Joseph Persky's excellent book, The Political Economy of Progress: John Stuart Mill and Modern Radicalism, shows that J. S. Mill's support for socialism is a carefully considered element of his political and economic reform agenda. The key thought underlying Persky's argument is that Mill has an ‘evolutionary theory of justice’, according to which the set of institutions and practices that are appropriate to one state of society should give way to a new set of institutions as circumstances change and the people themselves improve. However, Persky does not spend a great deal of time discussing Mill's theory of reform, in particular the principles he believes should guide our reform efforts. Reflecting on these principles – notably his principle of impartiality or equal treatment – shows the consistency of Mill's thought over time.

In The Political Economy of Progress, Joseph Persky argues for seeing John Stuart Mill as a consistent ‘radical’ with much to offer modern ‘radical’ political discourse. In this article, I further this claim with consideration of Mill's political philosophy, as well as his political economy. Exploring Mill's commitment to radical reordering of the economy, as well as emphasizing his commitment to egalitarianism; his historically nuanced view of ‘the progress of justice’; and his desire for a transformation of social (and economic) relations allows us to see more clearly how Mill's radicalism was a specific species of socialism. That is, Mill's early radical enthusiasm for the ideals of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ is also to be seen in his later socialism. Recognizing his ‘radicalism’ as a species of socialism allows greater understanding of the depth, importance and ‘radicalism’ of Mill's desired socialist reforms.

McCabe and Turner raise a number of perceptive points concerning my treatment of John Stuart Mill's political economy of progress and its relation to socialism. In giving context to their points this article first tries to clarify Mill's understanding of socialism as anchored in his positive classical economics. Mill the utilitarian philosopher endorses socialism, but he anticipates its arrival based on his materialist understanding of history. In this materialist context, the article argues that Mill expects the economy of worker cooperatives to advance from one focused on relational equality to one focused on luck egalitarianism. This shift is again supported by Mill's own utilitarian principles, but it is ultimately the product of what he anticipates will be the political economy of the cooperative mode of production.

R. M. Hare has an ambitious project of arguing from a limited set of premises about the nature of moral thought and language all the way to substantive utilitarian conclusions. I reconstruct Hare's argument, identify an important problem for Hare, and then develop and endorse a restricted Hare-like argument. This argument is less ambitious than Hare's, and does not substantiate utilitarian conclusions on its own, but I demonstrate that it nonetheless imposes important constraints on moral judgements and I indicate how it can play a role in a larger argument for utilitarian conclusions.

On certain plausible views, if humanity were to unanimously decide to cause its own extinction, this would not be wrong, since there is no one whom this act would wrong. We argue this is incorrect. Causing human extinction would still wrong someone; namely, our forebears who sacrificed life, limb and livelihood for the good of posterity, and whose sacrifices would be made less morally worthwhile by this heinous act.

This article seeks to cause trouble for a brand of consequentialism known as ‘desertarianism’. In somewhat different ways, views of this kind evaluate outcomes more favourably, other things equal, the better the fit between the welfare different people enjoy and the welfare they each deserve. These views imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing welfare to fit desert, which seems plausible enough. Unfortunately, they also imply that we can improve outcomes by redistributing desert to fit welfare: in other words, by making happy people more deserving, at the cost of making unhappy people less deserving. Extant versions of desertarianism predict that such ‘deservingness transfers’ are improvements and that we ought to carry them out. Even worse, they will sometimes rank deservingness transfers higher than simply benefitting deserving people who are poorly off.

Mill's On Liberty is centrally concerned with avoiding social tyranny. But Mill's Principle of Liberty defines interfering, in the context of social pressure, as intentionally punishing and it seems to allow speech and actions that critics have thought would conflict with liberty in self-regarding matters. To critics, Mill draws distinctions among social influences where no genuine difference is to be found and he permits more social pressure than can be accepted by someone who values liberty highly. In this article, I explain where and why Mill draws the line he does between permitted and forbidden influences and show the line is coherent and tracks a genuine difference. I also show that although the Principle leaves residual social pressure, Mill has resources besides the Principle that can prevent social influences that threaten individuality while retaining beneficial social influences.

Why is pain bad? The most straightforward theory of pain's badness, dolorism, appeals to the phenomenal quality of displeasure. In spite of its explanatory appeal, the view is too straightforward to capture two central puzzles, namely pain that is enjoyed and pain that is not painful (e.g. pain asymbolia). These cases can be captured by conditionalism, which makes the badness of displeasure conditional on an agent's attitude. But conditionalism fails where dolorism succeeds with explanatory appeal. A new approach is proposed, reverse conditionalism, which maintains the explanatory appeal of dolorism, but gives attitudes a value-defeating role. It is argued that this view does best in fulfilling the desiderata and capturing the cases.