Hikes - Spencer and The Liberal Idea of Community

Spencer and the Liberal Idea of Community
Author(s): Richard P. Hiskes

Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 595-609
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Spencer and the Liberal Idea of
Commnunnity
Richard P. Hiskes
As the originator of the term, "survival of the fittest," Herbert

Spencer has come to symbolize the harsh excesses of the liberal
state. This unflattering portrait emanates from two sources. First,
Spencer's political ideas read like a handbook for doctrinaire liber-
tarians: maximum liberty for the individual, unrestrained pursuit
of self-interest, and minimum governmental interference. Sec-
ond, Spencer's theory of social evolution in his eyes grants his
political ideas scientific validity, but it also presents those ideas in
a most inhumane and anticommunitarian light. And yet, in an
obscure editorial in the Times, this apologist for only the "most fit"
of evolutionary forms writes of the "horribly cruel practice of boil-
ing lobsters alive." Suggesting a more humane method of killing
these primitive creatures, Spencer concludes true to form that
"legislative coercion is not needful to enforce adoption of this
method." Rather, consumers of lobster should form a voluntary
organization aimed at boycotting lobsters not treated according to
his humanitarian proposal.'
This is more than an amusing and perhaps surprising anec-
dote, for within it are contained many of the central ideas of
Spencer's social and political thought. His concern with "in-
humanity" to lobsters is not unexpected given the basis of his
social and political ideas. All of Spencer's thought draws from two
essential premises: first, that all biological organisms are subject
to the laws of natural evolution. This evolutionary process is pro-
gressive in a qualitative and moral sense, and runs through in-
dividual members of a species as the units of selection. Included
in the list of biological organisms participating in the evolutionary
process is society. Second, callous or gratuitous interference with
the natural workings of evolution is both dangerous and immoral,
and this holds true regardless of whether the context is of coercive
governmental social programs or capricious cruelty to lower
evolutionary forms such as lobsters.
A preliminary version of this paper was delivered at the American Political
Science Association annual meeting, New York, September 1981.
1 Herbert Spencer, "An Inhumanity," Various Fragments (New York & Lon-
don, 1910), pp. 248-49.
595
596 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
These twin principles of Spencer's thought make his political

ideas especially vulnerable to a powerful modern criticism. As a
liberal who believes first and foremost in limited government and
individual liberty, Spencer confronts the problem of com-
munity - or rather the lack thereof- in an especially antagonistic
way. All liberal theorists from Locke to Nozick stand accused of
ignoring community or fraternity as a political value, but Spencer
seems more culpable than most. The reason for this special
culpability is that though Spencer argues strenuously for in-
dividual liberty - as do all classical liberals - he does not rely on
moral argumentation. Most liberals believe liberty is justified for
individuals because of their capacity for reason and moral respon-
sibility. Spencer's case for liberty is made entirely on the grounds
that evolutionary progress requires it. Thus, the ethical and
political ideas that characterize community appear less a part of
the liberal state as interpreted by Spencer than by any other
liberal thinker.
In this essay I will argue that the value of political community
is recognized and strongly supported in liberal theory, even in the
extremely individualistic approach of Spencer. Spencer's brand of
liberalism is somewhat unique for an additional reason other than
its excessive individualism. His view of society is peculiar among
liberals for its reliance on the organic metaphor to explain
society's participation in the universal process of organic evolu-
tion. This interpretation of society as an organism threatens
Spencer's liberal credentials while yet permitting his liberalism to
rise above the narrow individualism of his time, as well as to en-
sure a place for community atop the liberal scale of political
values.
Spencer embraces the organic characterization of society as

part of a larger attempt on his part to merge biological theory and
political theory. This attempt is particularly pertinent today in
light of all the current work being done in new fields such as
biopolitics and sociobiology. Spencer's relevance to modern
biobehavioral theory must be carefully stated however. Because
his political ideas rely on a theory of evolution, Spencer is
something of a pioneer in biopolitics. However, Spencer's view of
evolution is not accepted today by either biologists or
biobehavioral scientists. His view is a teleological or Lamarckian
one, an evolutionary theory overturned by Darwin and viewed to-
day mainly as a quaint anachronism. Lamarckian evolution
SPENCER AND COMMUNITY 597
theory rejects the idea of random variation so crucial to Dar-

winian theory and therefore cannot explain ongoing evolutionary
adaptations.
Spencer's Lamarckianism is important to his political theory,
however, because he interprets teleological evolution as pro-
gressive in both a physical and moral sense. Thus, teleological in-
terpretations of natural history provide Spencer with optimism in
his political views, a trait always present in liberal theory, but
usually associated with man's reason rather than his participation
in evolutionary processes.
So one must be careful before referring to Spencer as the
"father of biobehavioralism." On the other hand, two aspects of
Spencer's biologically based political theory are very much a part
of biopolitics today. First, Spencer understands the centrality of
human altruism to any proposed explanation of political or ethical
behavior. As will be seen later, his view of altruism is not the
modern biobehavioral one as put forward, for example, by
Trivers. But it is in his recognition of the importance of altruism
in human evolution and politics that Spencer still casts a long
shadow in modern biobehavioral theory. Second is a sociological
point. Spencer's biologically induced political recommendations
were not well received by other liberals of his time, and the
ideological reaction to them presages the reaction to current
biopolitical theories. Spencer would have sympathized with those
working today in the biobehavioral sciences, for he too was sub-
ject to the same vitriol from those who considered his politics reac-
tionary, harsh, or simply illiberal.2
Spencer's general attempt to make evolutionary explanation a
paradigm for political analysis can be given mixed reviews by to-
day's biobehavioral standards. As part of that attempt, however,
his use of the organic metaphor to describe society causes two
problems for his more specific political values. Both of these
challenge his avowed devotion to the idea of individual liberty.
The first problem lies in the fact that the organic metaphor seems
to grant a large role to the state in governing the affairs of the
social organism. The second difficulty is intimately related to the
first: if the state must play a large role, does this not leave but a
small realm for individual persons, their liberty, their interest, in
2 Particularly noteworthy as a Spencerian critic was Spencer's contemporary
Lester Ward, who in many works assailed Spencer's sociological theories. For a
review of Ward's critique, see Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American
Thought (New York, 1944), chap. 4.
defining the course of social events and social change? The second
question will be discussed later; the first is voiced by Spencer's
contemporary and friend, T. H. Huxley:
If the resemblances between the body physiological and the body

politic are any indication, not only of what the latter is, and how it
has become what it is, but of what it ought to be, and what it is tend-
ing to become, . . . the real force of the analogy is totally opposed to
the negative view of State function.3
As the author of the libertarian manifesto, The Man Versus the State,
Spencer more than most should understand Huxley's perplexity.
For most liberals, the incongruity is almost palpable between
liberal values and the description of political society as an
organism. The dangers of this marriage of ideas are evident to all
liberal thinkers.
These dangers as expressed by liberals reside in three fun-
damental and related objections to the belief in a "social
organism." First, to speak of a holistic social entity misconstrues
the empirical subject matter of social research, for, in Nozick's
words, "there is no social entity with a good. . . . there are only in-
dividual people, different individual people, with their own in-
dividual lives."* Second, empirical disputes aside, denying the
methodological individualist interpretation of social life has
serious and unacceptable ethical ramifications. If there is in fact a
social organism, presumably it is empowered to make claims
upon the individual in the name of its own good, thereby jeopar-
dizing the moral inviolability and autonomy of the individual.
Nonutilitarian liberals such as Kant are especially wary of this
consequence of invoking the organic metaphor.
Third, liberal individualists perceive the organic definition of
society as carrying with it a thoroughly unacceptable political doc-
trine of rigid hierarchy and centralized authoritarian control. The
implication of the organic metaphor is treacherously obvious in
3 T. H. Huxley, Fortnightly Review, 16 (1871), 534. Cited in Walter M.
Simon, "Herbert Spencer and the 'Social Organism,' " Journal of the History of
Ideas, 21 (1960), 294-99. Spencer, of course, was aware of Huxley's criticism and
responded to it specifically in a short essay entitled Specialized Administration. For a
discussion of this exchange, and of the amendments to his notion of social
organicism which Spencer made, see David Nicholls, "Positive Liberty,
1880-1914," American Political Science Review, 56 (March 1962), 114-28; and
Richard P. Hiskes, Community Without Coercion (Newark, 1982), chap. 2.
4 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York, 1979), pp. 32-33. Ob-
viously, Nozick also voices objections to the notion of the social organism which
rest on moral grounds rather than empirical.
this regard: if society resembles a biological organism, then like

all such organisms it must be arranged hierarchically with a single
control center analogous to the brain which directs all bodily ac-
tivities. This control center must be the government, which if the
metaphor is to be isomorphically correct, must possess supreme
dictatorial power and authority.
This third criticism of Spencer's use of the organic metaphor is
that identified by Huxley and others of his contemporaries such as
Lester Ward.5 Clearly, if Spencer intends the metaphor to iden-
tify how society functions and is structured, then his argument for
the liberal minimal state is a massive contradiction. However,
Spencer does not employ the metaphor in this way. The organic
aspects of society for Spencer refer to its susceptibility to evolution
and change, not to its internal structure or actual operation. In his
view, the principle of social organicism does not describe how
society looks or functions at any particular moment, but rather
calls attention to its participation in the evolutionary processes af-
fecting all organic species. Thus it is a principle that primarily
describes a process, not the object of the process. It refers to socie-
ty's dynamic character as a growth, rather than an artifact.6
Society is organic then in the sense that it is subject to the
same evolutionary laws affecting species. This does not mean that
in Spencer's eyes society is analogous to a single organism such as
a man. In a part of The Study of Sociology entitled "Methodological
Individualism" Spencer elucidates this subtle, but important dif-
ference. There he insists that "we must say that the morphology
and physiology of Society, instead of corresponding to the mor-
phology and physiology of Man, correspond rather to mor-
phology and physiology in general."' And more explicitly yet in
The Principles of Sociology, he explains that "the social organism,
discrete instead of concrete, asymmetrical instead of symmetrical,
sensitive in all its units instead of having a single sensitive centre,
is not comparable to any particular type of individual organism,
animal or vegetal."8
This is a controversial and even perhaps illogical use of the
organic metaphor. For if something is subject to the laws and pro-
cesses affecting all and only biological organisms, presumably
5 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 80.

6 Herbert Spencer, "The Social Organism," The Man Versus the State, ed. T.
Macrae (Baltimore, 1969), p. 198.
7 Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology (London, 1873), p. 59.
8 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (London, 1876), 1, pt. 2, p. 613.
then it is such an organism. Spencer's dilemma here is obvious,

but he inexplicably never fully resolves it in a satisfying way.
However, though his logic is flawed, it is obvious that Spencer's
view of society is not the same as other organic interpretations
such as those of Burke or Plato. Nor does it presume any par-
ticularly authoritarian or even hierarchical political structures in
society. This is so because the analogues of such structures are not
necessarily found in organic species, as they are in individual
biological organisms. Thus Spencer's liberal individualist creden-
tials are secure, though in his critics' view, at the expense of con-
sistency.
Why then does Spencer include discussions of the "organic"
nature of society in his works on politics? For two reasons: first
(and paradoxically) to supply a rationale for minimal govern-
ment; second, to lay the groundwork for voluntary cooperation
and the communal life. If society is a natural growth evolving in
morally progressive fashion from a lower to higher form, in-
terference with this process constitutes actual moral backsliding.9
This social improvement depends upon a similar ethical improve-
ment in individuals.'0 Therefore, governmental interference with
this moral "adaptation" of individuals and society acts as a
regressive force.11 Spencer uses the example of the Poor Laws as a
case in point.
The substitution of mechanical charity for charity prompted by the

heart is manifestly unfavorable to the growth of men's sympathies,
and therefore adverse to the process of adaptation. Legal bounty
further retards adaptation by interposing between the people and
the conditions to which they must become adapted, so as partially to
suspend those conditions. And, to crown all, we find not only that a
Poor Law must necessarily fail to diminish popular suffering, but
that it must inevitably increase their suffering . . . by causing a
retrogression of character which painful discipline must at some
future day make good.12
9 Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (New York, 1910), pp. 60; 366-67. See also
Hofstadter's discussion of moral evolution of individuals, Social Darwinism, p. 39,
passim.
10 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 17.
1 Ibid., p. 266. Spencer's use of the neutral-sounding term adaptation to
describe the evolution of human conscience should not be interpreted as a retreat
by Spencer from his oft-repeated assertion that evolution connotes and demands
moral development. As stated before, this is a proof of Spencer's liberalism: a
faith in the gradual moral improvement of the species through the natural in-
teraction of evolutionary forces.
12 Ibid., p. 294.
Hence the apparent harshness of Spencer's view of government

amelioration of social ills, for abundantly evident in this lengthy
quotation is the mean side of the doctrines of social evolution and
"survival of the fittest."
But Spencer's theory of evolution also lays the foundation for
community in the liberal state. As evolution is definable as a
"change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent
heterogeneity,"'3 society in its evolution is characterized by a
progress at the same time "toward complete separateness and
complete union."14 As society evolves, individuals become in-
creasingly "individuated" as they grow ever more united. What
results when this evolutionary process comes to fruition, then, is a
collection of persons so dependent upon each other as to form a
social unit that is itself individuated. This is a social organism in
every sense, for its internal structure is now, at the end of its evolu-
tionary development, truly organic. Society is no longer
analogous to an organism merely because it is subject to organic
laws of development. Indeed, at this point it is exempted from
those laws because it has reached its final stage. This end state of
social evolution, "equilibration" in Spencer's terminology, must
occur because the process of increasing heterogeneity is logically
finite.'5 When this stage is reached, then, society is an organism
because of how it functions and how it is structured. Spencer
names this final evolutionary form of society a community.
This union of men into one community, this increasing mutual

dependence of units which were originally independent, this gradual
segregation of citizens into separate bodies with reciprocally subser-
vient functions, this formation of a whole consisting of numerous
essential parts, this growth of an organism of which one portion can-
not be injured without the rest feeling it, may all be generalized
under the law of individuation. The development of society, as well
as the development of life generally, may be described as a tendency
to individuate - to become a thing.16
13 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 6th ed. (London, 1904), p. 291. The
term coherent heterogeneity in some ways sums up Spencer's emphases on both com-
munity and individuality. The community is coherent, or recognizable as a
single unit, yet its individual components remain distinguishable and important.
For an intriguing interpretation and update of this notion, and for a reading of
its place in contemporary evolutionary theory, see Peter A. Corning, "A Synop-
sis of a General Theory of Politics" (Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, New York, 1981).
15 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 37.
This final evolutionary form of society bears witness to

Spencer's Lamarckian view of evolution, and to the importance of
community in Spencer's political thought. But there is something
troubling here as well. Community as the final organic form at
the end of the social evolutionary process exhibits Spencer's liberal
optimism. But there is a pervasive determinism in the description
of that process which challenges the liberal faith in human
freedom. Just as Huxley called attention to the incongruity be-
tween the social organism and minimal government, so com-
munity as the end state of social evolution is incongruous with the
idea of individual free will. Individuals do not themselves freely
create this community according to their own ideas and values.
Instead, it is brought about by the ineluctable working out of an
impersonal evolutionary process. In other words, the community
that forms the final evolutionary stage of society is the result of the
operation of evolutionary laws that, though they also affect in-
dividual persons, are not controlled by them.
In a sense, then, Spencer handcuffs individuals in the same
way he stymies the state. The laws of evolution shackle in-
dividuals in their search for community by informing them that
though community is inevitable as the end stage of evolution, it is
not to be consciously sought. To do so would be to interfere with
the natural process that will bring community about in exactly the
same way that governmental interference will hinder its develop-
ment. Community then functions in Spencer's theory as the pot of
gold at the end of the evolutionary rainbow, which man will
secure if he only leaves well enough alone. Spencer might as well
speak of heaven. This would be an apt comparison, since
everyone would like to get there but few wish to tamper with the
natural process which must precede their entrance. As a guide for
action, this notion of community is not only an illiberal symbol of
human impotency, but offers little except a feeling of futility for
those who seek the communal life.
Treating community in this way as the goal of an impersonal
evolutionary process is problematic in that such a process and its
goal are not really prime topics for political theorizing- their link
to biopolitics notwithstanding. This is regrettable because my
purpose here is to locate the place of community as a political
value within liberal political thought. So far, Spencer's views on
community are neither innately political nor liberal. In fact, the
fully organic form of community at the end of evolution is far
removed from traditional liberal concerns for individual freedom

and autonomy. But there is a second view of community inherent
in Spencer's work, one which is both political and liberal, and
distinctively down to earth as well. This community is founded on
the liberal bedrock of individual self-interest. Thus it brings peo-
ple together and motivates them to form associations infused with
a spirit of voluntary cooperation, and endowed with a mandate of
supplying even the most basic of human needs.
Community based upon shared interest and taking the form of
voluntary cooperative association is viewed by Spencer not as the
end of evolution but as a tool of it. This is significant for many
reasons, not the least of which is that it highlights Spencer's in-
sistence that the activities and motivations of individuals are the
moving forces in the process of evolution. But the political
significance of this view of community is more readily apparent
still, for the character of the "voluntary cooperative associations"
Spencer proposes is best illustrated by comparing them to the
state as alternative means for satisfying the demands of individual
self-interest. Indeed, the political nature of this idea of communi-
ty resides in Spencer's contention that voluntary associations must
be viewed as possible (and eventual) replacements for the
machinery of the state.
Under the rule of the state, cooperation does exist, admits
Spencer, but it is coercive in nature. Under such a system in-
dividual liberty is violated in two ways. First, the nature of
cooperation is itself compulsory, for example, taxation. Second,
the methods of cooperation are not a matter of individual choice.
That is, competition is lacking between different forms of
cooperation or types of associations. Without the state, or with a
greatly diminished one, competition will flourish between types of
cooperation and their institutional manifestations. This will
restore liberty of choice to the individual, as well as greater effi-
ciency to the cooperative associations themselves.
But if free competition characterizes social relations without
state interference, what will motivate persons to cooperate at all
once they are no longer forced to do so? Spencer's answer is
deceptively simple. In addition to the fundamental need for com-
panionship, the individual desire to maximize one's interests by
gaining an advantage not previously held is the chief reason for
voluntarily cooperating with others."7 Thus, personal self-interest
17 Spencer, Man Versus the State, p. 174. Spencer views self-interest in this
regard in a curiously shortsighted fashion for a theorist of evolution. The in-
is the foundation of this second approach to community. And in

further accordance with the liberal attitudes Spencer exhibits in
this regard, community becomes a contractual agreement be-
tween persons.
Spencer bases his system of voluntary cooperation upon the
idea of contract; his contention is that the other form of coopera-
tion - the compulsory kind - cannot be so grounded. Contractual
relations are characterized by voluntariness for all parties, thus
the ensuing system of cooperation is itself voluntary and a matter
of free choice. However, the alleged contract that creates the state
is not voluntary after the death or departure of the original par-
ties;'8 thus, any later form of state-initiated cooperation is com-
pulsory and unacceptable from the standpoint of individual liber-
ty. While Spencer then embraces the idea of contract to establish
communal association, he rejects it as the true basis of the modern
state. In so doing he mirrors all classical liberals' dissatisfaction
with the modern state, while at the same time he verifies the alter-
native nature of the community that is destined to replace it.
The community of voluntary association is not only a political
idea, however, but also an evolutionary one. Spencer argues that
the replacement of the state by a system of voluntary cooperation
represents progress in the development of society toward its final
organic form. The evolution of society is directed away from the
state according to Spencer, who claims that, on the whole, state
interference tends to diminish as societies evolve. When voluntary
associations proliferate, the end of the state is close at hand, for
the new ideas magnifying voluntary cooperation are proof in
themselves that the state is already obsolete in evolutionary terms.
That is, society and the individuals constituting it have pro-
gressed to a point where the state's usefulness is at an end. At such
a point, Spencer concludes that "were it possible under such cir-
cumstances to uphold past institutions and practices (which, hap-
terests to be maximized through voluntary cooperation are primarily economic

and materialistic, though, as will become clear, altruism also plays an important
role. Still, if it is too much to ask that he portray self-interest as reproductive
fitness (inclusive or otherwise), it should not be too much to demand that incen-
tives for cooperation should include long-range plans or goals. These seem to be
sadly lacking as reasons for the initial motivation to cooperate voluntarily.
18 Ibid., p. 157. This is a common criticism of contract theory, and was even
in Spencer's time. For a much ignored but trenchant version of this argument,
and an application of it to the American Constitution, see Lysander Spooner, No
Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, reprinted by Ralph Myles Publishers,
Inc., Colorado Springs, 1973.
pily, it is not), it would be at the expense of a continual searing of

men's consciences."19
So according to Spencer, the introduction of voluntary
associations accurately predicts the eventually superfluous role of
the state in any but the most general matters such as national
defense. Voluntary associations also usher in a new epoch in
societal evolution, for they elevate society to a new method of
operation in the best pluralist style. Voluntary associations will
exist in great numbers when the state is diminished, for they must
serve the many and varied interests of the members of society at
large. Whereas previously these interests were all singularly
political in that their fulfillment depended upon state action,
under a system of voluntary cooperation there is no single
organization embracing all of an individual's or group's interests.
Thus, interests are treated as separable and pluralistic and give
rise to a pluralistic mosaic of associations that individuals may
voluntarily join to further their own ends. Each association pro-
vides only one or a few functions and so will not encompass the
"whole man," but only affect him in a small portion of his chosen
activities. The interests served by these associations range from
the relatively minor to the very significant, from weekend social
clubs to associations supplying personal protection and rules for
the use of inhabited land.
Yet why should this cooperative system be referred to as either
the evidence or essence of community? The emphasis here is on
self-interest. But according to Robert Paul Wolff, self-interest is a
hallmark of liberal theory which makes it incapable of valuing the
mutual feeling and "reciprocal awareness" that characterizes true
community.20 The ascendancy of self-interest as an organizing
principle, argues Wolff, makes liberalism incapable of seeing
beyond the individual to the warmth and reciprocity of the
"organic" social ties that bind persons into a concrete social whole
of communal commitment and mutual concern. And even though
Spencer clearly uses the same "organic" metaphor as Wolff, his
meaning of it is fraught with the very methodological in-
19 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 35. This quotation also formulates the grounds
upon which Spencer contends his view of social evolution is not harsh or cruel.
As moral ideas and relationships evolve (always and ever to a higher plane of
concern for others), outdated ideas of discrimination or abuse of others are ex-
posed as anachronisms of such viciousness that to act according to them would
result in the "continual searing of men's consciences."
20 Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston, 1968), chap. 5.
dividualism that Wolff insists saps the potential for real communi-
ty in the liberal society.
Community is, of course, a difficult concept to define, as
several recent attempts at definition bear out.21 Still, certain
similarities in all its definitions seem to indicate that the com-
munal relation involves more than merely self-interested coopera-
tion for a private gain. Community is readily recognizable as a
kind of mutual concern for others which transcends the narrow
dictates of self-interest. In fact, community may at times demand
a certain degree of self-sacrifice in the name of communal well-
being. This is why appeals to community often imply or explicitly
require the temporary suspension of selfish concerns. And this is
also why it is often held that liberals such as Locke, Nozick, or
Spencer cannot accommodate such appeals. The law of "survival
of the fittest" is the commandment of self-concern; and it appears,
at least for Spencer, to be the only social and ethical imperative.
One way of distinguishing community from mere cooperation
is to visualize communal relationships as resembling altruistic
ones, for both rely upon specialized internal sentiments and
motivations of the individuals involved. If anything, altruistic
associations are more demanding than those of community, for
altruism is by definition not a reciprocal relationship, whereas
community always is.22 When placed within the context of self-
interest, altruistic acts require the actual denial of self-interested
motives, while acts of communal concern promise a return for
one's self-sacrifice at some point in time. Both altruism and com-
munity require selflessness, albeit in varying degrees. Thus it is to
be expected that someone like Spencer who is so concerned with
self-interest would reject both, but particularly altruism.
It comes as something of a surprise then to find in Spencer's
writings a strong and often repeated appeal to the benefits, even
necessity, of altruism in the political society he envisions. Such an
appeal is particularly startling not only because of the extremely
individualistic tone of Spencer's liberalism, but also because
21 See, for example, Wolff, Poverty of Liberalism; Carl Friedrich, ed., Com-
munity (Nomos II) (New York, 1959); Joseph Gusfield, Community (New York,
1975); Raymond Plant, Community and Ideology (London, 1974); and Richard P.
Hiskes, Community Without Coercion.
22 See Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford, 1970), for a discus-
sion of this point. Nagel considers altruism in the conventional, normative mode,
not in the more recent context of evolutionary theory. See also, Wolff, Poverty of
Liberalism.
Spencer relies so completely for his social and political ideas on a

theory of evolution. Spencer's liberal optimism shines through in
his belief that as a participant in the universal process of evolu-
tion, society will of necessity change and evolve in a progressive
way.23 However, this progress will only occur if the moral con-
sciences of individuals also evolve, for Spencer insists "the ethical
process is part of the process of evolution."24 Specifically, this
means that the progressive improvement of society as an organic
form is reliant on the truth of a classic liberal dogma: the moral
perfectibility of man.25 This perfectibility takes the shape of the
continual and growing presence of altruism in social affairs. With
such an improvement in the moral sentiments of mankind, the
theory of evolution presumes a future far removed from the conse-
quences of a fatalistic and grasping self-interest.
So far, then, is the theory of evolution from implying a "paralyzing

and immoral fatalism," it implies that, for genesis of the highest
social type and production of the greatest general happiness,
altruistic activities are essential as well as egoistic activities, and that
a due share of each of them is obligatory upon each citizen.26
Altruism is to be institutionalized in society by means of the

growth of voluntary cooperative associations which have as their
purpose altruistic activities. These associations are essential for
the entire cooperative system that Spencer describes. In fact, it is
these altruistic associations that cement all the associations
together into one system, and bond them and their members into
one truly communal enterprise spanning all aspects of
life- economic, political, social and moral. These associations
witness to the progressive evolution of human conscience to the
point "in which egoism and altruism are so conciliated that one
merges into another,"27 and they provide the reciprocity and
mutual concern that community requires.
2: An optimism not shared by some political theorists who looked to Spenrcer

for intellectual inspiration such as William Graham Sumner, and other
American Social Darwinists. See Hofstadter, Social Darwinism.
24 Spencer, "Evolutionary Ethics," Various Fragments, p. 128.
2( Spencer, "Social Evolution and Social Duty," Various Fragments, pp.
133-34. Naturally, Spencer's conception of altruism is the conventional one: as a
motivation and relationship of normative or moral nature. That he does not con-
strue it as modern evolutionary theory does, for example, as Trivers's "reciprocal
altruism" ("The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism," Quarterly Review of Biology
[1971], pp. 35-54), is a primary point of distinction between Spencer's evolu-
tionary theory and contemporary (also Darwin's) theories.
27 Spencer, "Evolutionary Ethics," p. 124.
Without these altruistic associations, Spencer realizes that the

whole scheme is little better than that provided by the state.
Voluntary associations formed for the furtherance of selfish in-
terests do not by themselves indicate either individual growth or
social progress.28 True, they elucidate the development of forms
of social organization, but such progress is ephemeral in Spencer's
view without an improvement of the human character. And as a
good methodological individualist, Spencer views all social ar-
rangements as reflections of that character. Therefore, the com-
munity of voluntary association takes on a moral significance both
for the role it plays in the moral and social process of evolutionary
development and for the sympathetic and caring relationships
these associations instill between persons. Finally, this is a model
for community which is a full embodiment of the reciprocity and
warmth of feeling which Wolff rightly claims must be present for
community to thrive. This is so because it is populated by a type
of person "who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, in-
cidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and yet is only
enabled to fulfill his nature, by all others doing the like."29
It is clear then that within the classically liberal state that
Spencer speaks for is an argument for community that is both
powerful and sustained. Two arguments in fact: the first present-
ing the perfectly harmonious social organism that stands as the
final culmination of societal evolution; the second portraying the
individual and his communal sentiments of altruism and public
spiritedness that function as the means of that evolution. What
results from these arguments is a picture of community both as
utopia and as the common, everyday requisite for the successful
pursuit of self-interest. As Spencer concludes, "I do not see how
there could be expressed ideas more diametrically opposed to that
brutal individualism which some persons ascribe to me."30
What makes liberal individualism appear "brutal" is the
neglect of the cooperative elements which must accompany the
pursuit of self-interest in a social environment. Herbert Spencer is
28 Spencer, "Social Evolution and Social Duty," p. 132.
29 Spencer, "Evolutionary Ethics," p. 123.
30 Ibid., p. 128. See note 19. It is certainly true that Spencer was mystified
and not a little discouraged by the reception his ideas received. It is arguable that
this negative reception is primarily founded upon misperceptions concerning his
ideas. See for example George H. Smith, "Herbert Spencer's Theory of Causa-
tion,"Journal of Libertarian Studies, 5 (Spring 1981), 113-52; and George H. Smith,
"Liberty's Heritage: Will the Real Herbert Spencer Please Stand Up?" Libertarian
Review (December 1978), 14-18.
innocent of such negligence. Too often those who consider

themselves critics of the liberal tradition ignore the fact that
Spencer's "altruistic interests" are crucial aspects of his ethical and
political position and form the basis of community in the liberal
state. This ignorance motivates such a titanic critic of liberal
theory as R. H. Tawney to assume he is assailing liberalism when
in fact he is echoing Spencer's model of it.
In conditions which impose co-operative, rather than merely in-

dividual, effort, liberty is, in fact, equality in action, in the sense,
not that all men perform identical functions or wield the same
degree of power, but that all men are equally protected against the
abuse of power, and equally entitled to insist that power be used,
not for personal ends, but for the general advantage.31
But by far the worst offenders in this misconstrual of liberal in-

dividualism as noncommunal are the contemporary and self-
appointed keepers of the liberal flame. The individualism of
Nozick is brutal, as even he fears. The laissez-faire doctrines of
Friedman and Hayek are harsh. And the "supply-side" economics
of Ronald Reagan and David Stockman is, as Spencer fumes,
"that miserable laissez-faire which calmly looks on while men ruin
themselves in trying to enforce by law their equitable claims."32
They are so because their authors fail to recognize, as Spencer
does, the communal, even altruistic attitudes and motivations
which are part of the liberal tradition and of, simply, people. To
try to resuscitate the limits on governmental action which classical
liberals such as Spencer first penned, without at the same time en-
couraging the growth of community, is folly indeed, and an omis-
sion which even this most individualistic of liberal thinkers would
have scorned.
31 R. H. Tawney, Equality (London, 1952), p. 186.

32 Spencer, "Evolutionary Ethics," p. 126. Here Spencer turns the criticism
usually aimed at his political views on those, such as Huxley, who refused to
believe that freedom could coexist with community in the fullest sense. To find
him attacking any form of laissez-faire is often held to be either contradictory, or
at least surprising. The aim of this paper has been to point out the error in that
assertion, one that is still unfortunately alive in contemporary political theory.

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Spencer and the Liberal Idea of Community

Author(s): Richard P. Hiskes

University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics, Cambridge

As the originator of the term, "survival of the fittest," Herbert

These twin principles of Spencer's thought make his political

Spencer embraces the organic characterization of society as

theory rejects the idea of random variation so crucial to Dar-

If the resemblances between the body physiological and the body

this regard: if society resembles a biological organism, then like

5 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 80.

then it is such an organism. Spencer's dilemma here is obvious,

The substitution of mechanical charity for charity prompted by the

Hence the apparent harshness of Spencer's view of government

This union of men into one community, this increasing mutual

This final evolutionary form of society bears witness to

removed from traditional liberal concerns for individual freedom

is the foundation of this second approach to community. And in

terests to be maximized through voluntary cooperation are primarily economic

pily, it is not), it would be at the expense of a continual searing of

Spencer relies so completely for his social and political ideas on a

So far, then, is the theory of evolution from implying a "paralyzing

Altruism is to be institutionalized in society by means of the

2: An optimism not shared by some political theorists who looked to Spenrcer

Without these altruistic associations, Spencer realizes that the

innocent of such negligence. Too often those who consider

In conditions which impose co-operative, rather than merely in-

But by far the worst offenders in this misconstrual of liberal in-

31 R. H. Tawney, Equality (London, 1952), p. 186.

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