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Conflicting Principles or Completing Counterparts? J. S. Mill on Political Economy and the Equality of Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Michele Green
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Extract

In the 1970s feminist scholars rediscovered J. S. Mill's writings on sexual equality. The new feminist appraisal confronted traditional Mill scholarship which had tended either to neglect Mill's writings on women or to concentrate on Harriet Taylor's influence on Mill's views on sexual equality. But even the most cursory review of the writings of feminist scholars reveals a lack of consensus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , November 1994 , pp. 267 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 This article was originally presented as a paper at the International Society for Utilitarian Studies Conference, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, April 1992. I would like to thank the participants at that session, especially Prof. Wendy Donner, for their thought-provoking comments. This article has benefited from the criticisms and suggestions of the anonymous referee at Utilitas, as well as those of John M. Robson and Sydney Eisen. I am also grateful to Michael V. White whose work on the place of women in Jevons's political economy has been most helpful to my own work.

2 See the opening remarks to Mill, J. S., ‘Women's Suffrage [1]”, Public and Parliamentary Speeches, eds. Robson, John M. and Kinzer, Bruce, 2 vols., Toronto, 1988CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xxix. 373Google Scholar; Kent, Susan Kingsley, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914, Princeton, 1987, pp. 188–91Google Scholar; Millet, Kate, Sexual Politics, New York, 1970, pp. 96, 103Google Scholar; Mill, John Stuart and Mill, Harriet Taylor, Essays on Sex Equality, ed. Rossi, Alice, Chicago, 1970, pp. 58–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Axelrod, Rise, ‘Argument and Strategy in Mill's The Subjection of Women”, The Victorian Newsletter, xlvi (1974), 10–14.Google Scholar

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5 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, On Liberty and Liberalism, New York, 1974, pp. 188–92Google Scholar; Annas, , pp. 180–3.Google Scholar A most recent analysis of the relationship between Mill's views on political economy and women's equality, which links Mill's inadequate commitment to women's equality to his liberalism, can be found in Pujol, Michele A., Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Early Economic Thought, Aldershot, 1992, pp. 15–36.Google Scholar For her analysis Pujol draws on the Marxist critique in Krouse, Richard, ‘Patriarchal Liberalism and Beyond: From John Stuart Mill to Harriet Taylor”, The Family in Political Thought, ed. Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Amherst, 1982, pp. 161–71.Google Scholar

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27 Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 768. (emphasis my own).Google Scholar

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36 Mill, , Subjection of Women, CW, xxi. 285Google Scholar; Banks, , pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

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38 Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, CW, iii. 765–6.Google Scholar Smith, Kenneth, The Malthusian Controversy, London, 1951, pp. 168–9Google Scholar outlines William Thompson's rather similar views in his An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness (1827).Google Scholar

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45 Ibid., 754.

46 Ibid., 768–9, 792, 775–94.

47 Ibid., 708; Robson, John M., The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1968, p. 264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Mill, , Autobiography, CW, i. 239, 241.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 239, 241; Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 205, and 203Google Scholar for Mill's distinction between Communism and Socialism.

50 Mill, , Autobiography, CW, i. 175Google Scholar; Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, CW, ii. 209.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 206.

52 Ibid., 210.

53 Mill, , ‘On Marriage”, CW, xxi. 42–3Google Scholar; Tulloch, , p. 83.Google Scholar

54 Mill, , ‘Nature”, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969, CW, x. 374, 393–6Google Scholar; Robson, , ‘Rational Animals and Others”, p. 153.Google Scholar

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57 Mill, , ‘On Marriage”, CW, xxi. 44.Google Scholar

58 Mill, , Subjection of Women, CW, xxi. 278, 293.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 294–5, 333–6; Collini, Introduction, CW, xxi. p. xxxiv–xxxv.Google Scholar

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61 There are some interesting similarities here with Krouse's Marxist critique of Mill's views on women. See Krouse, , pp. 170–1.Google Scholar