Abstract
This chapter reconstructs and provides an overview of John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) ideas about self-interest, putting a special emphasis on what he called a political economy and on his Principles of Political Economy. Firstly, Mill explicitly threw light on the assumption of political economy. In his opinion, it presupposed that human beings always tried to obtain the greatest amount of wealth with as small a quantity of labor and abstinence as possible. Secondly, it was the desire for wealth rather than self-interest that Mill explicitly focused on when he defined political economy, although it was likely that Mill, in the Principles, mainly addressed people who endeavored to acquire wealth only for themselves. Thirdly, such selfish people did not reflect Mill’s ideal and the third and subsequent editions of the Principles regarded the association of laborers among themselves as one of the means of cultivating those people’s minds and provoking their public spirit in the future. Fourthly, in all the editions of the Principles, Mill, for the time being, endeavored to design political institutions which would reconcile the self-interested actions of individuals to the public benefit. This short-term and practical aspect of the Principles, though omitted in one of the abridged editions of it (i.e. Mill and Laughlin [1884] 1893), constituted Mill’s art of government founded on his political economy.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Mill’s article of 1861 and the first edition of the Utilitarianism said “you,” “your” and “yourself” instead of “one,” “one’s” and “oneself.”
- 3.
Focusing on the Principles, Sugihara (1985; 2003, 311–335) and Mawatari (1997a, 401–402, 408, 415) regard Mill’s views on infant industry protection and on colonization as his attempts to maximize the amount of good to mankind.
- 4.
In this context, Mill referred to the merit of military training which every citizen received in antiquity (Mill [1865] 1969, 339; cf. Mill [1848] 1965, 102–103). For Mill’s views on military training, see also Mill ([1871] 1988) and Varouxakis (2013a, 135–136; 2013b, 151–153, 164–171, 182–183).
- 5.
Mill generally called what is now called economics political economy. In the Principles, however, he used the word “pure economics” just once (Mill [1848] 1965, 327).
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After pointing out this definition, Mill continued: “[…] the didactic writer on the subject will naturally combine in his exposition, with the truths of the pure science, as many of the practical modifications as will, in his estimation, be most conducive to the usefulness of his work” (Mill [1844] 1967, 323). It is, therefore, reasonable that Mill’s Principles included not only the truths of political economy as a pure science but also their practical modifications. In fact, Mill, in his Autobiography, remarked that Principles “was not a book merely of abstract science, but also of application” (Mill [1873] 1981, 243).
- 7.
Mill also used the word “the art of government” in his On Liberty (Mill [1859] 1977, 308–309) and Considerations on Representative Government (Mill [1861a] 1977, 393). With regard to the word “practical politics,” Mill argued in the Logic: “The aim of practical politics is to surround any given society with the greatest possible number of circumstances of which the tendencies are beneficial, and to remove or counteract, as far as practicable, those of which the tendencies are injurious” (Mill [1843] 1974, 898).
- 8.
The fifth and previous editions of the Principles said “desire” instead of “power.”
- 9.
In his Autobiography, Mill also remarked: “The deep rooted selfishness […] forms the general character of the existing state of society” (Mill [1873] 1981, 241).
- 10.
According to the Principles, “the Communistic doctrine […] forms the extreme limit of Socialism; according to which not only the instruments of production […] are the joint property of the community, but the produce is divided and the labour apportioned, as far as possible, equally” (Mill [1848] 1965, 210). For further details of Mill’s views on Communism, see the third and subsequent editions of the Principles (ibid., xciii, 199–209).
- 11.
This passage is quoted at the beginning of one of the present famous textbooks on modern economics (i.e. Mankiw [1991] 2019, vii).
- 12.
In the Considerations, Mill suggested that England had “completely outgrown” “mutual exclusion by hostile tariffs” (Mill [1861a] 1977, 565). According to the Autobiography, “the last vestiges” of the protective system “were […] swept away by Mr. Gladstone in 1860” (Mill [1873] 1981, 103). This fiscal reform by Gladstone was reflected in the fifth and subsequent editions of the Principles (Mill [1848] 1965, 871–872).
- 13.
The first and second editions of the Principles said “select” instead of “demand.”
- 14.
As for the case of colonization, “the unparalleled amount of spontaneous emigration from Ireland” was reflected in the third and subsequent editions of the Principles (Mill [1848] 1965, 967; cf. ibid., 194–195, 376–379, 865–866). On this point, see Hollander (1985, 753–758).
- 15.
According to Laughlin, Mill’s Principles “yet remains the best systematic treatise in the English language” (Mill and Laughlin [1884] 1893, 23).
- 16.
Related to the word “Sociology,” Mill remarked in the Logic: “The Social Science, […] by a convenient barbarism, has been termed Sociology” (Mill [1843] 1974, 895).
- 17.
The word “perhaps” was added in the fifth edition of the Principles.
- 18.
On the relationship between the association and the increase in the economical productiveness, see also the first book of the Principles (Mill [1848] 1965, 183–184).
- 19.
Related to this point, it may be worth mentioning that Mill, in the Logic, quoted from his article entitled “Miss Martineau’s Summary of Political Economy” (1834): “[…] it has been a very common error of political economists to draw conclusions from the elements of one state of society, and apply them to other states in which many of the elements are not the same” (Mill [1843] 1974, 903–904; quoted from Mill [1834] 1967, 225–226). As for this article, Dome (2004, 173), for example, commences the chapter on Mill by quoting from it.
- 20.
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Ozawa, Y. (2021). John Stuart Mill on Self-interest: Focusing on His Political Economy and the Principles. In: Egashira, S., Taishido, M., Hands, D.W., Mäki, U. (eds) A Genealogy of Self-Interest in Economics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9395-6_6
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