On Spencer

On Spencer

Isaac Christiansen

First and foremost, before analyzing Spencer’s points on "The Boer War", his connection between the imperialism and slavery, and how empire enslaves the empire (by tying him to the ‘responsibilities’ of domination, or any other matter, it must be said that the attempt of the ‘survival of the fittest’ to justify disenfranchisement of racial groups and the use of social Darwinist theory as groundwork for scientific racism- remains a historical repugnancy. Spencer’s key adjustment to Darwin’s work on evolution, was that it had an endpoint, or a goal- and that those with more had more because they were more 'fit. This led the way- when applied to society, to saying that those on top deserved to be there because they were more fit and more evolved; the perfect defense for an execrable status quo (Wikipedia 2009).
A key part in Herbert Spencer’s analogy between society and biological organism, and one that deserves to be separated conceptually from the negatives inherent in social Darwinist intellectual poverty, relates to the concept of mutual dependence. “And when, in a society we see that the workers in iron stop if the miners do not supply the materials; the makers of clothes cannot carry on their business in the absence of those who spin and weave textile fabrics; that the manufacturing community will cease to act unless the food producing and food-distributing agencies are acting; that the controlling powers, governments, bureaux, judicial officers, police, must fail to keep order when the necessaries of life are not supplied to them by the parts kept in order; we are obliged to say that this mutual dependence of parts is similarly rigorous” (Spencer 1916).
This is all the more reason, for him to appreciate the essential character of the any forms of work carried out within a society, and thus the poverty of the idea, that a small section of the population deserves the majority of societies product. For if all parts of society are mutually dependent as in an organism, how can one view as functional, when one organ of the body, the bourgeoisie, over-consumes and becomes obese, while the very parts of the organism which provide it sustenance, are emaciated? This is only possible, in the mind of Spencer, because this principle, is subordinate to that of “survival of the fittest’ and apologetic stance towards an exploitative and disenfranchising status quo, in spite of his more noble (but contradictory) opposition to state violence (for through violence and coercion the status quo is maintained).
By far Spencer’s most onerous contribution to the protection of the status quo and anti-Black racism was the concept that “the subordinate position of Blacks, for instance, simply reflected the immutable laws of nature” (Banks, 1997). DuBois contested Spencer’s position successfully, but it is unfortunate that the “credibility of science” under Spencer's name was lent to such an impoverished idea. It is also unfortunate that the rest of Spencer’s thought, suffers from a ‘guilt by association’ and although may contain valuable nuggets (as in his condemnation of Empire), are stained by racism.

References:

Banks, William. (1997). “Black intellectuals: Race and responsibility in American Life” W.W. Norton and Company. New York NY.
Spencer, Herbert (1916). “The Principles of Sociology, In Three Volumes” Vol 1. D. Appleton and Company New York and London.
Wikipedia. (2009) “Herbert Spencer” Accessed February 15, 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer#Social_Darwinism