Is Politics Insoluble?

From Spencer's 1884 to Orwell's 1984 I 101
habitually stood for individual freedom versus State-coer-
cion."
So the complete Anglo-American switch of reference, by
which a "liberar today has come to mean primarily a state-
interventionist, had already begun in 1884. Already "plausi-
ble proposals'" were being made "that there should be orga-
nized a system of compulsory insurance, by which men during
their early lives shall be forced to provide for the time when
they will be incapacitated." Here is already the seed of the
American Social Security Act of 1935.
Spencer also pays his respects to the anti-libertarian
implications of an increasing tax burden. Those who impose
additional taxes are saying in effect: "Hitherto you have been
free to spend this portion of your earnings in any way which
pleased you; hereafter you shall not be free to spend it, but we
will spend it for the general benefit."
Spencer next turns to the compulsions that labor unions
were even then imposing on their members, and asks: "If men
use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty,
are they thereafter any the less slaves?"
In his second chapter, "The Coming Slavery," Spencer
draws attention to the existence of what he calls "political
momentum"— the tendency of state interventions and similar
political measures to increase and accelerate in the direction
in which they have already been set going. Americans have
become only too familiar with this momentum in the last few
years.
Spencer illustrates: "The blank form of an inquiry daily
made is—'We have already done this; why should we not do
that?'" "The buying and working of telegraphs by the State"
[which already existed in England when he wrote], he contin-
ued, "is made a reason for urging that the State should buy
and work the railways." And he went on to quote the demands