Herbert Spencer

Spencer's "law of equal freedom" holds that everyone may do as they wish provided they do not infringe the equal freedom of others. Social Statics (1851) even included a "right to ignore the state", which he later dropped, and The Man Versus the State (1884) attacked the new Liberal reforms as creeping coercion. His evolutionary language fed "survival of the fittest" social Darwinism, a reputation that still divides readers.