PoliSci Final- John Stuart Mill

 Final | Why Read Mill Today? (John Skorupski)

The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign (Mill 42)

     As a treatise on John Stewart Mill’s principles of liberalism by an aficionado, Why Read Mill Today (John Skorupski, 2006) does not present its own individual perspective, to be interpreted within the context of a larger body of thought. What Skorupski does is look at Mill’s words on liberalism in the context of both Mill’s intent, and in that of liberalism’s more conservative critics, and present that in a modern volume to a contemporary audience. Where logic or criticism find Mill’s choices wanting, the author takes some practical liberties and synthesizes some updated phrasing in order to patch whatever “flaw” while preserving the intent of the ideology. Skorupski presents his conclusions explicitly, but in the context of a logical proof on Mill’s behalf and not his own. He never questions whether one should continue to read Mill today, he answers only why they should. This is done from a critical perspective, and the inclusion of opposing arguments at every turn helps to make the case for both liberalism’s resiliency and survivability.

     The subject of the day is Liberalism, and Skorupski is quick to point out the reference is to the classical sense as envisioned and phrased by John Stuart Mill, not the contemporary American application of the term. As one of the pioneer thinkers on the subject, Mill is a singular authority; Skorupski looks here then at one of liberalism’s very sources. In so doing, there is a critical exploration of something Mill holds as axiomatic, that the singular ultimate goal of people is the highest level of happiness available. Pointing out Mill’s position that individuals would be willing to work towards the good of others based on a sense of human dignity (34), Skorupski observes that Mill himself appears to place dignity on the pedestal alongside happiness. Through the use of a hypothetical choice between two different pleasure/pain models, he establishes that there are indeed circumstances in which people would choose a painful outcome. Relativity certainly comes into play here however- the individual who makes a painful choice may be doing to so satisfy a deeper moral purpose that ultimately provides a level of satisfaction or happiness great enough to offset the pain experienced.

     As an absolutist position, that happiness is the greatest objective, argument is to be expected. Skorupski categorizes Mill as a hedonist for this foundational element, and those who believe greater complexity is possible are distinguished as “pluralists”. On behalf of the pluralists, Skorupski asks, “you want to know if you have cancer even if that knowledge will produce some net reduction in your happiness. Is that an unreasonable want?” (21) In the strictly hedonistic sense, it would be unreasonable for anyone who doesn’t embrace the chance of death. Yet those who would wish for nothing of the sort would still want that knowledge. It would appear then that one of pillars of Mill’s liberalism holds a flaw.

     That said, the danger of that flaw to the body of liberalism need not be of any consequence. Having recognized this seeming gap in Mill’s argument, Skorupski provides an equivocation. “He could argue,” the author supplies, that happiness “is the ultimate controller of all our principles. It is not their generator.” (37) By placing Mills’ concept of happiness into such a subjective utilitarian framework, we can have many individual or collective principles that may have their own discrete purposes or justifications without offering any substantive threat to the pursuit of happiness. Deferring back to Mills however, these principles “must give way if they turn out to be systematically incompatible with that final good.”

     On one level, liberalism is a victim of circumstance. Socialist critics like Marx see liberalism as being inextricably linked with capitalism, as both social systems found their footing within a century or so of one another. Mill on the other hand did not view capitalism as an inherently good partner, indeed he “sides strongly with socialists in their criticism of the capitalism he knew: its mass poverty, wage slavery, and glaring disproportion ‘between success and merit, or success and exertion’.” (81) The same ills that preoccupied Marx were familiar to Mill; liberalism was thus just as informed by the need to better capitalist societies as was socialism.

     Mill himself was not unsympathetic to the socialist position, but not to the point of abandoning liberalism and its capitalist marketplace. He hesitates to draw a line from where (for him) capitalism currently is to where socialism (for anyone) dreams it could be (81). As described by Skorupski, an irreconcilable difference is the idea that conflict can be abolished through the adoption of socialism, that an underlying submission to a public will would serve to assert itself over individual animus. “It is the cornerstone of any liberalism,” he writes, “that this cannot be. There is no collective subject; there are individual subjects who have common interests but also diverging, and often competing, ones.” (85) That Mill was a contemporary of early socialism and in a position to see the particulars of the ideology in his own work speaks to the capability of liberalism. One of its leading minds saw some of the emerging competition in real time, and found that his own arguments withstood the challenge. That Skorupski uses Mill’s framework to identify not only virtues of socialism but fundamental arguments against (84-85) points to the merit of liberalism as an ongoing system. Liberalism can be present in the absence of socialism, but the reactive nature of socialism suggests its existence is at least in part a function of liberalism.  

     Any discussion of the strengths or weaknesses of the Liberal argument must be through the lens of practical applicability, and how well the ideology holds up against its critics. From the fascist perspective, Alfredo Rocco considers the liberal state as “merely a sum total of individuals, a plurality which breaks up into is single components.” (Rocco 315) Any form of community in this sense is present only at the behest of and in service to the individual people within. To the liberal contrary, writes Skorupski, Mill saw the social inclinations of people as “strengthened by the much greater specialisation and interdependence of the modern world, and a good thing insofar as it provides a strengthening ‘sanction’ of utilitarian morality.” (73) The liberal state, as least as intended, is no more atomist in nature – to use Rocco’s term – than the fascist state imagined as a replacement. To Mill himself, it was a fundamental misunderstanding of liberalism as a doctrine

…to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other’s conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former rather than the latter. (Mill 49)

     A conservative argument posed by Edmund Burke is that the liberal’s focus on the importance of the individual relegates the position of the community in time to an unnatural inferiority. Members of such a state are “unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity.” (Burke 158) This argument posits that liberalism unwisely removes people from a place of responsible stewardship of society to a collection of owners of society, each an agent of change. Mill’s concern in response borrowed from the conservative epistemology. The ‘tyranny of the majority’ that concerned Mill was itself a phrase appropriated from Alexis de Tocqueville (41). Characterized by Skorupski, the liberal conflict between such deterministic individuals was “a conflict of interests and ideas” that would be “the permanent condition of progress.” (71)

     Though it holds up demonstrably well against the arguments of alternative ideologies, Mills’ liberalism is not without flaws of greater consequence than the number of goals beyond happiness. One key presupposition of Mill’s is the commonality of people, an Enlightenment-era theory of associationism. “Associationism says that there are no innate differences of psychology between human beings, similarities and differences of individual mental disposition all result from laws of psychological association working on similarities or differences of environment.” (76) This was a necessary equivalency for liberalism, lest conservative ideas of inherent and entitled elite classes assert themselves. It is also beyond the ability of Mill or anyone else to demonstrate as being actually true. It is a sympathetic notion that holds a democratic appeal, and the inability to prove it false leaves room for planning on the presumption that it could be true. But if it is indeed false, then one of liberalism’s inherent pillars collapses underneath it.

     Setting aside that unfortunate outcome, one of the virtues of Mill’s liberalism in a modern context is that is hasn’t actually been tried. In much the same way that classical conservatism has been replaced in the American mind with libertarianism, classical liberalism has come to be influenced by its opposition to that new conservatism. In the words of Mill are strategies for addressing social problems and ills, likely beyond the current sum total of political will in our nation’s capitols, but solutions nonetheless. To capitalism and economic inequality, he is willing to embrace redistributive tax policy (60), and counter the accumulation of wealth. “Inheritance taxes could be set to eliminate any unearned fortune within a few generations,” writes Skorupski (82). Politically, Mill acknowledges the complexity of legality and governance. To ensure an appropriate and informed expression of political will, he imagines a purely deliberative legislature, with educated and skilled subject experts tasked with the actual creation of legislation (87). Contrast that process with the one recently played out in the Senate, in which tax legislation was brought before the floor with handwritten ‘law’ scribbled in the margins by members of Congress.

     Ultimately, any ideology becomes fluid in the hands of its users. Shifts from conservatism to libertarianism, or liberalism to something more cautious, are no different from the shift in socialism from Utopianism to enforcement. Mills’ envisioning of liberal ideals and practice has not been put to complete use, but the societies that have made the effort have seen relative stability and prosperity. Any fundamental flaws in the application – of liberalism, not its capitalist marketplace – have yet to fundamentally disserve its constituents.

Political Science 22 #75070
12 December 2017

Works Cited

Note- all paginated and Mill citations refer to the primary text by John Skorupski

Burke, Edmund. Society, Reverence, and the “True Natural Aristocracy”. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader, Terence Ball, 9^th edition, Pearson, Boston, 2014.
Rocco, Alfredo. The Political Theory of Fascism. Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader, Terence Ball, 9^th edition, Pearson, Boston, 2014.
Skorupski, John. Why Read Mill Today? Routledge, 2006, New York.