[This essay is
taken from Chapter 23 of Man vs. the Welfare State.]
In 1884, Herbert
Spencer wrote what quickly became a celebrated book, The Man Versus The State. The book is seldom referred to
now, and gathers dust on library shelves if, in fact, it is still stocked by many
libraries. Spencer's political views are regarded by most present-day writers,
who bother to mention him at all, as "extreme laissez faire," and
hence "discredited."
But any
open-minded person who takes the trouble today to read or reread The Man Versus
The State will probably be startled by two things. The first is the
uncanny clairvoyance with which Spencer foresaw what the future encroachments
of the State were likely to be on individual liberty, above all in the economic
realm. The second is the extent to which these encroachments had already
occurred in 1884, the year in which he was writing.
The present
generation has been brought up to believe that government concern for
"social justice" and for the plight of the needy was something that
did not even exist until the New Deal came along in 1933. The ages prior to
that have been pictured as periods when no one "cared….. if the present
generation thinks this is true even of the 1920s, it is absolutely convinced
that this was so in the 1880’s….Yet the new reader's initial astonishment when…..ToRead More…..
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