The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State

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The Root of Liberty Discussion – "The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State"

Written by: Auberon Herbert

First published in 1885

Fundamental Concepts

Individual Liberty and personal responsibility

“The foundation of all morality is respect for the free choice and the free action of others.”

"…you will not make people wiser and better by taking liberty of action from them. A man can only learn when he is free to act. It is the consequences of his own actions, and the consequences of these same actions as he sees them in other persons, that teach him."

“The nature of man is indivisible; you cannot cut him across, and give one share of him to the state and leave the other for himself.”

“Under a system of the widest possible liberty, each man thinks and acts according to his own judgment and his own sense of right. He labors as he will, making such free bargains as he chooses respecting the price and all other conditions that affect his labor; he is idle or industrious, he spends or he lays by, he remains poor, or he becomes rich, he turns his faculties to wise and good account, or he wastes possessions, time, and happiness in folly. He is, be it for good or evil, the owner and possessor of his own self, and he has to bear the responsibility of that ownership and possession to the full. On the one hand he is free from all restrictions placed on him by others (except the one great restriction that he, too, in all his doings shall respect the like liberty of all men), and on the other hand he is dependent in everything on himself and his own exertions. He must himself meet and overcome the difficulties of life. Just because he is a free man, he must carry his own burden, such as it is, and not seek to compel others to bear any part of it for him. The really free man will neither submit to restrictions placed on himself, nor desire to impose them on others.”

The last sentence in the above paragraph is very similar to John Galt’s oath from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Herbert focuses on a single question as the basis of all others: “By what right do men exercise power over each other?”  This, Herbert writes, is “the greatest of all questions” and “the one that concerns the very foundations of society.” Even more boldly, he declares that “all ideas of right and wrong must ultimately depend upon the answer.” Every issue, every principle, every position must have as its foundation a response to this question.

Herbert points out that taxpayer-funded, centrally planned projects may superficially solve a perceived problem, but then he concludes that “great works are a poor compensation for other serious evils.”

Democracy and majoritarianism

Herbert makes a reference to the concept of natural law with this statement: “Is the majority morally supreme, or are there moral rights and moral laws, independent of both majority and minority, to which, if the world is to be restful and happy, majority and minority must alike bow?”

“You tell me a majority has a right to decide as they like for their fellowmen. What majority? 21 to 20? 20 to 5? 20 to 1? But why any majority? What is there in numbers that can possibly make any opinion or decision better or more valid, or which can transfer the body and mind of one man into the keeping of another man?”

“Five men are in a room.  Because three men take one view and two another, have the three men any moral right to enforce their view on the other two men? What magical power comes over the three men that because they are one more in number than the two men, therefore they suddenly become possessors of the minds and bodies of these others? As long as they were two to two, so long we may suppose each man remained master of his own mind and body; but from the moment that another man, acting Heaven only knows from what motives, has joined himself to one party or the other, that party has become straightway possessed of the souls and bodies of the other party. Was there ever such a degrading and indefensible superstition? Is it not the true lineal descendant of the old superstitions about emperors and high priests and their authority over the souls and bodies of men?”

“There cannot possibly be two supreme laws. Either the will of the majority or the rights of the individual are the highest law of our existence; one, whichever one it is to be, must yield in presence of the other.”

After repeatedly poking holes in the common claims made by those who justify the use of coercion because of a majority vote, Herbert dispenses with their belief in this absurd “magical power” – a “paganism of numbers,” he also calls it – so central to the socialist’s system of arranging human affairs. “Was there ever such a degrading and indefensible superstition?”

Use of force

“In the long dark history of the world,” he asks, “what real, what permanent good has ever come from the force which men have never hesitated to use against each other?”

“As long as we believe in force there can be no abiding peace or friendship among us all; a half-disguised civil war will forever smoker in our midst.”

“An evil suppressed by force is only driven out of sight under the surface—there to fester in safety and to take new and more dangerous forms.”

"The leading intention in this paper has been to show–apart from all those practical evils which are the children of force—that there is no moral foundation for the exercise of power by some men over others, whether they are a majority or not; that even if it is a convenient thing to exercise this power, in so apparently simple a form as that of taking taxes, and for purposes which are so right and wise and good in themselves, as education, or the providing for the old age of the destitute, there is no true authority which sanctions our doing so; and therefore that the good which we intend to do will ever be perverted into harm."

Further discussion

The Brilliance of Auberon Herbert by Connor Boyack 

Study Questions

1. Auberon Herbert said "A man can only learn when he is free to act".  What is the origin of this concept?

2. How does a majority of members of a group gain the right to make decisions for the minority of members?

3. Does collection of taxes permit the use of force?