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THE PARADOX OF JOHN STUART MILL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2011

Alan Charles Kors
Alan Charles Kors
Affiliation:
History, University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

John Stuart Mill is the critical transitional figure between the classical liberalism of the 19th century, with its emphasis upon the creative power of free individuals unfettered by government or social interventions, and the welfare-state liberalism of the 20th century, with its combination of individual choice in matters of belief and lifestyle and the political redistribution of wealth. In On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, Mill offered a defense of self-sovereignty and voluntary association that appeared to extend explicitly to the economic spheres. Both works are celebrations of the productive and moral enhancements of individual liberty. In The Principles of Political Economy, however, Mill's categorical distinction between “production” and “distribution” assigned the latter to the “expedient” discretion of the state, inviting, in theory, a democratic redistributionist state. Mill's posthumous Essays on Socialism reveal that he was no friend of socialism or Marxism, but that he welcomed a more active and interventionist state. One of individual liberty's most notable defenders, paradoxically, provided the theoretical underpinning of its current diminution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2011

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References

1 This essay was first published in 1843, in a collection entitled Anarchical Fallacies. See Bentham, Jeremy, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, John (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838–43), vol. II, A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights, “Preliminary Observations,” art. IIGoogle Scholar.

2 Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, in Mill, On Liberty with The Subjection of Women and Chapters on Socialism, ed. Collini, Stefan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 14Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 59–60.

4 Ibid., 56–57.

5 Ibid., 82.

6 Ibid., 13 (emphasis added).

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., 75 (emphasis added).

9 Ibid., 5–9.

10 Ibid., 16.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 87–88.

13 Ibid., 13.

14 Ibid., 83–84.

15 Ibid., 19–55.

16 Ibid., 56–57.

17 Patricia E. Brophy v. New England Sinai Hospital, Inc., 497 N.E.2d 626 (Mass. 1986)Google Scholar. References to Mill in court decisions can be found by a simple Google search of “Mill + Court.” The decision here is relatively brief, and the online version (http://homepages.udayton.edu/~ulrichlp/brophy.htm) does not have page numbers. A search for “Mill” within the document leads directly to the material cited.

18 Armstrong v. The State of Montana, 989 P.2d 365 (Mont. 1999)Google Scholar. The online version of the decision does not have page numbers, but a search for “Mill” within the document leads directly to the material cited: http://fnweb1.isd.doa.state.mt.us/idmws/docContent.dll?Library=CISDOCSVR01^doaisd510&ID=003726845.

19 Cullen v. Auclair, 809 A.2d 1107, 1110, p. 5 (R.I. 2002)Google Scholar. The opinion is online at the website of the Rhode Island Supreme Court: http://www.courts.state.ri.us/supreme/pdf-files/01-588.pdf.

20 Beattie v. Fleet National Bank, 746 A.2d 717, p. 20 (R.I. 2000)Google Scholar. The opinion is online at the website of the Rhode Island Supreme Court: http://www.courts.state.ri.us/supreme/pdf-files/98-338.pdf.

21 Amar, Akhil Reed, The Bill of Rights (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

22 Randolph, A. Raymond, “Before Roe v. Wade: Judge Friendly's Draft Abortion Opinion,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 29, no. 3 (2006)Google Scholar. Friendly's opinion of Mill and the Constitution was disclosed by Randolph (who had clerked for Friendly) in Friendly's unpublished papers, in the possession of Harvard Law School. Randolph's article was an extension of a talk that he had given to the Federalist Society in 2005: http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/pubID.368/pub_detail.asp.

23 Rand, Ayn, Atlas Shrugged (1957), 35th anniversary edition (New York: Signet Classic, 1996)Google Scholar. For Galt on “the greatest good of the greatest number” as the moral standard of a “prostitute,” see p. 943. For Rand on “rights,” see pp. 972–73.

24 von Mises, Ludwig, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005), chap. 1, sec. 2Google Scholar.

25 Mill, On Liberty, 59–63.

26 Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women, in Mill, On Liberty with The Subjection of Women and Chapters on Socialism, ed. Collini, Stefan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 160Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., 163–65.

28 Ibid., 168. The “(short of injury to others)” is Mill's clarification, not mine.

29 Ibid., 159.

30 Ibid., 212.

31 Ibid., 119.

32 Ibid., 122.

33 Ibid., 137.

34 Ibid., 134–35.

35 Ibid.

36 Mill, John Stuart, The Principles of Political Economy, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vols. II–III (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Inc., 2006), II, 21Google Scholar.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., 199.

39 Ibid., 199–200.

40 Ibid., 200–205.

41 Ibid., 351–79.

42 Ibid., 224–26.

43 Ibid., III, 918–19.

44 Ibid., 802–4.

45 Mill, John Stuart, Chapters on Socialism, in Mill, On Liberty with The Subjection of Women and Chapters on Socialism, ed. Collini, Stefan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 228–48Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., 248–74.

47 Ibid., 275–79.