Abstract
Following the success of the Logic (Mill 1973 [1843]), Mill turned again to political economy. In 1844, he took advantage of the Logic’s success to arrange the publication of his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy (which had been written in 1829 and 1830) (Mill 1967 [1844]). Shortly thereafter, he began work on a project he had earlier conceived, while at work on the Logic, of writing “a special treatise on political economy, analogous to that of Adam Smith” (quoted in Ashley 1929, xvii; see Note 2, Chap. 8, for explanation of subsequent citations of the Principle). This would become the famous Principles, to be published in 1848. In combination with the Logic, the Principles cemented Mill’s reputation as, arguably, the pre-eminent nineteenth-century thinker who wrote in the English language. As Mitchell puts it, the “Logic and the Principles of Political Economy together gave Mill a position in English life and thought such as no economist had enjoyed before him and such as no economist has enjoyed since his day in any country” (Mitchell 1967, 559) – a verdict that, with the possible exception of John Maynard Keynes, stands today.
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- 1.
Mitchell (1967, 559) accounts for the book’s being written “at a high rate of speed only because Mill all his life had been thinking more or less about the problems with which the subject dealt, and because to him political economy was a pretty well finished product … it was a matter of arranging an ordered exposition of principles which had been formulated by his predecessors”.
- 2.
Thus Mill’s book was the first major appearance of a “Principles” book similar in intent to those we see today – it was, in fact, a kind of textbook, not meant to be a work of great originality and original achievement. In this mission it was spectacularly successful.
- 3.
The work went through seven editions plus a “Peoples’ edition”, the seventh (last) edition coming out in 1871, 2 years before Mill’s death.
- 4.
Mitchell writes of Mill’s dissatisfaction with “the process of vulgarization through which political economy had gone in the generation after Ricardo, a vulgarization which adapted it to all sorts of partisan use, which made political economy in the hands of the well-to-do people a rationalization of their view of the proper treatment of the poor … a process that had made political economy, which professed to be a science, practically a weapon adapted to the uses of class warfare” (Mitchell 1967, 566).
- 5.
Mitchell (1967, 560) takes the contrasting view that Mill’s interest in political economy’s applications to social philosophy can be fully explained by that “keen interest in public welfare characteristic of the utilitarians in general and of Mill in particular”. This view however seems difficult to defend in the face of Ashley’s careful documentation of Mill’s explicit linkage to Comte for his motivation in writing a text emphasizing applications to “social philosophy” (See Ashley 1929, x–xvii).
- 6.
Certainly this is not always so; as, for example, in Mill’s survey of the consequences of the different incentive schemes facing various types of “peasant proprietors” (Book II, Chap. VI), where he masterfully analyzes the different economic consequences ensuing from differing institutional setups.
- 7.
Ashley writes: “Until the present social system should be fundamentally changed, Mill clearly regarded the Ricardian economics as so far applicable to existing conditions as to call for no substantial revision in method or conclusions” (Ashley 1929, xxiii).
- 8.
The Principles and the Autobiography are peppered with examples of Mill’s faith in the development of a Higher Man who will replace mere Economic Man with a new one of altruistic sentiment; for example:
When minds are coarse they require coarse stimuli, and let them have them. In the meantime, those who do not accept the current very early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for being comparatively indifferent to the kind of economical progress which excites the congratulations of ordinary politicians; the mere increase of production and accumulation. (Principles, 749; 754–55)
Or:
The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. …We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. (Autobiography, 239)
Such revelry is not entirely lacking today [2010] in the attitudes powering the behaviours of sundry “democratic” governments. Mill at times reads like a veritable John the Baptist heralding the imminent coming of that eternal Socialistic Saviour – “Higher” Man.
- 9.
Himmelfarb (according to Berns 1975) emphasizes the vast difference between “the Mill of On Liberty” and that “other” Mill “of the Principles of Political Economy, Representative Government (Mill 1973 [1861]), and the famous essay on Coleridge (Mill 1969 [1840]), among other works”. It will be argued below, in contrast to Berns/Himmelfarb, that the “other” Mill is very much in evidence in these latter-mentioned works. Certainly it is true that there were two Mills – one named John and one named Harriet – but more than that it seems difficult to say.
- 10.
Both Say’s Treatise (Say 1983 [1803]) and James Mill’s Elements (James Mill 1844 [1821]) have a Book I on production and a Book II on distribution. Say’s Book III is on Consumption, after which the book ends. James Mill’s Book III is on exchange, and his Book IV is on consumption. Say discusses value at the start of Book II, Mill does so (like his son) at the start of his Book III. Ricardo (2006 [1821]), by contrast, begins his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation with a thorough discussion of his labour theory of value, then moves on to rent, wages, and other distribution topics, then to foreign trade and types of taxes, ending with a mixture of topics including his macroeconomic ones. Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Smith 1937 [1776]) is organized substantially differently from all of the above and it is clear that J. S. Mill’s inspiration from Smith did not extend to his scheme of organization.
- 11.
Or, as Barber (1967, 104) phrases it, the state had an important role to play as a “‘civilizer’ – i.e. as the sponsor of improved educational facilities, as well as such cultural amenities as parks and museums. Elevation in popular tastes and aspirations, especially among members of the working class, was vital to the banishment of the Malthusian devil and to the exercise of human control over the distribution of income”. Mill’s case for public education based on such thinking will be discussed in detail when we reach the discussion of the Principles’ Book V.
- 12.
This section focuses on Mill’s primary orthodox contributions as judged by several leading works on the History of Economic Thought. For readers seeking a good comprehensive summary of the Principles focusing more on “what’s in it”, rather than what is predominately new, see Blaug’s Reader’s Guide to the book in (Blaug 1985).
- 13.
Notably, James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy also begins with production, moves on to distribution and only then comes to exchange. James Mill’s organizational scheme stems from his following goods through production to distribution to exchange and consumption, roughly the temporal order in which things occur in an initial production decision (Elements of Political Economy, 2–4).
- 14.
Schumpeter (1954, 589) writes that “J. S. Mill only clinched prevailing practice when he emphasized that the term Value was, in economic theory, essentially relative and that it meant nothing but the exchange ratio between any two commodities or services”.
- 15.
Regarding supply-and-demand, Schumpeter (1954, 603) states that Mill “went much further than the majority of economists before him – always excepting Cournot – and may be said to have been the first to teach its essentials”. Landreth (1976, 145) concludes that “it can be argued that our general understanding of the workings of supply and demand in allocating resources under competitive markets has not been fundamentally changed since Mill”.
- 16.
“[T]he quantity demanded is not a fixed quantity, even at the same time and place; it varies according to the value; if the thing is cheap, there is usually a demand for more of it than when it is dear” (Principles, 446; 465–66). Sowell (1974, 107) attributes to Malthus the “earliest schedule concept of supply and demand”, while Blaug (1985, 43) finds the gist of a schedule concept even earlier in The Wealth of Nations (Book I, Chap. 7).
- 17.
Mill actually did much of this work in 1829 and 1830 (see his essay on Trade in his Essays on Unsettled Questions in Political Economy) (Mill 1967 [1844]). Mill’s treatment there is arguably clearer than in the Principles.
- 18.
In the original essay in the Unsettled Questions, Mill makes excuses for Ricardo on the grounds that Ricardo, “having a science to create” (page 4), had no time to trifle with second-order issues. Mill thus, in an oft-played role, assigns to himself the middling task of mopping up after Ricardo. In fact, as is usually the case while playing this humble role, Mill advances the state of understanding considerably of the topic at hand. Perhaps Mill’s relative assessment of his contribution to the topic improved with time, for there is no hint of this self-effacing attitude in his discussion of it in the Principles.
- 19.
Mill is aware of the possible inroads opened by his analysis for government-led manipulation of the terms of trade with other nations. He discusses the matter in Book V, Chapter 4 of the Principles.
- 20.
Mill however does not display a complete command of the public-goods concept, particularly as regards to its breadth. He treats the public good issue (discussed in Section 15) as separate from the incomplete coordination issue known today as the “who goes first” problem (discussed in Section 12). Modern public finance theory sees them as two varieties of the same prisoners’ dilemma problem (cf. Buchanan 1967).
- 21.
Interestingly, nowhere in this discussion does Mill state that it is capitalist institutions that have played a main role in creating this bounty, but this may be induced from other passages in the volume (e.g. Book I, Chap. 13, 189–90), and the “Peasant Proprietors” chapters explicitly linking favourable incentives to productive activity (Book II, Chaps. 6–9).
- 22.
Mill is not one for “trickle-down” theories: He speaks of how great progress can co-exist with a considerable underclass that gains little from progress at the higher income levels. “We must, therefore”, he says, “in considering the effects of the progress of industry, admit as a supposition, however greatly we deprecate as a fact, an increase of population as long-continued, as indefinite, and possibly even as rapid, as the increase of production and accumulation” (Principles, 699; 709). Arguably, this passage should be interpreted as Mill denying that he believes in the Malthusian assumption he still feels compelled to make, but is coming to disbelieve. It would be interesting to see him explicitly step out of the Malthusian box and contemplate the consequences, but, at least in the analysis of Book IV, he never does, except – as usual – to propose ways of lowering birth rates.
- 23.
“As, in a case of voluntary subscription for a purpose in which all are interested, all are thought to have done their part fairly when each has contributed according to his means, that is, has made an equal sacrifice for the common object; in like manner should this be the principle of compulsory contributions…” (Principles, 805; 808).
- 24.
“On the Influence of Consumption on Production”, in his Essays in Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy (Mill 1967 [1844]).
- 25.
Hume had earlier perceived that periods of money inflow corresponded to periods where “industry has encreased” (1970 [1752], 37) and vice versa (op. cit., 40). Moreover, Hume had seen that “there is always an interval before matters be adjusted to their new situation…” (ibid ). But he had dealt only with cases of change in money supply, and Hume’s essay aggressively denies that money is anything but a medium-of-exchange and a unit-of-account.
- 26.
There are some exceptions. For example, Ricardo (2006 [1821], Chap. 21, 205–6) traces out the bare bones of a money-driven cycle based on confusion of real and nominal effects. But Ricardo discusses these within the context of a single representative merchant, and does not go on to draw out any economy-wide implications from these insights. Moreover, he places no special emphasis on these passages – they are merely ruminations in the midst of other loosely related ruminations.
- 27.
Mill has no patience with the “we owe it to ourselves” principle which is often advanced when discussing public borrowing of purely domestic funds. His simple retort is that the “transfer, however, being compulsory, is a serious evil” (Principles, 876; 876).
- 28.
Mill catalogues forces that might somewhat ameliorate the minimum-profits principle. One of his more interesting counter-forces in the light of recent world events [2008–2009] is “the waste of capital in periods of over-trading and rash speculation, and in the commercial revulsions by which such times are always followed” [Principles, 734; 741]. Others are technological improvements, international trade, and “the perpetual overflow of capital into colonies or foreign countries…” (op. cit., 735–9; 742–5). A few pages further on, Mill remarks casually that “[t]he railway gambling of 1844 and 1845 probably saved this country from a depression of profits and interest…” (op. cit., 743; 750).
- 29.
Mill offers little argument for why it might be that technological improvement cannot be fast enough to stave off the arrival of the minimum-profit, stationary state. Instead, the proposition is presented as, more or less, an article of faith (no doubt he was encouraged in this approach by the broad consensus among classical thinkers that there was a real, inevitable such state in the economy’s future).
- 30.
That Mill himself is quite aware of this historical tendency is made clear in the very next chapter, where he writes, in answer to those, like Carlyle, who would see the higher classes “protect and guide” (that is, control) the lower classes. Mill writes: “All privileged and powerful classes, as such, have used their power in the interest of their own selfishness, and have indulged their self-importance in despising, and not in lovingly caring for, those who were, in their estimation, degraded, by being under the necessity of working for their benefit” (Principles, 754; 759).
- 31.
An even more emphatic passage occurs early in Book V when Mill debunks the idea that the main function of the law is to protect the producer’s private property rights to what he has produced. Mill demurs, citing public environmental goods: “But is there nothing recognized as property except what has been produced? Is there not the earth itself, its forests and waters, and all other natural riches, above and below the surface? These are the inheritance of the human race, and there must be relations for the common enjoyment of it. What rights, and under what conditions, a person shall be allowed to exercise over any portion of this common inheritance cannot be left undecided” (Principles, 797; 801). A more succinct statement of the socialist premises of the modern environmental movement could hardly be found anywhere.
- 32.
There is, however, another intriguing possible explanation. If these were passages written not by Mill but by his wife, then Mill for personal reasons would have been extremely reluctant to remove, or even alter, the words of his “almost infallible counsellor” (Autobiography, 261).
- 33.
He wrote in the Autobiography: “The chapter of the Political Economy which has had a greater influence on opinion than all the rest, that on ‘the Probable Future of the Labouring Classes’…”
- 34.
Some appreciation of the Mills’ enthusiasm for the cooperative model can be gleaned from the following: “…[T]he relation of masters and workpeople will be gradually superseded by partnership, in one of two forms: in some cases, association of the labourers with the capitalist; in others, and perhaps finally in all, association of labourers among themselves” (Principles, 764; 769 [emphasis added]).
- 35.
Mill is aware of the difficulty of separating this automatic component of rent with the rest of it which may well be connected to the “skill and expenditures on the part of the proprietor” (Principles, ibid; 820). He proposes that a “rough estimate” of the gain can be gleaned by the gain in value over a specified time period of “all the land in the country” (Principles, ibid; ibid ).
- 36.
He writes of the exceptional cases, like that of the favourite situations in large towns, “[where] the predominant element in the rent of the house is the ground-rent, and among the very few kinds of income which are fit subjects for peculiar taxation, these ground-rents hold the principal place, being the most gigantic example extant of enormous accessions of riches acquired rapidly, and in many cases unexpectedly, by a few families, from the mere accident of their possessing certain tracts of land, without their having themselves aided in the acquisition by the smallest exertion, outlay, or risk” (op. cit. 834; 835). Earlier, in Book IV, Chap. 2, Mill had written a passionate defence of the role played by speculators in society. Apparently, Mill would exclude land speculation from his earlier endorsement of speculation in general.
- 37.
In an 1829 letter to Gustave D’Eichthal, Mill also states this expansive definition of government, writing: “Government exists for all purposes whatever that are for man’s good: and the highest & most important of these purposes is the improvement of man himself as a moral and intelligent being…” Letter of October 8th, 1829 (Mill 1963 [Vol. XII], 34–8 [Letter 27]). This shows that an expansive view of government coloured his perspective from his early years.
- 38.
See Rawls (1999 [1971]). The appearance here of Rawls is ironic, since Rawls was a strong opponent of utilitarianism in the sense Mill defined the term. See, for example, “John Rawls”, in the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/rawls.html.
- 39.
“The first element of good government, therefore, being the virtue and intelligence of the human beings composing the community, the most important point of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the virtue and intelligence of the people themselves” (Mill 1973 [1861], 390). After raising this point, Mill turns immediately to the “machinery” of good government, which consists, not in explicit restrictions on government power, but rather in there being clear rules of appointment and succession, etc. to which government is subject (op. cit., 391–2). Later, great attention is given to Thomas Hare’s voting scheme, which Hare (and Mill) believed would create a high “degree of perfection in representation” (op. cit., 453 ff ). An emphasis on a new vote-weighting system is consistent with the views of one who thinks the main problem is getting the “right people” into office, rather than setting up constraints that would constrain the wrong people should they somehow get in. Earlier, Mill himself suggested his own scheme in Thoughts of Parliamentary Reform (Mill 1977a, b [1859]) where he proposed special voting rules that would give extra weight to the votes of those “more qualified” (in practice, those with more formal education) to judge on political matters.
- 40.
“It is one thing to provide schools or colleges, and another to require that no person shall act as an instructor of youth without a government licence. There might be a national bank, or a government manufactory, without any monopoly against private banks and manufactories. There might be a post-office, without penalties against the conveyance of letters by other means. …There may be public hospitals, without any restriction on private medical or surgical practice” (Principles, 942; 937).
- 41.
In fact, Mill seems to have been an early supporter of what is today the Civil Service. He emphasized:
the distinction between the function of making laws, for which a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good laws made … and the consequent need of a Legislative Commission, as a permanent part of the constitution of a free country; consisting of a small number of highly trained political minds, on whom … the task of making [a law] should be devolved: Parliament retaining the power of passing or rejecting the bill when drawn up, but not of altering it otherwise than by sending proposed amendments to be dealt with by the Commission (Autobiography, 265).
Despite the fig leaf of a legislature able to finally accept or reject a bill, it is still just to say that if this does not describe a system of rule by “wise, enlightened, experts”, then it is difficult to imagine what does.
- 42.
Surely here we also find one of the points of origin of the myth of the soulless, out-of-control corporate power, answering to no one but itself and its almighty god, Profit.
- 43.
Mill is not necessarily advocating the idea of lowering labour’s work-day – though he is clearly sympathetic. He is merely using the case to illustrate the coordination problem and the argument for a government role that emerges from that problem.
- 44.
The reader should first notice in this argument what Mill does not: that the difficulty with supplying public goods is similar in nature to that of the “who goes first” problem. In both cases, the problem is that many people benefiting from such a good stand aside and wait for others to come forward and voluntarily fund the good. Thus, sufficient funds to finance the good cannot be accumulated since many of those who benefit will enjoy the good for free, paradoxically leading to the good not being supplied at all privately. The workers trying to organize for a lower work-week in the “who goes first” problem face precisely the same difficulty as the citizens trying to organize to privately supply a public good. Coordination difficulties are at the heart of the issues impeding the supply of collective goods in general.
- 45.
Some concluding thoughts about the last section of Mill’s closing Principles chapter are provided in Section “Mill’s Legacy” below.
- 46.
The statement can be found in Mill (1984 [1851]), 97–100.
- 47.
This was, interestingly, too much even for Britton, who, writing at mid-twentieth century, could not resist recording his disapproval: “Mill held that a philosophy is to be judged by its conception of human nature: and it is somewhat disconcerting to find that his own conception suffered from this eccentric limitation” (Britton 1953, 37–8).
- 48.
Mill’s wife was too ill to accompany him on such a long and arduous trip.
- 49.
Schumpeter suggests that Mill’s preliminary fragments on socialism are “perhaps more misleading than helpful”, since the work’s critiques were merely “exploratory sketches”, and since, doubtless, the book would have included “a positive complement that might have reversed the impression the reader of these sketches is likely to get” (Schumpeter 1954, 532).
- 50.
Of course, he also wrote a number of articles on economic topics.
- 51.
By contrast, says Mitchell, Mill’s “remarks on monopoly are of an exceedingly vague, and, from the modern viewpoint, unsatisfactory character” (Mitchell 1967, 581).
- 52.
Revolutionary socialists despised Mill. Mill’s arguments, says Schumpeter, “were gall and wormwood not only to Marxists but to all socialists who base their argument on the thesis of inevitably increasing misery and for whom the revolution is an essential article of faith” (Schumpeter 1954, 532).
- 53.
There is, however, an important difference between Mill’s vision and that of his twentieth- (and twenty-first) century admirers on the Left. Mill thought that Malthusian forces and the inevitable stationary state closed off the possibility of market economies expanding indefinitely to ever-greater wealth and material success. He did not imagine market societies a century-and-a-half after his death in which, in very many respects, people really did not have material worries in the sense that they had them a century earlier. His admirers today, still lauding his socialist stance, have watched precisely such an explosion of material well-being occur wherever capitalist institutions have been given even moderately free reign. Is it the distribution of wealth, or the average standard of living, that matters in the end? If the latter, then history gives a poor grade to those who would seek some version of Mill’s democratic socialism in the early twenty-first century.
- 54.
The framers had no defence against the willful misinterpretation of their words by activist scholars and judges who saw those words (correctly) as bulwarks against the type of society they preferred.
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Montgomery, M.R. (2012). John Stuart Mill’s Road to Leviathan II: The Principles of Political Economy. In: Backhaus, J. (eds) Handbook of the History of Economic Thought. The European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences, vol 11. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8336-7_9
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