Spencer versus the Empire

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

A little over a century ago, Herbert Spencer published his last book of essays, a volume with the rather unexciting title Facts and Comments. (His previous book had been titled Various Fragments; clearly the man needed some marketing advice.) Topics of the essays ranged over Spencer’s usual broad range of interests, from business ethics, the psychology of music, and the criteria of literary style, to evolutionary biology, the existence of God, and the metaphysical basis of geometry.

Among the essays were four, unfortunately as timely today as in 1902, dealing with the evils of militarism. The first of these, Spencer’s acerbic"Patriotism," I posted online nearly two years ago; in fact it was the very first text to be included in the Molinari Online Library. I have now posted the remaining three:

• "Imperialism and Slavery" examines the relation between foreign and domestic policy, arguing that militarism abroad must inevitably translate into loss of liberty at home.



• "Re-barbarization" explores the reciprocal influence between militarist policy and the increasing brutalisation of popular culture.



• Finally,"Regimentation" analyses the growth of governmental bureaucracy and corporatism as part of the militarist syndrome.

This is the first time, to my knowledge, that any of these essays has appeared online. While I plan in due course to post all of Facts and Comments (and indeed ultimately all of Spencer's work), I thought the relevance of these particular essays to present sociopolitical circumstances made it worth jumping the chapter queue to make them available.