Auberon Herbert - Criticisms

Criticisms

Individualist anarchist, Victor Yarros, noted what he believed to be a key flaw in Herbert's ideology, namely economic inequality. In an article called "Private Property and Freedom," Yarros argued that Herbert:

believes in allowing people to retain all their possessions, no matter how unjustly and basely acquired, while getting them, so to speak, to swear off stealing and usurping and to promise to behave well in the future. We, on the other hand, while insisting on the principle of private property, in wealth honestly obtained under the reign of liberty, do not think it either unjust or unwise to dispossess the landlords who have monopolized natural wealth by force and fraud. We hold that the poor and disinherited toilers would be justified in expropriating, not alone the landlords, who notoriously have no equitable titles to their lands, but all the financial lords and rulers, all the millionaires and very wealthy individuals. . . . Almost all possessors of great wealth enjoy neither what they nor their ancestors rightfully acquired (and if Mr. Herbert wishes to challenge the correctness of this statement, we are ready to go with him into a full discussion of the subject). . . . If he holds that the landlords are justly entitled to their lands, let him make a defense of the landlords or an attack on our unjust proposal.

According to Carl Watner "Herbert never defended his position in Liberty."

Anarchist-communist Peter Kropotkin echoed Yarros and argued that the "modern Individualism initiated by Herbert Spencer is... a powerful indictment against the dangers and wrongs of government, but its practical solution of the social problem is miserable – so miserable as to lead us to inquire if the talk of 'No force' be merely an excuse for supporting landlord and capitalist domination." (Act For Yourselves, Freedom Press, London, 1987, p. 98)

G. K. Chesterton wrote that "Herbert Spencer really went as far as he could in the direction of Individualism, just as Karl Marx went as far as he could in the direction of Socialism. He left only the gallant and eccentric Auberon Herbert to go one step further; and practically propose that we should abolish the police; and merely insure ourselves against thieves and assassins, as against fire and accident." (Illustrated London News February 15, 1936, p. 266.)

J. A. Hobson, an early democratic socialist, echoed the anarchist critique in his essay on Herbert, "A Rich Man’s Anarchism" (Humanitarian, no 12, 1898, pp. 390–7). He argued that Herbert’s support for exclusive private property would result in the poor being enslaved to the rich. Herbert, "by allowing first comers to monopolise without restriction the best natural supplies" would allow them "to thwart and restrict the similar freedom of those who come after." Hobson gave the "extreme instance" of an island "the whole of which is annexed by a few individuals, who use the rights of exclusive property and transmission... to establish primogeniture." In such a situation, the bulk of the population would be denied the right to exercise their faculties or to enjoy the fruits of their labour, which Herbert claimed to be the inalienable rights of all. Hobson concluded: "It is thus that the ‘freedom’ of a few (in Herbert’s sense) involves the ‘slavery’ of the many." (p. 394). Hobson’s argument reflected Proudhon’s critique of private property in "What is Property?"

Scholar M. W. Taylor notes that "of all the points Hobson raised... this argument was his most effective, and Herbert was unable to provide a satisfactory response." (Men Versus the State, Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 249)