The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance Vol. 1 : No.2 Spring 1980 - Article 1 of 6

The libertarian Trouble About his Soul, The and Wrongs of Compulsion by the State and The tradition No 1: Voluntaryist Creed. Auberon Herbert Although Herbert never composed a system- atic exposition of his ideas, he consistently By Chris R Tame pointed the direction in which Libertarian ideology had to develop if it was Some recent hostile responses to the rapid successfully to combat, not only the growth of have depicted it as remaining survivals of old-fashioned statism, a febrile spin-off from the post-hippy 'Me but also the virulent new form rooted in the Decade'. In fact we are the inheritors of an socialist movement. Whilst many liberals illustrious centuries old tradition, largely relapsed into a tired defence of the status overlooked by the myopic current fashions in quo, Herbert held aloft the utopian ideal of a the history of ideas. Liberals like J. S. Mill fully "Voluntaryist" social order. His and receive plenty of philosophy of "" was an attention in college courses, but the inspiring statement of the doctrine of "self- libertarian tradition as a whole is largely ruling, not each-other-ruling", a "system of ignored, and misrepresented where touched complete ". It was a philosophy based upon. Mill and Bentham constitute one on the axiom of self-ownership and the right aspect - in many ways the feeblest - of and necessity for individuals to seek their . Dozens of thinkers and activists own interest and happiness, to employ their who embodied the most systematic or radical faculties unobstructed by aggressive force. elements in Libertarianism have been Herbert considered it absurd to deny that consigned to the Memory Hole. individuals were "self-owners", and his view This journal honours Auberon Herbert by on this is repeatedly stressed in his work. reviving the title of his publication Free Life, Taxation so it is fitting that the series begin with him. While, with some exceptions (such as the Born in 1838, Herbert developed at first as a Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari and typical member of the British ruling class. the American individualist anarchists) most Youngest son of the third , libertarians of his time had accepted the right he went to Eton and Oxford, and entered and necessity of the state to levy taxes, politics as a Conservative. After several Herbert rejected this assumption. He unsuccessful Tory candidacies, he entered recognised that the issue of compulsory Parliament as a Liberal in 1872. There was a taxation marked the real difference between period of fluctuating, indeterminate opinions individualist and state socialist, and that by before Herbert emerged as a radical and accepting taxation the liberal conceded the penetrating defender of individual liberty. state socialist's premises: From the early 1880s until his death in 1906, "I deny that A and B can go to C and force Herbert was probably the leading English him to form a state, and extract from him Libertarian. He was published by major certain payments and services in the name of houses, and his ideas were widely discussed. such a State; and I go on to maintain that if He eventually lost the support of his Liberal you act in this manner, you at once justify constituency organization (and hence his State . The only difference between seat) but remained active in anti-war the tax-compelling Individualist and the agitation and in the Personal Rights and Self- State Socialist is that whilst they both have Help Association, both of which he founded. vested ownership of C in A and B, the tax- As well as his own Free Life, Herbert wrote compelling Individualist proposes. to use the essays for such leading contemporary powers of ownership in a very limited journals as Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly fashion, the Socialist in a very complete Review, Contemporary Review and fashion." The Humanitarian, and turned out a succession of books including A Politician in

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Herbert added: "I object to the ownership in produce consequences the reverse of those any fashion". The power to levy taxes was its wielders professed to seek. He opposed then for Herbert the "stronghold" which must attempts to 'better society' or 'enforce morals' be "levelled to the ground". "There can be no by outlawing or regulating prostitution, true condition of rest in society, there can be pornography or the sale or consumption of no perfect friendliness amongst men who alcohol and other drugs, not because he differ in opinions, as long as either you or I approved of such activities, but because such can use our neighbour and his resources for attempts did not achieve their alleged goals. the furtherance of our ideas and against his His view was that "thinking and acting for own." others had always hindered, not helped, the real progress; that all forms of compulsion deadened the living forces in a nation that Herbert refused to accept the label of every evil violently stamped out still per- 'anarchist', largely because of a semantic sisted, almost always in a worse form, when decision whereby he labelled the defensive driven out of sight, and festered under the use of force (which, naturally, he accepted) surface. as "". His discussion of the issue Subsequent history has amply corroborated of anarchism (mainly in debate with the Herbert's claims. American prohibition of American individualist anarchist Benjamin alcohol created organized crime and led to Tucker) unfortunately never emerged from increased consumption of (poor quality, high such confusion, and became bogged down in priced) alcohol. Persecution of prostitutes other side-issues. It has had to wait until our does not lessen the demand for their services, generation for writers like , but simply renders them subject to David Friedman, Jarret Wolistein, Morris exploitation by criminals and makes their and Linda Tannehill to demonstrate how the customers liable to similar criminal can supply defensive force and harassment or to disease (because of the lack rights- protecting agencies (police protection, of any open market in information and courts etc.) in the absence of a monopoly common law redress). agency of force (government). The Dangers of War The Workers' Cause In foreign policy, Herbert had a true Libert- Although Herbert's wealth and social origins arian dedication to the cause of international enabled socialist opponents to smear his . He was one of the chief organizers of philosophy as "Rich Man's Anarchism" (title the anti-Jingoism rallies at Hyde Park in of an essay by J. A. Hobson) it is clear that 1878, to counteract the growing momentum Herbert defended free market as towards war with Russia. He opposed British the means for liberating the masses from state intervention in Suez to guarantee the their age-long burden of poverty. The free results of particular commercial speculations. market was "the way of peace and co- operation"; interventionist or socialist War had indeed proved to be the principal systems were "the way of force and strife". destroyer of lives, and property, and The former resulted in division of labour, the principal collectivizer of economics and increasing productivity, high wages, minds throughout the twentieth century. innovation and progress. The latter could Opposition to chauvinism and war hysteria only mean perpetual conflict, mutual and to the involvement of the state in predation and poverty. Hayek's modern overseas private business affairs must be a insights on the diffusion of knowledge, the principal activity of Libertarians today - a market as the means of discovering and logical counterpart to their struggle to restrict channelling such knowledge into the most the state at home. urgent applications and the impossibility of Socialism efficient central planning, were all presciently suggested in Herbert Herbert was writing at a time when, largely due to its own errors, Liberalism was The Fatal Gift crumbling before the rise of socialism. For Herbert, power, the use of force, was Whilst socialists were largely successful in always "a fatal gift", which could only portraying their ideology as an heir to

Free Life Archive on the Web from the website www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk Vol 1 No 2 The libertarian tradition No1: Auberon Herbert - Chris R Tame Page 2 of 3 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group, with a shared desire to work for a free society. liberalism, Herbert saw it as the last gasp of Recognition of mutual interdependence is a reactionary phenomenon, aggressive force. not enough to justify placing everyone under He called for "One fight more. The Best and a system of universal compulsion as the Last" against this "mere survival of designed by Hobson and his descendants. barbarism, . . . perpetuation of slavery under Ironically, as Herbert observed, the socialist new names against which the reason and the aim of "controlling" society had the most moral sense of the civilized world have to be "unsocial" consequence since "The unity of called into rebellion." unrestrained differentiation is a far truer unity than the unity of compulsory Against the "Social Organism" sameness". In reality, as those born since In my view his most incisive contributions to Herbert's time have seen demonstrated only the critique of socialism came in his too clearly, "social control" has meant the exchange with the eminent socialist J. A. control of some individuals by others: Hobson in 1898. What Herbert had to deal "Every form of socialism only represents the with was an 'argument' which has since dominant faction - that and nothing more." provided the back-bone for myriad versions What drives socialists to such verbal of collectivism, a metaphysical attack on the gymnastics, untenable attempts to destroy very reality of the individual. In the hands of even the concept of the individual? For countless political, sociological and Herbert, the answer was clear: psychological writers, "Even the modest "It is all due to the fact that the socialist is luxury of a theoretical existence" has been under the unhappy destiny of having to plead denied the individual. Hobson glorified the for an impossible creed - a creed founded on "social organism", which he claimed to be Old World reactionary and superstitious somehow superior to the individuals of ideas, that are only waiting half-alive to be which it was composed. Not only was the decently buried forever by the race that has fact of the interdependence of individuals in suffered so much and so long for them . . . Is society (the "organic system of relations there any reason, then, to wonder that men, between individuals") supposed to justify a with the literary tact and ability of Mr socialist state, but social wholes (like Hobson, smk, almost unconsciously to crowds) were held to consist of something themselves, to cover up the dead bones of that could not be accounted for in terms of this system with metaphor and abstract individual actions. conception, and to ask us to admire the For Herbert, such arguments were nothing something of their literary manufacture, more than "literary conjuring", the "tendency which has as little to do with the real thing, to put phrases in place of realities" and as hothouse flowers have to do with the poor Hobson was (as Herbert titled his reply to decomposing remains that lie inside the him) "Lost in the Region of Phrases". coffin on which the flowers are flung." Nowhere did Hobson demonstrate that all individuals were "made by society", nor prove the metaphysical existence of "society". Individuals are influenced by other individuals. When opposing the social entity to the individual, we are then "tricking ourselves with words ... simply opposing some individuals to other individuals." There is a crude metaphorical similarity between "society" (a population group con- ceived as a whole) and an organism, but it is simply an analogy, and there are very real differences between the entities making up that "whole". We are indeed all dependent upon each other, and a voluntary and mutually convenient exchange of goods and services has proved to be the best way of handling our mutual interdependence.

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