From Free Life, Issue 27, September 1997
ISSN: 0260 5112

Spencer's great beacon shines undimmed. His arguments and grand prose are just as stirring as when first published in 1884.

It is interesting to note how much The Man Versus The State anticipates Bruce L. Benson's work - and thus complements it admirably - for of course Spencer was one of the first thinkers to grasp the significance of the absence of government in early societies. See his reference to the "utterly uncivilized Wood Veddahs" of Ceylon, who were "without any social organisation at all", yet who thought it "perfectly inconceivable that any person should ever take what doesn't belong to him, or strike his fellow, or say anything that is untrue" [173]. So much for Hobbes.

Although there are a few interpretations with which one could not agree (particularly in the Postscript), Spencer's superbly written and far-seeing essays are essential reading for all enemies of state coercion. They are also a source of inspiring quotes - eg, "Government is begotten of aggression by aggression" [112] - and of numerous historical examples of state idiocy or cruelty.

Nicholas Dykes