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Shirley Letwin: Spencer and Adam Smith

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer was applauded as England's greatest philosopher. By the end of the century the Synthetic Philoso- phy was dismissed as pseudo-science. Now both philosophers and social scientists are rediscovering Spencer's greatness. When all order appears to be vanishing into Existentialist absurdity, a system that links morality and politics, along with astron- omy, geology, psychology, biology, physics and sociology, to one scientific law has an obvious appeal. It especially impresses philosophers who have renounced the positivist dream of a unified knowledge based on infallible facts but still believe that science is the paradigm of all rational activity. It also attracts those defenders of a competitive economy who envy the col- lectivists' Marxist armoury and would like to believe, as Mr Enoch Powell suggested in a recent SPECTATOR article (6 March), that the market is a natural mechanism beyond moral judgment. To wistful philosophers and deprived reactionaries Spencer offers the prospect of deducing their wisdom from cosmic processes.

The vanity of all such hopes is made clear in Mr Peel's study of Spencer*. Mr Peel is at his best when showing that Spen- cer's scheme allows for no choice in the human world, but only for an unfolding of what has always been.

It was undoubtedly a bold scheme. While distinguished scientists, like Tyndall and Kelvin, were timidly suggesting that all phenomena known to man might once have been 'latent in a fiery cloud' or could perhaps be derived from some universal *Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist J. Y.D. Peel (Heinemann £3.50) fluid, Spencer announced the law that actually governs the universe—everything, he said, is constantly changing from 'an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity'. Change is caused by the tendency for internal forces to reach an equilibrium with external forces, and as every equilibrium is upset by changes else- where in the universe, the process of change continues. In man, as in all other organisms, this adjustment of forces takes the form of a continuous adaptation to the environment, and each new stage of adaptation is distinguished by greater heterogeneity because a more refined divi- sion of labour increases efliciency. Since Spencer took it for granted that com- plexity is superior to simplicity, it was self- evident to him that the cosmic process is a movement towards greater perfection and that the law of evolution is a moral as well as a scientific law. He therefore claimed that his moral and political edicts were deduced from the universal law com- manding men to submit to natural processes.

Mr Peel condemns Spencer's law of evolution because it is fatalistic and neither takes into account 'motives and purposes' nor allows for human effort to improve things. But this is merely a symp- tom of the basic defect in Spencer's system —its degradation of man.

Spencer's misconception of human nature starts from his understanding of living as a uniform activity of resisting external forces (a view echoed today by those who feel afflicted by 'pressures'). Resistance is first registered as muscular tension which forms the 'raw material of thought in all its forms', the sole function of mental activity being to represent its environment to an organism. Although a higher mental development brings a better capacity to represent and associate sensations. Spencer makes it clear that human reason differs from the instinctive responses of a simple organism only by being a more efficient instrument of adaptation. The object of all thought, as of every other human activity, is, in his view, to help human beings sur- vive in the struggle for existence.

In this picture, the man who dies for honour or glory has no place; thought that does nothing but reproduce external stimuli cannot invent any reason for dis- daining to survive, any more than it can engage in understanding or speculating for its own sake. Since 'thinking' is 'a pattern of action' and the sole human concern survival, Spencer's men turn out to be just cunning animals.

This low view of man makes possible beguilingly simple explanations of human conduct not fully exploited by Spencer. It underlies the sociology of knowledge, which, Mr Peel tells us, is concerned with distinguishing the different ways in which thought and action are related. Though occasionally Mr Peel produces interesting passages of intellectual history, mainly his account of Spencer's intellectual develop- ment rests on sociological pieties.

Determinism, Peel says, is the 'natural' response of 'those who, in a situation of general anxiety and disagreement, feel that they know', and as Spencer was a confi- dent man in a society where many were fearful, a determinist scheme was highly congenial to him. What made Spencer so confident remains obscure. But why every- one else was so fearful, Mr Peel explains as follows: The industrial revolution had destroyed the 'cultural hegemony of the upper ranks'. When other classes became more powerful, they asserted their own interests, leading to a struggle for survival between interests dressed up as ideals. As long as men had been 'equally subject to the forces of the market, values had a non-subjective, non-supernatural basis be- cause they were created for everyone by social needs'. Once the market society dis- appeared, the '"ethics of possessive indi- vidualism" lost its coherence' and all but Spencer suffered the torments of uncer- tainty. The conditions were then ripe for the birth of a determinist philosophy.

How a 'class' is to be identified, or why all members of a 'class' are bound to have the same 'needs' or share the same 'values' does not concern Mr Peel. He assumes that there is only one way or interpreting and responding to any set of events. As his account allows for no variety of desires, aversions, preferences, beliefs, or choices, we arc forced to conclude that despite Mr Peel's objections to determinism, his view of human rationality is no more generous than Spencer's.

Mr Peel falls into similar contradictions when he discusses the details of Spencer's thought. He criticises Spencer's talk of 'mechanism' and 'function' instead of 'men evaluating and acting', but he nevertheless hopes that sociology will discover the 'determinants' of human behaviour and he commends Spencer for having suggested a 'universal grammar for sociology'. Al- though Spencer is also chastised for being 'unhislorical' Mr Peel considers the thesis that 'human behaviour is subject to law' to be 'axiomatic to rational thought' and he understands history as a testing ground for sociology, thus bringing confusion where Spencer was at least consistent. Spencer regularly damned history for rea- sons anyone who believes in sociological laws ought to accept—that, if we do not know the laws governing history, we cannot have any true history, and if we do know them, we don't need history.

The worst confusion encouraged by Mr Peel is the identification of Spencer's laissez-faire with that of Adam Smith. In fact the two differ radically and are con- nected with totally opposed views of the character of politics.

Spencer believed that competition was ordained by nature because he thought of society literally as an organism. This meant that society had 'organs' with 'functions' which would become increasingly special- ised as the division of labour became more complicated. A government is an 'organ', and so Spencer was certain that in the course of evolutionary progress the gov- ernment's function would dwindle to 'nothing more than voluntary political organisation for mutual protection'.

The operation of social 'processes', Spencer warns us, is as much `beyond the conceptions of common sense' as biological processes, and governments that try to interfere just do harm. The only good law is one that repeals Previous laws. Any 'welfare legislation' is necessarily perni- cious because it removes 'the incentive for each individual 'to adapt himself more fully to the social state'. That men must be exposed to the unmitigated forces Of nature in order that the human race may evolve successfully is for Spencer an in- evitable corollary of biological laws, though he promises a better time ahead when, thanks to a 'high state of social evolution', adaptation will take the form of cooperation instead of competition. Nothing could be further from the views of Adam Smith. Whereas Spencer saw only one alternative to his organic analogy —society regarded as a mechanism oper- ated by a government, Adam Smith under- stood society altogether differently. For him it was an association of autonomous beings, who are not driven by natural nec- essity but create their wants for themselves. He was not concerned with 'processes' of any kind. His 'invisible hand' is strictly a metaphor, alluding not to any myster- ious cosmic forces but to certain regular unintended consequences of buying and selling in a free market by men who pre- fer to buy cheaply and sell dearly. His 'laws' of economics are not, as Spencer's are, continuous with natural laws; they apply only to beings capable of deliber- ating and making choices. Economic theory is more reliable than maxims about foreign policy simply because, as Smith's friend—David Hume—explained, the de- sire for economic gain affects most men in much the same way and the public consequences of a multitude of economic choices are not significantly affected by the odd tastes of a few persons. . Neither Adam Smith, nor any of his genuine disciples (such as Hume and Bentham, or Hayek and Friedman) regards government as unnecessary or evil. On the contrary, government has a crucial part to play in a competitive economy be- cause it must ensure that force and fraud do not interfere with free economic choiees. Moreover, all non-Spencerian advocates of laissez-faire expect governments to ex- ercise a variety of 'welfare' functions. though not in the same form nor for the same reasons as socialists would.

Above all, economic theory, as under- stood by Adam Smith and his followers, does not free men from the nasty business of politics. Just what governments ought to do remains a matter for political deliber- ation. This may be enlightened by advice from economists but it must take into ac- count many other considerations as well. Neither economic development nor any other objective becomes an overriding ob- ligation as a result of favouring com- petition for Smith's sort of reasons, which arc wholly compatible with opposing a commitment to 'growth', 'a high standard of living', or 'economic supremacy'.

How free men should conduct their lives cannot be deducted from a universal law. Consequently there can be no ab- solutely correct eternal answers, only more or less reasonable, contingent, political decisions reached by reflecting on alter- native proposals. There is thus no relief and no escape from the task of deciding. Of course cosmic guarantees, such as Spencer offered, would remove the discomforts of politics. But anyone who takes up such an offer must want to renounce his autonomy. .

Shirley Robin Let win is the author of 'The Pursuit of Certainty' and lectures in Phil- osophy at the London School of Econ- omics and Political Science