Today, Herbert Spencer should be known as one of the great classical liberal anti-imperialists. Unfortunately, any mention of his name is typically accompanied by the phrase, “Social Darwinism,” a theory that individuals are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection governing the evolution of plants and animals. Social Darwinism, at times, was used by early twentieth-century intellectuals to justify imperialist, eugenicist, and white supremacist policies under the principle of survival of the fittest. This intellectual caricature of Spencer as a eugenicist and white supremacist has greatly maimed his legacy.
This reputation damage is in part due to the work of the historian Richard Hoftstader, who, forty years after Spencer’s death, published Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915. Hoftstader condemned free marketeers like Spencer who applied principles of biology to social science. He argued for technocratic economic reform over markets, viewing Herbert Spencer’s doctrines as the source of Social Darwinism’s appeal to American intellectuals.
Hofstadter declared American Social Darwinism a dead idea by 1918, disappearing after the Great War brought unprecedented state intervention. Between 1916 and 1943, just 49 articles used the term Social Darwinism. From 1944 to the present, there are over four thousand citations for Social Darwinism, suggesting that Hosftader’s book aided in disseminating the term while tarring Spencer with associations to eugenics and Nazism.
Scholars have since identified Hofstadter’s fundamental error: Herbert Spencer was not a Darwinist but a Lamarckian. Spencer’s Lamarckian account of evolution held that by improving their skills and knowledge to adapt to their environment, humans passed on good practices to their progeny. Darwinian evolution is explained by chance variation and natural selection of inherited traits, while Spencer’s Lamarckian evolution is a result of conscious exertion and self-improvement, characteristic of Spencer’s liberal belief in the freedom of the individual to choose.
While the foregoing correction is sound, I believe a far more potent antidote to Spencer’s caricature is not to quibble over what variation of evolution he advocated but to examine the reception of his ideas outside the Western world. In so doing, we find that Spencer’s broad narrative of societal evolution, alongside his anti-imperialist views, made him an invaluable resource for people resisting the increasing pressures of Western imperialism in the nineteenth century. These followers of Spencer did simply copy and paste his views but adapted them to their individual circumstances and aspirations.
Spencer’s staunch anti-imperialism and classical liberal ideas were readily received in the Eastern world. Upon closer examination, Spencer was undeniably a classical liberal, one who believed in individuals, not races, and whose writings helped provide a generation of budding liberals with the much-needed intellectual ammunition to advocate for a better and freer future.
Despite his quiet life defined by routine and consistency, Spencer was an intellectual rockstar. He is one of the few philosophers who sold a million copies of their work while alive. For decades, Spencer’s ideas inspired millions across the globe in an era before rapid communication.
His vision of society’s transitioning from militant to industrial predicted a new age of peace and progress ushered in by mechanisms of cosmological change. Spencer wrote about physics, ethics, politics, evolution, religion, and metaphysics, sometimes all at once. His work is not always inviting to modern readers accustomed to the strict separation of disciplines. However, Spencer’s oeuvre still holds historical value; few can boast the vast number and variety of liberal converts that Spencer made. It’s worth considering Spencerian influences in three places: Japan, Egypt, and India.
Japan was an isolated archipelago until the latter half of the 19th century. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry and his gunboat diplomacy forcibly opened Japan’s borders. The reigning Tokugawa fell apart and was quickly replaced by Emperor Meiji, ushering in a period of unparalleled modernization in Japan. During this period, thirty translations of Spencer’s work into Japanese were made. His philosophy was appropriated by the Freedom and Popular Rights movement led by the founder of Japan’s Liberal Party, Itagaki Taisuke, a samurai turned liberal statesman.
The Freedom and Popular Rights Movement comprised ex-samurai and merchants who wanted to establish popular political representation. With Spencer’s model of a human society transitioning from a militant to an industrial society, Japanese liberals had found both a scientific guide and spokesman for progress. Itagaki Taisuke referred to Spencer’s Social Statics as “the textbook of social rights.” Social Statics was also one of Japan’s first texts to discuss women’s rights. Spencer inspired the founder of Japan’s education, Mori Arinori, to advocate for reforming marriage laws and ending the mistreatment of women. Arinori penned an Ethics Textbook in part inspired by Spencer’s Principles of Ethics, where he advocated for the education of both men and women.
British occupation spread Spencer’s ideas abroad, paradoxically giving their subjects the intellectual tools to attack imperialism. Under British occupation until 1922, Egypt was also receptive to Spencer. Publications like the popular monthly science magazine Al-Muqtataf promulgated Spencer’s philosophy and helped it spread, which, for many Arabic readers, was an invaluable sociological source on good government.
Muhammad Abduh, the Grand Mufti of Egypt (one of the highest positions of Islamic jurisprudence), visited Herbert Spencer shortly before Spencer’s death. It was a dream come true for the Mufti, who described Spencer as “the greatest living philosopher.” When Spencer died, the editors of Al-Muqtataf wrote how they “mourned his death like that of the greatest Egyptian.” Spencer’s influence spurred a movement to revive the works of Ibn Khaldun, reintroducing Arabic nations to their native sociological tradition. Ibn Khaldun and Spencer share a mutual distrust of the state “solving” social issues.
From 1858 to 1947, India was under direct rule by the British government. Shyamaij Krishnavarma was a lawyer, journalist, and early advocate of Indian Independence. He founded the Indian Home Rule Society for the cause of self-rule in India and India House, an organization promoting Indian nationalism. Both organizations became a hub of revolutionary activity. He was also an avid follower of Herbert Spencer. On the first anniversary of Spencer’s death, he donated £1000 to the University of Oxford to found a Herbert Spencer lectureship. A year later, Krishnavarma also founded fellowships named after Spencer, which enabled Indian graduates to study in England.
Krishnavarma started a publication called The Indian Sociologist. Every issue had two quotes from Herbert Spencer on the title page: “Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man” and “Resistance to aggression is not simply justifiable but imperative. Non-resistance hurts both altruism and egoism.”
Krishnavarma intended his publication to be “An Organ of Freedom, and Political, Social, and Religious Reform.” In the first issue’s editorial statement, Krishnavarma wrote the journal existed to spread the Spencerian sociological truth that “it is impossible to join injustice and brutality abroad with justice and humanity at home.” It was not a partisan publication; participants were united by the principle that “every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.” From 1904 to 1915, The Indian Sociologist published articles on ideas of liberty and India’s struggle for independence, setting the groundwork for the later independence movement to flourish.
Throughout his life, Spencer condemned the imperialist ventures of the British Empire. In one of his early essays, “The Proper Sphere of Government,” in 1843, he writes, “War has been the nurse of the feudal spirit, so long the curse of all nations; and from that spirit has owed much of the selfish and tyrannical legislation under which we have so long groaned.” Spencer rightly believed war and imperialism only benefited the aristocrats and monopolists of society.
Free trade and industry promote peace; war only serves to tear down these achievements. Unlike contemporary liberals such as John Stuart Mill, who saw colonialism as part of a civilizing mission, Spencer did not believe nations outside of the West needed tutelary supervision. If left to their own devices, they would flourish and thrive.
Spencer theorized that the universe was evolving towards increased complexity. Cumulative evolution results in the universe subdividing into more intricate and differentiated systems. In Principles of Sociology, Spencer illustrated the process of evolution as transitioning from homogeneity (sameness) to heterogeneity (diversity).
Spencer believed a similar phenomenon was occurring in human societies. He theorized human societies had recently begun evolving from their former militant forms into industrial states. Militant states base authority upon hierarchies and status. One’s family, race, and allegiance dictate one’s place in society. Individuality is a luxury at best. The industrial society Spencer championed was not based on blood or birth. Instead, people were judged based on what they could achieve in a free society. According to Spencer, industrial societies defend individuality and freedom because they act as an engine of technological, economic, and even moral progress.
Though Spencer believed evolution was a crucial idea that helped explain how societies develop, not one that justified imperialism abroad or eugenics at home. When focusing exclusively on the Western world, our image of Spencer is distorted due to decades of mischaracterization. Spencer’s philosophy is more accurately reflected when we examine how those outside the West viewed his work.
Far from the caricature of a curmudgeonly racist, Spencer was an enemy of doctrines of Anglo supremacy, imperialism, and state intervention, ghastly ideas that all originated from the same source, the glorification of war. Spencer’s most dedicated admirers were in the grumbling colonies abroad, while promises of socialist utopias and nationalist fervor seduced British intellectuals at home as Spencer aged.
Though rarely mentioned by nearly anyone outside of academia, Herbert Spencer deserves to be recognized as a great disseminator of classical liberal principles. The label of Social Darwinist is unrepresentative and ill-fitting for a thinker whose views arguably had an even more pronounced impact outside the Western World than they did in his home country.
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