La reinterpretazione spenceriana della rappresentanza politica

The main aim of this essay is to outline the differences between Spencer and Sumner’s conceptions of representation. The Spencerian scheme of representation is rooted in his general conception of evolution. As far as social organisms are concerned, the necessary outcome of the inter-social struggle for existence is the survival of the fittest society, and the fittest society is – in Spencer’s perspective – the industrial one. In this type of society, individual interests are the only possible source of legal obligation. Consequently, political representation is the impersonal and non-inteventionist representative agency of the free play of economic interests. On the other hand, in Sumner’s works the very idea of representation seems to lose its prerogatives. His conception of the republican form of government – though being the natural evolution of the Spencerian model of the industrial society – is partly pessimistic. As a matter of fact, Sumner has no faith in the political machinery in general, and in any electoral system in particular. Even the American federal system – in his opinion – has dangerous tendencies to become a plutocracy, i.e. a system where richness and populism tend to be the main ruling forces. From this standpoint, the representative device typical of political modernity is inevitably downsized.