More Ass-Whupping From J.S. Mill

Here's another one of those paragraphs by Mill that can't be excerpted, only reproduced in full:

I have already observed that, owing to the absence of any recognized general principles, liberty is often granted where it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted; and one of the cases in which, in the modern European world, the sentiment of liberty is the strongest is a case where, in my view, it is altogether misplaced. A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns, but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty of each in what specifically regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over others. This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the family relations—a case, in its direct influence on human happiness, more important than all others taken together. The almost despotic power of husbands over wives needs not be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil than that wives should have the same rights and should receive the protection of law in the same manner as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty but stand forth openly as the champions of power. It is in the case of children that misapplied notions of liberty are a real obstacle to the fulfillment by the State of its duties. One would almost think that a man's children were supposed to be literally, and not metaphorically, part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the smallest interference of law with his absolute an exclusive control over them, more jealous than of almost any interference with his own freedom of action: so much less do the generality of mankind value liberty than power.

Boom! I don't really have anything to add, other than that this dude was awesome. I particularly appreciate how, in a section primarily devoted to the defense of children's rights (though the vehicle of the state's protection of those children from abuse and/or neglect by their fathers), he just throws in a little sentence containing one of the major, major policy planks of modern feminism, in an essentially unadulterated form.

John Stuart Mill Demolishes Libertarianism

John Stuart Mill, whose work I praised in my last post, is most famous for his book On Liberty, a spirited defense of the proposition that people not be coerced, either by legislation or by social pressure, in matters concerning only or primarily themselves. You might think that, if anyone would be included within the bounds of a word such as "libertarian," it would be the dude who wrote a book called On Liberty. Nope. Not by the modern sense of that word, anyway. This paragraph is so good it needs to be reproduced in block form:

Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of goods to the public does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society; accordingly, it was once held to be the duty of governments, in all cases which were considered of importance, to fix prices and regulate the processes of manufacture. But it is now recognized, though not till after a long struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine of "free trade," which rests on different grounds from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted in this essay. Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, qua restraint, is an evil; but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of free trade [my emphasis], so neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits of that doctrine... Such questions involve considerations of liberty only in so far as leaving people to themselves is always better, caeteris paribus, than controlling them; but that they may be legitimately controlled for these ends is in practice undeniable."

As the principle of liberty is not involved in the doctrine of free trade. Yeah. Chew that one over, modern American libertarians. This is why one can be a liberal, which I think in its modern sense is first and foremost about devotion to pretty much Mill's exact ideas about individual liberty, without being a libertarian: those ideas simply don't tell us anything about the proper scope of economic regulation. Economic activity by one person, basically by definition, affects more than just that one person, and is therefore amenable to regulation where appropriate. It is an empirical question when such regulation will be appropriate, not one that can be settled by reference to grand philosophical first principles.

Earlier in the book, by the way, Mill also says that each individual is responsible to society for doing their share of the work of maintaining/defending society, a share which must be determined by some principle of equity. In modern society we choose the "progressive income tax" as the primary principle of equity, and it seems to me to be entirely within the scope of Mill's ideas of liberty. There really isn't much in this work that's inconsistent with anything in the modern American-liberal platform, and it's the definitive statement of the modern ideal of individual liberty.

John Stuart Mill Was Awesome

I have now moved on from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Approximately one-sixth of the way through the book, I've already encountered the following three seriously awesome lines. The first, on the tendencies of people who find themselves in conflict with dominant social norms in some particular:

"They preferred endeavoring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points on which they were themselves heretical rather than make common cause in defense of freedom with heretics generally."

The second, rather self-explanatory:

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it."

The third, of a majority seeking to suppress a minority opinion with which it disagrees:

"To refuse a hearing to an opinion because they are sure that it is false is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty."

The first is an incredibly astute observation and might be one of the first explicit avowals of a pro-hersey agenda. It also, I think, is less true now than when he wrote it in 1859: over the past century and a half, the cause of letting heretics be heretics in all walks of life has made tremendous progress. I'm not sure that Mill and his mentor, Jeremy Bentham, were the first major pro-fun philosophers, but they were certainly in the vanguard of the "let's have fun!" agenda that has revolutionized human society. The second is basically the foundation of modern (secular) moral philosophy, and its acceptance is wholly necessary for the flourishing of that pro-fun agenda. The third is an essentially complete statement of one of the many, many sufficient reasons for protecting freedom of speech. This guy knew what he was talking about. He and Bentham both are just such so refreshingly right about stuff compared to most of their contemporaries and predecessors.