The New Slavery: Nock on Spencer

by Albert Jay Nock

[Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) was the great American essayist
whose anti-statism had a huge impact on the development of
American libertarian theory. This is his introduction to
Spencer's forgotten 1884 classic, The Man Versus the State.]

In 1851 Herbert Spencer published a treatise called Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified. Among other specifications, this work established and made clear the fundamental principle that society should be organized on the basis of voluntary cooperation, not on the basis of compulsory cooperation, or under the threat of it.

In a word, it established the principle of individualism as against Statism — against the principle underlying all the collectivist doctrines which are everywhere dominant at the present time. It contemplated the reduction of State power over the individual to an absolute minimum, and the raising of social power to its maximum; as against the principle of Statism, which contemplates the precise opposite.

Spencer maintained that the State's interventions upon the individual should be confined to punishing those crimes against person or property which are recognized as such by what the Scots philosophers called "the common sense of mankind"[1]; enforcing the ...

Read the entire article at: Ludwig von Mises Institute
http://www.mises.org/story/1944