the tariff on raw cotton; the second that they should
request parliament to shorten the working hours, and otherwise improve
the conditions of workers in the mills. The first proposal carried
unanimously, but the one on which Owen’s heart was set, was not even
seconded.
Knowing as he did the terrible condition of the English working class
of that period, the callous brutality of these rapacious masters roused
him to irony and defiance. He delivered an address to the conference
which he had printed and spread broadcast in every corner of the
country.
This is how the lion turned on the jackals:
“True indeed it is that the main pillar and prop of the political
greatness and prosperity of our country is manufacture, which, as
now carried on, is destructive of the health, morals, and social
comfort of the mass of people engaged in it. It is only since the
introduction of the cotton trade that children, at an age before they
have acquired strength or mental instruction, have been forced into the
cotton mills--those receptacles, in too many instances, for living,
human skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect, where, as the business
is often now conducted, they linger out a few years of miserable
existence, acquiring every bad habit which they may disseminate
throughout society. It is only since the introduction of this trade
that children and even grown people were required to labor more than
twelve hours in a day, not including the time allotted for meals. It is
only since the introduction of this trade that the sole recreation of
the laborer is to be found in the pothouse or ginshop, it is only since
the introduction of this baneful trade that poverty, crime, and misery
have made rapid and fearful strides throughout the community.
“Shall we then go unblushingly, and ask the legislators of our country
to pass legislative acts to sanction and increase this trade--to sign
the death warrants of the strength, morals, and happiness of our
fellow-creatures, and not attempt to propose corrections for the evils
which it creates? If such be your determination, I, for one, will not
join in the application--no, I will, with all the faculties I possess,
oppose every attempt made to extend the trade that, except in name,
is more injurious to those employed in it than is the slavery of the
poor negroes in the West Indies, for deeply as I am interested in the
cotton manufacture, highly as I value the extended political power of
my country, yet knowing as I do, from long experience both here and
in England, the miseries which this trade, as it is now conducted,
inflicts on those to whom it gives employment, I do not hesitate to
say: Perish the cotton trade, perish even the political superiority of
our country, if it depends on the cotton trade, rather than that they
shall be upheld by the sacrifice of everything valuable in life.”
Compare these noble utterances of the great-souled utopian Socialist
with the sneers at the most unfortunate element of the working class
which disfigure the pages of “The Man Versus the State” and let the
Individualist take whatever satisfaction he can get from the contrast.
But Spencer’s reactionary views did not stop with opposition to every
attempt to alleviate the condition of the wealth producers of his day.
As an individualist, he would tolerate no “government interference”
with the rights of individuals who wished to shoot sea-birds which they
could not get, but which usually flew out to sea, and died floating,
with a broken wing. Why should these lofty minded people be interfered
with? Were they not the prototypes of our own Roosevelt, who is always
ready to manifest his love of nature by killing everything in sight?
What a pity these individualists were not allowed to have the British
telegraph system managed by a gang of financial pirates like the owners
of the “Western Union” and the “Postal” of this country.
State repression of knowledge having proved such a bad thing in the
middle ages, state encouragement of learning must of course, needs
be equally bad in the nineteenth century. “Government endowment
of research,” indeed! Not for the individualist champion. And yet
England holds the world’s honors in biology, because of Darwin,
whose opportunity came through the government exploration of “The
Beagle,” and Huxley, who began his brilliant career with the government
expedition of the “Rattlesnake.” As England led the world in the middle
of the century so France had held first place during its first quarter,
and that because the French government sent out scientific expeditions
to the tropics, which, on their return loaded down the shelves of the
“Jardin des Plantes” with specimens which made possible those greatest
of her thinkers, Lamarck, Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire.
When the feeding of school children is thrown as a charge against
Socialism, we are proud to plead guilty. It is our glory that the
only cities in the world that have no starving children behind school
benches are those cities such as Lille, Ivry, Montlucon, etc., with a
Socialist majority in the town councils, which removed the disgrace.
Such then were the arguments of this flag bearer of Individualism, who
has supplied the opponents of Socialism with objections these thirty
years. His individualist philosophy is now so thoroughly discredited as
to call for no answer were it not for the fact pointed out by Huxley,
that erroneous ideas do not die just simply because they have been
killed.
It is not necessary to wheel into position the heavy artillery of Marx
to overthrow this house of cards. Spencer is a sufficient reply to
Spencer.
Here is the great contradiction. Spencer, the great biologist, says
the brain is to the animal what the Government is to a society. (1)
The more effectively and completely the brain controls the members
composing the animal body, the higher its place in the organic scale.
(2) The less effectively and completely the Government controls the
members of the body politic the better will be the society.
Sociological literature has failed to produce any individualist
champion able to reconcile this astonishing contradiction. And so there
it stands plainly before the eyes of Mr. Spencer’s readers.
“Suppose,” says Professor Huxley, “that, in accordance with this
view, each muscle were to maintain that the nervous system had no
right to interfere with its contraction except to prevent it from
hindering the contraction of another muscle; or each gland, that it
had a right to secrete, so long as its secretion interfered with no
other; suppose every separate cell were left free to follow its own
“interest” and laissez-faire lord of all, what would come of the body
physiological? The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks
for the physiological organism, acts for it, and rules the individual
components with a rod of iron. Even the blood corpuscles can’t hold a
public meeting without being accused of “congestion”--and the brain,
like other despots whom we have known, calls out at once for the use of
sharp steel against them.”
This is the rock upon which Spencerian Individualism struck and went to
pieces, independently of those great forces, which I shall point out,
that made for its disintegration.
These two contradictory positions are the upper and nether millstones
between which the individualistic philosophy of Anarchism is ground
to powder. Socialists are not stupid enough to argue that because
society can get along without a king therefore an orchestra should have
“no head.” We are also able to distinguish between “the state” which
Socialism will abolish, and the “administration of industry” which it
will establish.
Every step forward in modern thought has emphasized the importance
of that factor called “environment.” The evolution philosophy is an
environment philosophy. Lamarck, the greatest pioneer of modern
science, makes a change of environment the prime necessity of organic
development. Darwin makes environment the selective factor in “Natural
Selection” and in this he is supported by every living biologist of
note. Karl Marx paralleled these great advances by discovering that
every political philosophy takes its origin in some particular economic
environment. This is true of Socialism and Individualism alike.
And so if we wish to understand the historic significance of
Individualism we must go back to the period of its birth and examine
the social processes of production of that day. This takes us back to
the early years of the 19th century.
In the closing half of the 18th century, laborers individually owned
the small and crude tools by which they made their living. In this
stage of social development the laborer owning the tools he used,
appropriated the result. There was here no contradiction and whatever
notion of justice is supposed to inhere in the “individual ownership
of the means of production” derives its whole force from the economic
status of the worker of this period. If that status had remained
unchanged, Socialism would never have been heard of. But in the process
of evolution the truth and justice of the 18th century became a lie
and a social wrong in the 19th.
This transformation was wrought by the development of machinery. It
was impossible for every individual worker to own a large machine, and
so some men became toolless wage laborers employed by the owners of
machinery. This is the beginning of the present labor problem and here
arises the struggle in the world of ideas between the philosophy of
Individualism and that of Socialism.
Let us examine the vital change which had taken place even before we
reach the middle of the last century. Now, one man uses the tools, but
another owns them and appropriates the result. And this is the economic
foundation of the class war between the exploited wage worker and the
exploiting capitalist.
But the individualist theories proper to the 18th century, and its
mode of wealth production, passed over into the 19th where their
economic justification had ceased. As the fortunate individual owners
of machinery found themselves growing rich at a great rate apart from
their own individual efforts, they became enthusiastic supporters of
“Individualism” and eventually founded the “Manchester” school of
politics, which had Herbert Spencer as its chief mouth-piece and Henry
George as a somewhat belated trumpeter.
In this heyday of Individualism the “rate of profit” was at its
highest, one Lancashire cotton spinner boasting of one thousand per
cent. But the social hell in which the English working class of this
period lived is without parallel in modern times. Its system of child
labor, as recorded in the government blue books as well as already
shown by Owen, was indescribably horrible, but the manufacturers were
opposed to “government interference” and the individualist philosophy
and its bogey of “paternalism” was their craven plea.
With the grouping of the workers in factories production became
socialized, and now came this contradiction, production was social
while ownership and appropriation were individual. The Socialists of
that period rightly maintained that society should either go back in
production to the individual form so as to be in harmony with the
existing individual form of ownership and appropriation, or it should
adopt social ownership and social appropriation to harmonize with the
already existing social production.