John Stuart Mill, political economist: a reassessment.

• Author: Taylor, Quentin
• Position: Biography

John Stuart Mill's reputation as an economic thinker rests almost entirely on Principles of Political Economy. First published in 1848, this weighty tome met with immediate success and was widely recognized as a towering achievement on a scale with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. For more than a generation, its influence was unrivaled and established Mill as the dominant economist of the age. At the time of his death in 1873, the Principles was in its seventh edition and remained an authoritative text until eclipsed by Alfred Marshall's treatise of 1890.

Today Mill is best known not as a political economist but as a social philosopher whose works On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Utilitarianism are standard fare in college syllabi. Among scholars, however, Mill's economic thought remains very much alive, and not just for its historical significance. He was the paradigmatic nineteenth-century liberal, and his concerns, values, and analysis continue to resonate in contemporary liberal societies. And because Mill employed political economy on behalf of a broader program of social reform, he remains highly relevant to current debates on social justice, income inequality, the welfare state, and the future of capitalism.

Unfortunately, Mill's relevance has been consistently compromised by the failure of historians of economics (and other scholars) to squarely confront his actual teaching. All observers recognize that Mill "explored" or "flirted" with socialism and expressed a certain "sentimental" attachment to "cooperative" schemes for a future society. Yet nearly all deny that Mill was a "socialist" in any accepted sense of the term, even though he openly identified himself as one in his Autobiography. On the contrary, Mill is consistently hailed as a classical economist, a defender of the free market, and a reformer of capitalism whose professed "socialism" was hypothetical and went no further than the welfare state.

Mill and Historians of Economics

The efforts of historians of economics to "save Mill from himself" can be traced to the ideological currents that accompanied the Cold War. Before the rise of bolshevism and fascism in Europe, Mill had been widely viewed as an evolutionary socialist, a proto-Fabian, and had even been placed among the "theoretical adherents" of revolutionary socialism. Beginning in the late 1940s, economic scholars such as Jacob Viner, Lionel Robbins, and Robert Heilbroner would attempt to rebrand Mill as an idealistic thinker who ultimately adhered to the fundamental tenets of classical theory and the market system. For Viner, Mill's flirtation with socialism was "in large degree platonic," a harmless dalliance safely relegated to the "vague future" (1949, 381). In the interim, Mill counseled economic orthodoxy, which, along with his "utopian aspirations," struck just the right tone for mid-Victorians. This tone gave Mill's economic teaching a broad, if eclectic, appeal: he became "a major source of inspiration for the Fabian socialists as well as for the laissez-faire liberals" (363).

The future Lord Robbins noted the ambiguity in Mill's eclecticism. Was Mill an "arch-individualist" or a "good socialist"? Robbins attributed much of the confusion to Mill himself, a divided thinker who "would have dearly liked to believe in socialism in some form or another" (1952, 142). His preferred form of socialism was "syndicalist rather than . . . collectivist" (159, italics in original), but this did not make Mill a "socialist" in the strict sense of the term. In the end, "Mill's utopia" was mere smoke and his socialist noodling little more than "a plea for an open mind." Through all the "mysterious vicissitudes" of his thoughts on socialism (164 n.), Mill "remained a great Utilitarian and a great exponent of Classical Political Economy" (145).

In The Worldly Philosophers, Robert Heilbroner popularized this paradoxical picture of Mill, a "utopian" whose "leanings" were only "mildly Socialist" ([1953] 1999, 133). Mill admittedly envisioned (indeed predicted) a society of workers' cooperatives in which "[c]apitalism would gradually disappear" (132-33). And yet Mill is said to have adhered to "a doctrine English to the core: gradualist, optimistic, realistic, and devoid of radical overtones." In a subsequent work, Teachings from the Worldly Philosophers (1996), Heilbroner updated this equivocal portrait of Mill as "a fervent libertarian" whose "utopian yearnings" were balanced by "scrupulous fairness" in analysis and "a recognition of [socialism's] practical difficulties" (129, 141). And although Mill's future utopia--the Stationary State--"must today seem hopelessly unrealistic," it represents "no leap into socialism" (146, 150). Yet not even Heilbroner was able to reconcile the "astonishing change" from Mill's spirited defense of laissezfaire to his anticipation of the modern welfare state (155).

For Heilbroner, the split nature of Mill's economic doctrine is revealed in the dual character of the Principles of Political Economy, at once a "textbook" of pure economic theory and a roadmap of "socioeconomic evolution" (1996, 141). V. W. Bladen, the modern editor of the Principles, characterizes it as the hybrid work of a philosopher and a scientist, "a preacher" and a "political economist" (1965, xxxix). A recognition of this duality has not prevented scholars from attempting to square the circle of Mill's eclecticism. Mark Blaug downplays Mill's attacks on capitalism and private property and eschews the "socialist" label--Mill's "sympathetic treatment of socialist arguments" notwithstanding. On the contrary, Mill "is the perfect example of what we mean when we call someone a 'classical liberal'" (1985, 220). John Bell accuses Mill of inescapable inconsistencies, calling him at once "a firm believer in capitalism" and a proto-Fabian socialist. And yet Mill never departed from the free-market principles "expounded by his father" or "abandoned the fundamentals of capitalism" (1980, 252, 253). Bell admits that Mill's cooperative vision "would virtually dispense with the wage system" and with it capitalism, but this vision was "at variance with the economic fundamentals in which he believed" (270-71). Thus, Mill remains "the last of the great classical economists" (271).

Abram Harris also identifies the "socialistic and individualistic tendencies" in Mill's thought and agrees that the latter got the upper hand. Or did they? For although "Mill was no starry-eyed egalitarian," "[h]is philosophy upholds the ideal of a kind of classless society, one in which all divisions except those of taste, interest, and ability are non-existent" (1963, 153). Not to be outdone, E. K. Hunt observes that "Mill not only morally rejected the capitalist structure of his time . . . but he also believed it would ultimately be abolished" (2002, 195). And yet because Mill placed the advent of socialism on the distant horizon, "it is questionable whether he could be properly called a socialist" (196). In fact, "Mill's real objective was to promote the reform of capitalism" (197). Donald Losman shares the notion that Mill's critique of capitalism was merely reformist and required "only minor modifications in the [existing] economic system" (1971, 86). Far from transcending this system, Mill's reforms were aimed at "retaining and re-vitalizing the basic institutional framework of capitalism" (86). "He was, in short, no more a socialist than Professor [Paul] Samuelson," who believed that '"all these evils [of capitalism] can be ameliorated . . . within the framework of the capitalist system'" (104). Similarly, Robert Ekelund and Robert Tollison identify Mill as a modern-day Keynesian and proponent of the welfare state (1976, 214), while Ekelund and Robert Hebert identify Mill as realist who "rejected socialist and romantic proposals for income redistribution as being at odds with the nature of human beings" (1990, 213). As a pioneer in the struggle for a viable form of "distributive justice"--"the distinguishing feature of his social thought"--Mill stands as an illustrious "forerunner of contemporary liberal economic policy" (Ekelund and Tollison 1976, 214).

The authors of full-length studies of Mill's political economy reach similar conclusions. Pedro Schwartz acknowledges that Mill hoped "that a co- operative social organization could be gradually and peacefully substituted for the capitalist system," but he concludes that Mill was not a socialist, "whether Utopian or revolutionary" (1972, 232-33, 191). Samuel Hollander, author of the definitive study of Mill's economics, fundamentally agrees but is even more ingenious at explaining away Mill's alleged inconsistency and ambivalence. For Hollander, vacillations in Mill's economic policy "do not so much reflect changes of substance . . . but rather an altered perspective" (1985, 602). Mill is also said to have varied his teaching on the basis of his audience, "often taking a more extreme position than his mature reflections justified and thereby suggesting far less consistency than actually exists" (683). Accordingly, Hollander reiterates that George Stigler's assertion that Mill's so-called ambivalence "on the comparative merits of private enterprise and various forms of socialism" is "far from a fair evaluation" (684, 685). "On the whole there was little change in Mill's position over time" (808).

As for the charge of socialism itself, Hollander is evasive. If Mill did identify himself as a "socialist," it was largely in a speculative and provisional sense. Socialism per se "would appear not to reflect Mill's general intention" (1985, 885). Hollander does concede that "Mill's ideal for the future . . . entailed transition from the worker-capitalist relationship of 'dependency,' to a system of worker cooperatives," but "[s]ocialism in the modern sense of the term is not in question" (775). (Certainly, Mill rejected top-down, state collectivism, but his model...