ABSTRACT
In favour of limiting the power of the State, convinced that an ‘industrial society’ cannot flourish if the State takes over powers which are not its right, Spencer’s influence on the élites of industrial societies has not survived the continuous growth of the State in democratic regimes from the 1920s until today. Neither did it survive among professional sociologists, particularly in France, especially because of the successful critique of Durkheim. Like Weber, Simmel, or Tarde, Spencer, in France, is a victim of the orthodoxy of Durkheim and his
followers, an orthodoxy which they succeeded in imposing on French sociology over a long period of time. But in England, Germany, and the US, Spencer still counts among the great names of classical sociology.
