by James Tuttle
The First Libertarian*
(*Actually, the first “dialectical” libertarian!)
In his short review of The Political Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, Timothy Virkkala (May 1999) praises Tim S. Gray’s discussion of the great classical liberal’s methodology as a synthesis of “individualist” and “holist” approaches to social theory. But Virkkala remarks
This method–I’m tempted to call it “dialectical,” but Spencer’s prose and position seem so far from Hegel’s that the term is almost indecent–confuses many readers. But it is surely his strength. Gray is one of the few Spencer scholars to see this method as fundamental, and to present sophisticated analyses of Spencer’s syntheses.
It is unfortunate that Virkkala refuses to give into his temptation, because crucially significant aspects of Herbert Spencer’s work are, indeed, dialectical.
Some will say: “Ah, there goes Sciabarra. He thinks everyone is dialectical!” The truth is, of course, that though a genuine dialectical mindset is rare, not a few of the major classical liberal and libertarian thinkers have had a strong dialectical sensibility–and the neglect of this dialectical streak has been something I’ve tried to remedy for many years. The project encompasses a trilogy of works that began with Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (SUNY, 1995), where I argued that Hayek’s critique of “constructivism” is essentially dialectical because it views utopianism as a revolt against the broad conditions within which freedom is born and nourished. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Penn State, 1995) is the second part. There I argue that Rand was a master at tracing the relationships among disparate factors within a dynamic context; her emphasis on the epistemic, psychological, ethical, and cultural requirements of freedom was simultaneously a vision of an integrated human existence that triumphed over conventional dichotomies–mind versus body, fact versus value, theory versus practice, etc. My forthcoming book, Total Freedom, completes the trilogy by tracing the history and meaning of the concept of dialectic from the pre-Socratics to Murray Rothbard, focusing on its relevance to our defense of liberty.
Dialectics is a methodological orientation toward contextual analysis of dynamic, structured systems. Dialectical techniques have been championed by Hegel, Marx, and those on the left, but they are as old as Western philosophy. They originated in the argumentative arts. A two-person dialogue constituted a dialectic of sorts, a means of contextualizing a problem by looking at it from different vantage points. While Plato gave expression to the Socratic form in his many dialogues, Aristotle was the first theoretician, the father, of the enterprise. His Topics and Sophistical Refutations were the first textbooks of dialectic. He articulated its principles and was probably its teacher in Plato’s Academy.
In the evolution of dialectics, it was inevitable, perhaps, that it would be applied to objects and phenomena far beyond the confines of discourse. As long as an object of study can be treated as a structured totality–as a specific kind of whole constituted by dynamic relations–dialectical analysis becomes possible. There are many distinct phenomena–a language, a philosophy, a culture, an economy, a political organization, a social system, and even the relations among these–that can be analyzed as structured totalities. Because none of us can achieve a godlike vantage point on the whole, because the desire for omniscience is what Hayek called a “synoptic delusion,” dialectics requires that we grasp any given object in its multiple dimensions by successive shifts in our perspective.
For years, Marxists derided liberals as thoroughly “undialectical” because their allegedly “atomistic” approach reduced social analysis to an abstract mental gymnastic on the life and times of Robinson Crusoe. But the history of liberalism is replete with rich, textured, context-sensitive thinking. In this regard, Herbert Spencer was one of the most important classical liberal thinkers to pioneer an alternative “dialectical libertarianism.” His contributions to this project have yet to be fully appreciated, although his contributions to general systems theory in sociology are well known.
Hayek tells us too that Spencer’s work had an impact on some of the early Austrian economic thinkers, including Friedrich von Wieser. But as Tibor Machan argues, Spencer was also among the first to provide “a full-blown scientific justification” for the liberal worldview, just as Marx had done for communism (in Spencer [1879-93] 1978, 9). His evolutionary approach shared much with that of Darwin and provided inspiration for Collingwood, Kuhn, and Toulmin. It displayed all the “architectonic instinct[s]” and “propensit[ies] for synthesis” that we have come to expect from bona fide dialectical modes of inquiry (Copleston [1966] 1985, 145).
Spencer ([1879-93] 1978) admits into his conception a genuine appreciation for reciprocal relations among factors within a wider totality. It was Aristotle who first explored the mutual implications of “correlatives,” such as “master” and “slave.” Hegel stressed the same notion in his analysis of the relationship between “lord” and “bondsman.” Like Aristotle and Hegel, Spencer explains “that correlatives imply one another,” as surely as a father requires a child, and a child requires a father.
Beyond the primary truth that no idea of a whole can be framed without a nascent idea of parts constituting it, and that no idea of a part can be framed without a nascent idea of some whole to which it belongs, there is the secondary truth that there can be no correct idea of a part without a correct idea of the correlative whole. There are several ways in which inadequate knowledge of the one involves inadequate knowledge of the other. (37)
An examination of the part of a whole must not reify that part as “an independent entity,” or it will risk the misapprehension of “its relations to existence in general . . .” (37). And the relations must not be viewed “statically,” says Spencer, but “dynamically” and “organic[ally]” (38). Spencer absorbs the organic metaphor from Aristotle in much the same way as Hegel did. In Parts of Animals, Aristotle examines the connections of parts that derive their essence from their constitution of the living organism as a whole. A hand disconnected from the body to which it belongs is a hand in name only, for “it will be unable to perform its function” (1.1.640b34-641a10). Spencer ([1879-93] 1978) argues likewise that “a detached arm” is one in name only and that it must be integrally understood as part of the organic whole to which it belongs. The moon’s orbit cannot be understood apart from the movements of the larger solar system; the loading of a gun is “meaningless” outside the context of the “subsequent actions” performed; the “fragment[s] of a sentence” are “unintelligible” when disconnected from “the remainder”; and moral conduct “is an organic whole . . . of interdependent actions,” in which each action is “inextricably bound up with the rest” (38-39).
This dialectic is extended to the whole network of social intercourse. Long predating Hayek, Spencer ([1984] 1981) views society as a spontaneous “growth and not a manufacture.” His focus on the “mutual dependence of parts” within a society and on the analytical “integrity of the whole” does not lead him to embrace the organic collectivism of traditional holistic approaches. He maintains that society lacks a collective brain, a “corporate consciousness,” and since each person within the community retains an individual consciousness, the “corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts, instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life.” As a society becomes more and more integrated, there is a greater need for heterogeneity and differentiation among the individuals who compose it (392-93).
This individualist insight does not prevent Spencer ([1850] 1970) from suggesting that the “body-politic” requires the freedom of each of its members in order to achieve freedom-in-general (405). In Spencer’s conception of the social world, “whatever produces a diseased state in one part of the community must inevitably inflict injury upon all other parts.” It is a “salutary truth” of the ideal community “that no one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy” (409).
Eric Mack has recognized that this kind of utopian vision is “implausible and doctrinally corrosive” to the individualism that Spencer espouses (xvii). In the first place, it is virtually impossible to measure interpersonally people’s level of morality and happiness. And if the human community requires such “perfect” freedom across the globe, freedom is likely to remain a chimera for a long time to come. But despite these problems in Spencer’s work, we can still appreciate how he integrates the theoretical lessons of conservatism and radicalism, moving back and forth between adaptation “to old conditions of existence” and “becoming adapted to new ones” (Spencer [1950] 1970, 420).
What makes his contribution so important is his penchant for tracing the connections among social relations as manifested across different organizational structures and institutions. He sees an organic unity between the increasingly bureaucratic domestic state and its militarism abroad, between the interventionist dynamic and social disintegration. These ties are endemic to the statist system as a whole, as it evolves and influences each of its parts. Each part becomes a microcosm of the wider injustices, Spencer declares, even as all the parts reproduce injustice on a macroscopic scale.
The lesson is one that contemporary libertarians should heed. Those who advocate a single change in one part of society, namely government, will not sustain their revolution. To focus solely on rolling back the state, while not paying attention to the complexities of social psychology, ethics, and culture, is a sure prescription for failure. As Spencer might say, to disconnect a single aspect from its broad context is to achieve partial, one-sided, “inadequate knowledge” of all that is necessary to achieve fundamental change. That Spencer was among the first “dialectical libertarians” to grasp this principle remains an enduring legacy of his work.
REFERENCES
Copleston, Frederick. [1966] 1985. A History of Philosophy, BookThree Volume VIII. Bentham to Russell. Garden City, N.Y: .Image Books.
Gray, Tim S. 1996. The Political Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Avebury.
Spencer, Herbert. [1879-93] 1978. The Principles of Ethics, 2 vols. Introduction by Tibor R. Machan. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
___. [1940] 1981. The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom. Foreword by Eric Mack. Introduction by Albert Jay Nock. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
___. [1850] 1970. Social Statics: The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
Virkkala, Timothy. 1999. Booknotes: The Synthetic Man. Liberty 13, no. 5 (May): 59-60.
Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In philosophy the first famous (there may indeed have been many others before him – but they are not so famous) libertarian was indeed Aristotle – for it was he who maintained that human beings have the capacity to know moral right from wrong and to choose to do right. However, this is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for POLITICAL libertarianism.
A political libertarian must take this philosophical foundation and then build upon it with the argument that as humans are moral agents it is wrong to use force or fear to make them do things or take their stuff. This Aristotle did not do – indeed he attacked those who did do it, such as Lycrophon (indeed we only know of Lycrophon’s argument because of Aristotle’s attack upon it in the “The Politics”). To Aristotle the state was justified in using force (or the threat of it) to make people “just and good” – not just to make people not attack the bodies and goods of other (“just”) but also actively “good”.
Many Aristotelians (for example Randian Objectivists – but not just Randian Objectivists) have argued that Aristotle’s politics was in contradiction with his philosophy – and led to terrible consequences over many centuries.
Nor is this a new point – many have made it. For example Gladstone argued that moral improvement (making people “good”) could not possibly come from the force and fear of the state (that moral virtue, to be moral virtue, had to be voluntary)
It should be noted that Gladstone did not deny the central Aristotelian conception of what human beings are (that we are moral agents – unless brain damaged or insane, capable of working out what is morally right and, with an effort, choosing what is right against our desire to do wrong) – many 19th century liberals (and conservatives) were Aristotelian in this respect. The rather different conception of what a “human being” is, to be found in the Westminster Review group (for example in James and J.S. Mill) was a minority position in 19th century liberalism.
Full disclosure, I regard a “liberalism” that rejects the Aristotelian conception of what a human being morally is (to be found in 18th century Whigs such as Edmund Burke and 19th century liberals such as Gladstone) to be morally worthless – fundamentally mistaken. A “liberalism” as a building without foundations, or a tree without roots.
If you will forgive the presumption, let me offer a few comments from the perspective of an American conservative who, in his intemperate youth, flirted with the Libertarian Party.
Spencer’s insistence that none are fully free till all are free seems to me rather a self-evident proposition. So long as there is someone, with respect to whose rights I stand in a privileged position, my relations with him are suspect even if they appear to be no different from my relations with equals. That is, how would a disinterested observer ever know that my inferior accepted our interaction without his own calculation of his inferiority? Thus, my position of privilege might work to my advantage even without my intention to make use of it.
Tuttle, citing Mack’s criticism of Spencer’s position on this point, concludes that “freedom is likely to remain a chimera for a long time to come.” This is, if anything, an understatement. It would seem to me that true freedom is a project that can rightly be called “utopian” in the pure sense of the word. But the conservative in me replies that this is in no sense a denigration of the quest for greater liberty. Perhaps the most telling difference between Left and Right (Libertarians hate that dichotomy, bit it’s awfully handy sometimes) is that the Right understands that the perfect should not be allowed to become the enemy of the good.
This brings me round to another issue raised in this essay, Spencer’s appreciation of what we might call in an inelegant modern word “interconnectedness.” Not only is the full realization of my liberty bound up with that of others, but there is another more mundane sort of connection in the ordinary interactions of people. It is here that the caution of conservatism comes into play. Left projects have the tendency to be narrowly focused. That is they identify (manufacture might be a better word) a problem and push their chosen solution. But, there is seldom any consideration of how the solution proposed might, even if it worked as advertised for the problem in hand, have further consequences and those not necessarily salutary.
The conservative project, rightly considered, is not to oppose progress, but to keep in the policy debates the idea than change, while a necessary condition, is not a sufficient condition for progress to occur. And further, that government is not the only source of change. People, acting in their private capacity can make things different and sometimes better. And, people can organize themselves – through churches, fraternal societies, insurance companies, educational and philanthropic foundations, etc. – with little or no government action needed but to get out of the way.
The state cannot make bad people into good people. But, it can discourage some people from acting out the evil they might do in a state of nature. Alas, it has a similar power to discourage doing good. The trick becomes to restrain the state from interfering with the good, even if that means curtailing some of the state’s power to discourage evil acts.
A candidate for promotion to front page?
Mr. Holland, you make very good points. E.g., you write “Not only is the full realization of my liberty bound up with that of others….” This is one of the consequences of Enlightened Self-Interest as we were taught it in school in the ’50’s.
I also particularly appreciate your observation that it is not that conservatives are “against change.” Rather, I think American conservatives are leery of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. To “conserve” is not to pickle in formaldehyde.
Of course, that’s as distinguished from dogmatists and traditionalists. By the latter I mean, very specifically, those to whom tradition is paramount in his idea of his properly-functioning society. I do agree that traditions are important glue in social groups, including the group called a “country.”
But a conservative will let go of a tradition, or an idea, if it becomes clear to him that it’s a bad one in some important way that overrides whatever value — if any — it has. Although it tends not to come easily to him.
Thank you for your kind remarks on my humble offering. I wish I had received some awareness of concepts like enlightened self-interest in school as you did. Of course, in the 50s, I was a bit young to appreciate such ideas and much more fascinated by science and technology (the International Geo-physical Year, the beginning of the space race).
It wasn’t until high school and joining Young Americans for Freedom (which I continued in college) and then exposure to publications of the Foundation for Economic Education, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and others, that I ever heard of libertarianism. In 1969, I was solidly on the trad side of lib-trad divide in YAF, but about five years later I was a founder of the LP in Virginia.
Let me say something more about tradition. In my earlier comment, I meant only that habits of thinking and governance, when long-established, develop a web of connections through a society. Pruning even a dead branch can cause another to lose its support and collapse, and this van weaken other branches to which that one is connected. But, I should make it clear that there are relatively modern traditions, particularly some arising from the Progressive Era in American politics, with regard to which the true American conservative must be a radical; that is to say, one must cut them out root and branch to let in the sunlight. I have, since becoming aware of Dr. Gabb, heard him comment in this vein; but it was something those of us who called ourselves “movement conservatives” were keenly aware of forty years ago.
That said, the conservative faces a dilemma – he wants the progressive rot utterly eradicated, but he understands that connections have grown to other things worthy of preservation and that require skillful pruning. The Left radical has no such qualms, he is content to tear down everything in his path to, in the phrase made famous by Barack Obama, “fundamentally transform” society.
A final point, in favor of dogmatism. There are such things as principles that ought not to change – things like more freedom, less government, equality of rights and responsibilities and, most importantly, that government is not the source of rights or justice, merely a means for achieving their expression as is said in the Declaration of Independence.
The business about the “dialectical method” is important. I can’t figure out from the article where it’s Mr. Tuttle who’s speaking and where Dr. Sciabarra, but it’s surely true that the average anti-Marxist cringes and either weeps or spouts steam from the ears upon hearing the word “dialectical.” I always used to, myself.
But I think the best description I ever read said that a dialectical method just means checking either your theory or what you think you’ve observed, whichever, against further observations of reality or further developments in or conclusions drawn from your theory, and then updating your conclusions or beliefs or understanding (as you prefer to call them) so as to bring them into closer congruence to the more recent observations or to other conclusions from the theory.
Note: “Observations” includes mundane old experience, so negotiating our way through life itself requires some sort of dialectical method — if my understanding of the root idea is correct.
As such, a dialectical method would stand against dogmatism, which is inherently rigid and whose pronouncements are to be swallowed whole and indigested as True Fact, all experience to the contrary.
Dr. Sciabarra is not the first (I think!) to point out that Aristotle, who predated Hegel by some years, used a dialectical method of investigation — which Mr. Tuttle points out, above.
On the slavery question the deeds of Aristotle were not consistent with his “natural slave argument” words – after all he freed all his slaves in his will.
As for whether non slaves are made more free by slaves being freed…… well neither Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis were executed for treason after the Civil War (even thought they had personally sworn oaths to the United States – one as a officer of the United States army the other as a member of Congress), a, relatively, humane policy towards oath breakers (traitors) was followed. Were Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis more free after the Civil War (due the freeing of the slaves) than they were before the slaves were freed? It is a difficult question.
I hesitate to point this out for fear of my point being misconstrued, but what connection can there possibly be between the abolition of slavery (the 13th Amendment, ratified 6 December 1865) and whether Lee, or Davis, was prosecuted for treason for activities which ceased over half a year earlier?
As to whether Lee and Davis were freer men after slaves were freed is indeed a difficult question. Were all men in the United States freer? As a matter of political theory, clearly they were because they inhabited a freer society. Leaving aside, of course, the question of how truly free the former slaves were.
Lee and Davis both suffered crippling financial losses on the defeat of Southern arms, and Davis spent two years in prison at Fortress Monroe (ironically named for the president who had appointed Davis a West Point cadet nearly four decades earlier) and then another year on bail and in exile with his family in Canada until the Christmas pardons of 1868. So, it is doubtful whether either of them, and especially Davis, thought himself freer after the end of slavery.
I thought you were going to argue it was Eve – and that libertarianism was actually invented by a woman!
The problem with Spencer is that despite all his comments on the superiority of egoism – he was, in the final analysis, an altruist.
His ethics are full of altruistic assumptions and tropes, a normative ideal affirmed in the System of Synthetic Philosophy: “the highest ambition of the beneficent will be to have a share – even though an utterly inappreciable and unknown share – in the ‘making of Man.’ Experience occasionally shows us that there may arise extreme interest in pursuing entirely unselfish ends and as time goes there will be more and more of those whose unselfish end will be the further evolution of Humanity. While contemplating from the heights of thought the far-off life of the race never to be enjoyed by them but only by a remote posterity they will feel calm pleasure in the consciousness of having aided the advance towards it.” -Herbert Spencer,
That’s nice!
If human nature is to evolve toward a creature which finds its highest blessedness in self-sacrifice, then only one end can result from this – political collectivism.
If self sacrifice is so good then let us forget evolution – let’s start now.
Let’s abolish individual rights!