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The Left must reclaim JS Mill The progressive philosopher has been defamed

Mill for Dummies (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)


May 4, 2023   7 mins

A century and a half after the death of John Stuart Mill, it is easy to think that we have had enough of him. Although William Gladstone once posthumously canonised him as “the saint of rationality”, many contemporary thinkers believe he’s beyond his sell-by date. Monty Python offers an assessment for our age: “John Stuart Mill/ of his own free will/ on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.”

In the eyes of sceptics, Mill has lost his relevance. The campaigns in which he fought have been won, and the ideas he defended — namely, free speech and female suffrage — have become widely embraced, elaborated, refined and transcended. Furthermore, aspects of his writings grate on current sensitivities. To many, his career in the East India Company reveals not only a thoughtless acceptance of colonialism but also a complacent conviction of the superiority of British society. His proposals to grant extra votes to the well-educated demonstrate a casual elitism, as does his emphasis on higher pleasures: on poetry rather than pushpin. What’s more, the negative picture of liberty he defended — focused on insulating people’s lives from outside interference — can be used today by libertarians and other boosters of minimally regulated markets; perhaps Mill was even a closet libertarian himself. Clear-headed charity should allow him to fade gracefully into the (Victorian) wallpaper.

All this, I believe, is profoundly incorrect. Mill was a far deeper thinker than many of his readers today recognise. He was a progressive, not a neoliberal, someone who has much to teach us about our own society and its conflicts.

These common misconceptions of Mill will no doubt be articulated in a future canonical text entitled Mill for Dummies. When this book is written, it will tell us what “everybody knows” about him. First, he was a utilitarian. To act rightly, he claimed, is to maximise happiness. Following Jeremy Bentham in this thesis, he added a new twist: some pleasures are “higher” than others. Reading poetry supplies more units of bliss (hedons) than you derive from playing childish games in your local tavern. Second, he was an ardent defender of individual liberty. The most important freedom, he tells us, consists in your choosing and pursuing your own good in your own way. Intervening in other people’s lives is warranted only to prevent their harming other folk. These two ideas are the major themes of his most important works: Utilitarianism and On Liberty.

Unfortunately, Dummies probably won’t address the obvious question: How do these two ideas fit together? To find an answer you’d have to go back to On Liberty, where Mill tells us that his defence of freedom will not involve any concept of rights that are independent of utility. He continues by explaining what he means: “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.” The authors of Dummies, who identify utility in terms of happiness with an elitist additive, will see this as obfuscation rather than clarification — a lapse into flowery Victorian rhetoric.

Yet the thought of human progress, together with a commitment to promoting it, is all over Mill’s writings. It is expressed in the closing pages of A System of Logic, in The Subjection of Women, throughout On Liberty, and in the Principles of Political Economy (a work roughly four times as long as Utilitarianism and On Liberty combined, and which went through eight editions in his lifetime). In fact, whenever Mill takes up any issue of social policy, he always asks first about how to make progressive changes in individual lives and in the conditions of society that foster or impede such advances. If he mentions happiness at all, it is an afterthought.

The “only freedom which deserves the name” — the ability to choose and pursue your own good in your own way — is at the core of his concept of progress. People’s lives are better when they have more opportunities for figuring out what kind of life they want to lead, more developed cognitive and emotional capacities for making choices about their aims and aspirations, more support in trying to attain their selected goals. When societies restrict options — when, for example, they deny women any chance to obtain university degrees or to own property or to engage in public activities allowed to men — they are interfering with human progress. Advances come when these kinds of restrictions are abolished. It is hardly surprising that Mill would oppose de jure restrictions on the kinds of activities women can pursue; he is, after all, the apostle of non-interference.

Once progress is understood in terms of freedom (real freedom), however, things get more complicated. A poor but talented black American child may dream of becoming a lawyer, perhaps even a judge, or a Supreme Court Justice. But if that child is being raised by a single parent, sometimes homeless, often hungry, and sent to a dangerous and underfunded school staffed by a rotating corps of disillusioned teachers, he may in principle have a chance to realise the dream of giving eloquent speeches in a courtroom, but, even with the most determined effort, his chances of success are slim. What the law allows is negated by the facts of the child’s life. In the absence of public goods — education of the quality available to their more fortunate contemporaries, or a “safety net” that protects against severe poverty and homelessness — the odds are against success for even the most gifted and diligent of children.

Despite popular assumptions, Mill’s conception of human progress does not write off the children of the poor. Throughout his entire career, he advocated Bentham’s famous dictum, “Each to count for one, and none for more than one”, elaborating it in a conception of human well-being that went far beyond his predecessor’s limited focus on momentary pleasures. To ground utility in “the permanent interests of man as a progressive being” is to demand providing resources to support the many members of affluent societies who are allowed to fall by the wayside.

Mill’s educational commitments go even further. If someone is to make a wise choice about how they want their life to be, they must be able to discover their talents and to understand the options for developing and exercising them. They require the emotional and social capacities to understand how their aims might have a positive impact on the lives of others. To improve individual lives is thus to fashion educational institutions that develop self-understanding; and to produce citizens who can work cooperatively together. A Millian society emphasises two kinds of liberty: not only freedom from the interference of others, but the freedom to become reflective and sensitive people as well.

Mill’s emphasis on the “cultivation” of the individual is evident in On Liberty, especially in its third chapter. There, the idea of “making the [human] race infinitely better” is tied to “furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race”. Similarly, The Subjection of Women argues that allowing women “the free use of their faculties” and “the free choice of employments” makes social progress both through correcting an injustice and through doubling the power of individuals to contribute to society. Yet Mill’s most obvious break with libertarianism, and, indeed, with the dominant socio-political conceptions of our day, comes in the work in which he figures as one of the great predecessors of contemporary economic thinking: the Principles of Political Economy.

His purely economic writings are pervaded by judgments about what is most valuable in human life. For Mill, political economy consists in engaging the best ethical thought with investigations in the social sciences. Although that engagement appears in the work of other classical political economists (notably Adam Smith and Karl Marx), nobody pursued it more deeply than Mill. It figures prominently in Book 2 of the Principles, with its astonishing title and theme: “Distribution”. From the perspective of prior political economy, there should be no need to discuss how income and wealth should be distributed: the task is to understand how aggregate wealth is amassed and how societies prosper. After that, the chips — the bullion and the banknotes — fall where they may. For Mill, that is not good enough. The distribution of wealth must allow for as many individual lives as possible to flourish.

Hence, he is an early advocate of what contemporary libertarians call “death taxes”. With his respect for liberty, Mill gives inheritance law an interesting twist: the amount any person can gain via inheritance is to be limited; donors can decide how to spread their prosperity among a large number of recipients (Mill conjectures that they will often opt for providing public goods, apparently foreseeing the coming of Andrew Carnegie and his like). In each generation, he believes, differences in talent, industry and, he points out, luck will produce inequalities in wealth. But, as resources pass down the generations, a death tax results in more equal distribution, benefiting both those whose ancestors had little to leave them and the potentially pampered children of the rich, whose motivation to exert themselves would otherwise be sapped.

Nor is Mill obsessed with productivity and growth as primary economic imperatives. The progressive interests of humanity are not fostered by intensifying competition. In the section of Mill’s Principles entitled “Of the Stationary State of Wealth and Population”, he wrote: “I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but one of the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.” If capitalism is superior to socialism — and that is a question Mill takes very seriously — it must be capitalism with a human face.

The narrative that will be contained in Dummies, then, sells Mill short. He is neither a peculiarly elitist utilitarian (indeed, it is doubtful whether he is any kind of utilitarian), nor is his concern for liberty consistent with even the slightest move in the directions that libertarians favour. Instead, he draws on a rich and complex approach to human progress, suggesting reforms both for his own society and for our own.

Were he alive today, Mill would remind us that freedoms are for all, not simply for a privileged few; that democracy requires taking the perspectives of all people seriously; that minimally regulated markets produce consumer goods cheaply at enormous personal and social costs; and that ethical inquiry should be the foundation of socio-political decisions. Much contemporary political “thought” would be subjected to the rebuke he directed at Bentham: politicians and pundits today see in human life “little but what the vulgarest eye can see”. In this, Mill belongs at the progressive end of the progressive parties of the modern world. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders should welcome their ally — Mill the progressive.


Philip Kitcher is John Dewey Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He has been President of the American Philosophical Association and Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science. His most recent book is On John Stuart Mill.


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Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

I do not claim, in any way shape or form, to be a scholar of Mill’s work – or to have read enough of his output to be able to categorise his political stance, and thus be able to use his authority to buttress my own arguments – but there is a quotation from On Liberty I read many years ago at school that I have tried to adhere to and have often cited (in precis) when challenging others in debate,
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
It was precisely this piece of advice that led me to continue reading leftish writers – and the Guardian almost daily – long after the point that I realised I disagreed with almost every position they took.
How can you ever feel confident in your own opinions unless you have understood, or at least exposed yourself to, the counter-argument – and from well-versed people who can make a strong defence for it?
Yet this obvious good sense, in the digital age, is anathema to most – certainly to many who would claim JS Mill for their own side of the aisle. With the plethora of information resources available to us it is all too easy to gravitate towards news that sits comfortably within your own preferred world-view.
It used to be said that you were entitled to your own opinions, yet we now live in a culture where many seem to feel entitled to their own facts.
Too many people feel they have a right to simply dismiss any information that challenges the consoling half-truths that bolster their preconceptions – because they’re convinced their point of view is intrinsically virtuous, thus everyone who thinks differently to them must be wrong. And, distressingly often, not merely wrong but somehow “Evil”. It seems to blind them to the possibility that other, perfectly decent and thoughtful people might, quite justifiably, think differently to them. I think this is the fundamental cause of the pessimism that permeates so much political discourse.
Even within our universities, the very places that should be most dedicated to the free exchange of opposing ideas, we have allowed a culture of no-platforming any who challenge the cultural shibboleths of our time. Not only do we find academics and journalists unwilling to listen to the case for the other side, we find plenty of people who actually claim that such a monocular view is a virtue, and damn any who dare think otherwise.
The BBC, which has a charter obligation to reflect the breadth of any argument and find articulate proponents to make the case for their own positions, was attacked by Emily Maitlis in her (what should be infamous) MacTaggart lecture, accusing her employer of committing the sin of “Both-sideism”.
As I say, I make no claim as an expert on JS Mill, but in my humble opinion, nothing would improve the tenor of political debate and critical thinking in our present time more than if those who do lay claim to his work took this particular piece of his advice to heart. 

Last edited 1 year ago by Paddy Taylor
Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

That’s a very astute observation. I used to read pieces I fundamentally disagreed with, but never thought of it as me trying to understand the other side. I always thought they were written to inflame and outrage readers in order to keep them engaged rather than informed, which is why I read a lot less of publications like the Guardian than I used to.
Articles on the Guardian are website are so ridiculous that I can’t believe it still has serious readership, yet occasionally I venture forth to their comments section only very quickly to retreat back to mental refuges like Unherd or Quintette.
I think I tried to understand the other side but eventually gave up, believing they were too far gone down the progressive rabbit hole.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

I think this expectation is rather discriminatory toward Progressive Totalitarian and Postmodern Ideologies based in Standpoint Epistemology.

A progressive operates beyond reason because progressives possess Gnose or absolute knowledge. Absolute Knowledge can’t be accessed by the uninducted, non-expert class or those defined as privileged.

There is simply no reason for the progressive to consider a more conservative viewpoint when he already knows the truth.

Dissenting opinion is just an outdated form of bourgeois property that needs to be shelved in the interest of the global community!

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Compared to Thomas Paine he was rubbish.
Action NOT words is the true judge, always has been always will be.

james burkholder
james burkholder
1 year ago

One has to know what actions are best

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago

I would say that to be the main inspirational source for the foundation of the USA was a pretty good start.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago

I would say that to be the main inspirational source for the foundation of the USA was a pretty good start.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Charles,
I take your point that words are cheap and it is by one’s actions that one should be judged.
But how do you suppose you can decide what course of action would be justifiable and right, unless you have discussed and considered the problem at hand from all sides? Your gut-instinct is often not the wisest approach.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Off course, Paine was very fortunate with his timing, whilst Mill was not so lucky.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Off course, Paine was very fortunate with his timing, whilst Mill was not so lucky.

james burkholder
james burkholder
1 year ago

One has to know what actions are best

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Charles,
I take your point that words are cheap and it is by one’s actions that one should be judged.
But how do you suppose you can decide what course of action would be justifiable and right, unless you have discussed and considered the problem at hand from all sides? Your gut-instinct is often not the wisest approach.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

When you look into the void, the void looks into you.

And yes, when you inculcate the teachings of the void, you understand yourself better.

Even if that self would seem a monster to your earlier self.

Last edited 1 year ago by Bret Larson
Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

That’s a very astute observation. I used to read pieces I fundamentally disagreed with, but never thought of it as me trying to understand the other side. I always thought they were written to inflame and outrage readers in order to keep them engaged rather than informed, which is why I read a lot less of publications like the Guardian than I used to.
Articles on the Guardian are website are so ridiculous that I can’t believe it still has serious readership, yet occasionally I venture forth to their comments section only very quickly to retreat back to mental refuges like Unherd or Quintette.
I think I tried to understand the other side but eventually gave up, believing they were too far gone down the progressive rabbit hole.

T Bone
T Bone
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

I think this expectation is rather discriminatory toward Progressive Totalitarian and Postmodern Ideologies based in Standpoint Epistemology.

A progressive operates beyond reason because progressives possess Gnose or absolute knowledge. Absolute Knowledge can’t be accessed by the uninducted, non-expert class or those defined as privileged.

There is simply no reason for the progressive to consider a more conservative viewpoint when he already knows the truth.

Dissenting opinion is just an outdated form of bourgeois property that needs to be shelved in the interest of the global community!

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Compared to Thomas Paine he was rubbish.
Action NOT words is the true judge, always has been always will be.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

When you look into the void, the void looks into you.

And yes, when you inculcate the teachings of the void, you understand yourself better.

Even if that self would seem a monster to your earlier self.

Last edited 1 year ago by Bret Larson
Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

I do not claim, in any way shape or form, to be a scholar of Mill’s work – or to have read enough of his output to be able to categorise his political stance, and thus be able to use his authority to buttress my own arguments – but there is a quotation from On Liberty I read many years ago at school that I have tried to adhere to and have often cited (in precis) when challenging others in debate,
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
It was precisely this piece of advice that led me to continue reading leftish writers – and the Guardian almost daily – long after the point that I realised I disagreed with almost every position they took.
How can you ever feel confident in your own opinions unless you have understood, or at least exposed yourself to, the counter-argument – and from well-versed people who can make a strong defence for it?
Yet this obvious good sense, in the digital age, is anathema to most – certainly to many who would claim JS Mill for their own side of the aisle. With the plethora of information resources available to us it is all too easy to gravitate towards news that sits comfortably within your own preferred world-view.
It used to be said that you were entitled to your own opinions, yet we now live in a culture where many seem to feel entitled to their own facts.
Too many people feel they have a right to simply dismiss any information that challenges the consoling half-truths that bolster their preconceptions – because they’re convinced their point of view is intrinsically virtuous, thus everyone who thinks differently to them must be wrong. And, distressingly often, not merely wrong but somehow “Evil”. It seems to blind them to the possibility that other, perfectly decent and thoughtful people might, quite justifiably, think differently to them. I think this is the fundamental cause of the pessimism that permeates so much political discourse.
Even within our universities, the very places that should be most dedicated to the free exchange of opposing ideas, we have allowed a culture of no-platforming any who challenge the cultural shibboleths of our time. Not only do we find academics and journalists unwilling to listen to the case for the other side, we find plenty of people who actually claim that such a monocular view is a virtue, and damn any who dare think otherwise.
The BBC, which has a charter obligation to reflect the breadth of any argument and find articulate proponents to make the case for their own positions, was attacked by Emily Maitlis in her (what should be infamous) MacTaggart lecture, accusing her employer of committing the sin of “Both-sideism”.
As I say, I make no claim as an expert on JS Mill, but in my humble opinion, nothing would improve the tenor of political debate and critical thinking in our present time more than if those who do lay claim to his work took this particular piece of his advice to heart. 

Last edited 1 year ago by Paddy Taylor
Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago

Unfortunately the modern left simply doesn’t believe that ‘democracy requires taking the perspectives of all people seriously’. Quite the opposite in fact.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 year ago

Unfortunately the modern left simply doesn’t believe that ‘democracy requires taking the perspectives of all people seriously’. Quite the opposite in fact.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago

Mill a ‘progressive’? Yes, I will certainly buy that. But that has most certainly not turned out to be a good thing in the long run, rather the intrusion of publically funded dubious ideological obsessions into more and more areas of private life. I’d agree women should have equal opportunities, but what if they choose child rearing and home making as their priority? Pay someone to look after your very young children while you go out to work?! Many other examples.

Mike Doyle
Mike Doyle
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

To true. To describe someone today as a progressive is not a complement.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Doyle

The article seems to position Mill more as a One Nation Tory than a progressive. But who am I to interpret the intentions of the eminent professor.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Doyle

The article seems to position Mill more as a One Nation Tory than a progressive. But who am I to interpret the intentions of the eminent professor.

Victor T
Victor T
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Dude made his money as a part of the East India Company, maybe the most rapacious corporation in existence. Spare me the encomiums.

https://victorianweb.org/philosophy/mill/career.html

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Victor T

Think you would have been different in the 19th century? It’s very unikely.

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago
Reply to  Victor T

Think you would have been different in the 19th century? It’s very unikely.

Mike Doyle
Mike Doyle
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

To true. To describe someone today as a progressive is not a complement.

Victor T
Victor T
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Dude made his money as a part of the East India Company, maybe the most rapacious corporation in existence. Spare me the encomiums.

https://victorianweb.org/philosophy/mill/career.html

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago

Mill a ‘progressive’? Yes, I will certainly buy that. But that has most certainly not turned out to be a good thing in the long run, rather the intrusion of publically funded dubious ideological obsessions into more and more areas of private life. I’d agree women should have equal opportunities, but what if they choose child rearing and home making as their priority? Pay someone to look after your very young children while you go out to work?! Many other examples.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

A superb defense of one of the most brilliant Englishmen who ever lived. I recommend that anyone inclined to make one or another assumption about John Stuart Mill read 100 pages of his actual works.
I respect the fact that this website allows–and publishes–a variety a viewpoints on the same important subject.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

A superb defense of one of the most brilliant Englishmen who ever lived. I recommend that anyone inclined to make one or another assumption about John Stuart Mill read 100 pages of his actual works.
I respect the fact that this website allows–and publishes–a variety a viewpoints on the same important subject.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

The eminent professor worries about the availability of

public goods — education of the quality available to their more fortunate contemporaries, or a “safety net” that protects against severe poverty and homelessness — the odds are against success for even the most gifted and diligent of children.

But the question is:
Can gubmint ever deliver quality education?
Can gubmint deliver a “safety net” against poverty and homelessness?
Or does it always Make Things Worse?
Take the French, currently enraged about the gubmint mucking around with their retraites. Suppose the graduates of les grandes écoles had built a system where French workers financed their own retraites with a little gubmint regulation to keep fraud down to a dull roar? What then?
I’m a follower of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, who says that politics is just friend vs. enemy. You gift your friends; you fight your enemies. And that is all. Prove to me that I’m wrong, Noble Professor.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

No one can disprove a dark, cynical worldview to the satisfaction of one who peers through such a lens.
“All seems infected that th’ infected spy, / As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye” (Alexander Pope).

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

Of course governments can provide quality education if they have the will. My 3 children all went to public school in British Columbia. All 3 are now professionals doing quite well. They loved their high school.
Similarly, if it has the will government can provide a safety net against poverty and homelessness. Unfortunately many voters want to be taxed a lot less, which diminishes the ability of governments to do that.
None of the above is perfect, but perfectability isn’t and shouldn’t be the goal.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

No one can disprove a dark, cynical worldview to the satisfaction of one who peers through such a lens.
“All seems infected that th’ infected spy, / As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye” (Alexander Pope).

harry storm
harry storm
1 year ago

Of course governments can provide quality education if they have the will. My 3 children all went to public school in British Columbia. All 3 are now professionals doing quite well. They loved their high school.
Similarly, if it has the will government can provide a safety net against poverty and homelessness. Unfortunately many voters want to be taxed a lot less, which diminishes the ability of governments to do that.
None of the above is perfect, but perfectability isn’t and shouldn’t be the goal.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

The eminent professor worries about the availability of

public goods — education of the quality available to their more fortunate contemporaries, or a “safety net” that protects against severe poverty and homelessness — the odds are against success for even the most gifted and diligent of children.

But the question is:
Can gubmint ever deliver quality education?
Can gubmint deliver a “safety net” against poverty and homelessness?
Or does it always Make Things Worse?
Take the French, currently enraged about the gubmint mucking around with their retraites. Suppose the graduates of les grandes écoles had built a system where French workers financed their own retraites with a little gubmint regulation to keep fraud down to a dull roar? What then?
I’m a follower of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, who says that politics is just friend vs. enemy. You gift your friends; you fight your enemies. And that is all. Prove to me that I’m wrong, Noble Professor.

Barry Dixon
Barry Dixon
1 year ago

An interesting piece and in a similar vein to the one written by Patrick Deneen and published in this portal last week. If I did not know better, I could imagine another attempt to undermine proper, European, liberalism.
 
The author, rightly records that Mill was a progressive but then tries to construe that the progressivism of 150 years ago is aligned with what, rather unhelpfully, is described as the progressivism of today’s hard left. The progressivism of Mill is not the progressivism that AOC and Sauders hope to progress, nor should they be described as liberal. Their progressivism is authoritarian and flavoured by the intolerance of Marcuse and others of that fraternity. In effect regressive and this is well-illustrated by Orwel and Huxley.
 
The progress that Western Society has experienced over the last centuries has been founded upon progressive policies that have understood the importance of the individual and his need for autonomy. To allude to the polar opposites of Capitalism and Socialism though his passage “The progressive interests of humanity are not fostered by intensifying competition. In the section of Mill’s Principles entitled “Of the Stationary State of Wealth and Population”, fails to distinguish the consequences of socialist imposed redistribution of earned wealth and the desirable redistribution that meritocracy brings through opportunity in a free market society.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago
Reply to  Barry Dixon

Agree entirely. JS Mill worked to progress to humanity.

The loony left wants to proceed to ant hood. With of course three or four different classes of ant.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 year ago
Reply to  Barry Dixon

Agree entirely. JS Mill worked to progress to humanity.

The loony left wants to proceed to ant hood. With of course three or four different classes of ant.

Barry Dixon
Barry Dixon
1 year ago

An interesting piece and in a similar vein to the one written by Patrick Deneen and published in this portal last week. If I did not know better, I could imagine another attempt to undermine proper, European, liberalism.
 
The author, rightly records that Mill was a progressive but then tries to construe that the progressivism of 150 years ago is aligned with what, rather unhelpfully, is described as the progressivism of today’s hard left. The progressivism of Mill is not the progressivism that AOC and Sauders hope to progress, nor should they be described as liberal. Their progressivism is authoritarian and flavoured by the intolerance of Marcuse and others of that fraternity. In effect regressive and this is well-illustrated by Orwel and Huxley.
 
The progress that Western Society has experienced over the last centuries has been founded upon progressive policies that have understood the importance of the individual and his need for autonomy. To allude to the polar opposites of Capitalism and Socialism though his passage “The progressive interests of humanity are not fostered by intensifying competition. In the section of Mill’s Principles entitled “Of the Stationary State of Wealth and Population”, fails to distinguish the consequences of socialist imposed redistribution of earned wealth and the desirable redistribution that meritocracy brings through opportunity in a free market society.

j watson
j watson
1 year ago

Really good. Thank you

j watson
j watson
1 year ago

Really good. Thank you