THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

288 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
form and under Its civil form, there has been less progress in sentiment and
idea towards that form of ownership by others which socialism implies. 66
As this passage indicates, Spencer believes that socialism is a derivative
of the militant and feudal type of state, and has no natural affiliation with
industry. Like militarism, socialism involves the development of centralization,
the extension of governmental power, the decay of initiative, and
the subordination of the individual. "Well may Prince Bismarck display
leanings towards State Socialism."67 "It is the law of all organization that
68
as it becomes complete it becomes rigid."
Socialism would be in in-
dustry what a rigid instinctive equipment is in animals; it would produce
a community of human ants and bees, and would issue in a slavery far
more monotonous and hopeless than the present condition of affairs.
Under the compulsory
arbitration which socialism would necessitate,
. . . the regulators, pursuing their personal interests, . . . would not be
met by the combined resistance of all workers; and their power, unchecked
as now by refusals to work save on prescribed terms, would grow and ramify
and consolidate until it became irresistible. . . . When from regulation of
the workers by the bureaucracy we turn to the bureaucracy itself, and ask
how it is to be regulated, there is no satisfactory answer. . . . Under such
conditions there must arise a new aristocracy, for the support of which
the masses would toil; and which, being consolidated, would wield a power
far beyond that of any past aristocracy. 69
Economic relationships are so different from political relationships,
and so much more complex, that no government could regulate them all
without such an enslaving bureaucracy. State interference always neglects
some factor of the intricate industrial situation, and has failed whenever
tried; note the wage-fixing laws of medieval England, and the pricefixing
laws of Revolutionary France. Economic relations must be left to
the automatic self-adjustment (imperfect though it may be) of supply
and demand. What society most wants it will pay for most heavily; and if
certain men, or certain functions, receive great rewards it is because they
have taken, or have involved, exceptional risks or pains. Men as now
constituted will not tolerate a compulsory equality. Until an automa-
tically-changed environment automatically changes human character,
legislation enacting artificial changes will be as futile as astrology. 70
Spencer was almost made sick by the thought of a world ruled by the
wage-earning class. He was not enamored of trade-union leaders so far
as he could know them through the refractory medium of the London
Times. 71 He pointed out that strikes are useless unless most strikes fail;
for if all workers should, at various times, strike and win, prices would
""III, 596-9. "Social Statics, p. 329. "Sociology, i, 571.
"Ill, 588. There is danger of this in Russia to-day.
"Cf. The Man vs. the State.
n lLL 589.