The book's content draws upon lectures from the John Stuart Mill Bicentennial Conference on Mill's thought that took place in London in 2006 and includes articles by some of the most well-known and respected researchers of his philosophy. Most articles in the book focus on Mill's legacy and on the contemporary character of his philosophy and its relevance today. Various aspects of his theory are analysed, such as his philosophical anthropology, his logic, and his moral and political philosophy. Regardless of any possible reservations about the content or disagreements one might have, one cannot but welcome such a truly valuable effort that undoubtedly enriches the literature on this classical liberal thinker.
Since it is impossible to comment on all the articles, my review will focus on those lectures that struck my attention for specific reasons. I believe that the most valuable contribution of Mill's philosophy, his treatment of ‘the social question’, is unfortunately the least developed and discussed. Mill was one of the few political thinkers who seriously tackled the burning political issues of his era, such as class inequalities, poverty, the calls for socialism and communism, and the connection between political economy and social theory. Unlike most twentieth-century liberal philosophers, he did not avoid attempting to understand the logic of the capitalist mode of production. The fact that this is largely ignored by the volume's contributors has significant repercussions for the positions that they take on the issues analysed.
For instance, Terence Ball's chapter on Mill's views on character formation is wanting on this score. Ball does not stress Mill's engagement with the logic of capitalist production including his belief that those at the upper levels of the capitalist market are generally more intelligent and cultivated than those who have humble jobs and belong to the lower levels (John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, Collected Works, vol. 19 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 475). Is Mill, then, advocating a free society, as Ball claims (p. 52)? Are not the opportunities for wage labourers to educate themselves severely constrained by the fact that even if all the changes advocated by Mill were to take place, they would still be obliged to sell their labour power to capitalists and thus remain the ‘ghost of capital’, as Marx would say? There is a strong connection between Mill's philosophical anthropology and capitalist values, but it remains unexplored in Ball's contribution.
Mill's engagement with the capitalist system, demonstrated by his rejection of anti-property doctrines (John Stuart Mill, French News, Collected Works, vol. 23 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), p. 671), unfortunately does not lead Donald Winch to question ‘Mill's “green” credentials’ (p. 57). Winch is certainly correct in saying that Mill was in favour of parliamentary regulation of private companies (p. 62) and opposed to infinite capitalist accumulation (p. 60). However, he ignores the question whether it is possible for privately owned companies functioning within a capitalist framework, that is, within a fiercely antagonistic framework that Mill did not oppose, to respect ‘wild natural beauty’, to use the writer's own words.
In his very interesting essay, Jonathan Riley aims to show that for Mill the pleasure of security associated with the moral sentiment of justice is the highest pleasure (p. 100). According to Riley, Mill ‘assumes that an optimal code of equal rights is properly determined by the majority verdict of people who are competent to assess the means of providing security’ (p. 116). I have no reason to doubt Riley's claim that security is the highest pleasure, but it should be borne in mind that, for Mill, those who possess the aforementioned competence are those who have reached the highest levels in the market, namely the bourgeoisie.
In Mill's political theory, ‘political improvement’ and ‘success in the future’ require one to belong to the manufacturing and commercial classes who ‘have made their own position and their own fortunes’ (John Stuart Mill, Political Progress, Collected Works, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), pp. 127–8). Mill's adoption of values supporting the capitalist mode of production is also evident when he explicitly attributes possessing property to the development of character. One passage in which this is plainly evident is in one of his essays on Ireland where he writes: ‘Property in the soil has a sort of magic power of engendering industry, perseverance and forethought’ (John Stuart Mill, The Condition of Ireland, Collected Works, vol. 24 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), p. 898).
Martha Nussbaum's essay, ‘Mill's Feminism’, although stressing the radical character of Mill's views on feminism, criticizes him for not developing his argument further, for not ‘imagining radical alternatives to dominant social norms in the areas of social division of labor, sexuality and the shape of the family’ (p. 131), and for not proposing ‘alternative lifestyles’ or ‘experiments of living’ with regard to the hierarchy of the sexes (p. 143). Although she rightly identifies Mill's failure to offer more precise proposals, she does not explain the existence of this failure. I believe instead that Nussbaum's argument should be pushed further in that it can be argued that the main characteristics of Mill's philosophy of history reappear in his arguments on women. He does not propose sudden institutional changes because he does not believe that human nature can be improved significantly in the near future and because he maintains that people's ideas must change first, and only then can practical changes follow. Likewise, Mill does not propose a rapid transformation of the sexual division of labour. Nussbaum undervalues the fact that Mill's feminism was fettered, to a large extent, by the intellectual, social and economic milieu of his time. Thus, Mill's support of the ‘desirable custom, that the wife should contribute . . . to the income of the family’ (John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, Collected Works, vol. 21 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), p. 298) seems feasible only for upper-class women who are not compelled to work because they have inherited respectable sums of money. Mill therefore constructs a model for the proper functioning of the family that can be followed only by those who have property, namely a tiny minority of Victorian society.
The book concludes with Peter Singer's article on ‘Mill's Relevance Today’. Singer's argument only focuses on the up-to-date relevance of Mill's utilitarian ethical philosophy, leaving Mill's whole analysis of the ‘social question’ to one side. Singer restricts his analysis to the issues that connect his work to Mill's. Of course, Singer need not reference every major issue that Mill addressed, but one nevertheless wishes that he had discussed the social-democratic character of Mill's political theory, which also remains truly valuable and relevant for us today.
Summing up, Mill's most valuable ideas provide strong philosophical foundations for the welfare state and social-democratic policies that today are considered by many to be too radical. The fact that he had very good knowledge of the social disintegration that results from the capitalist mode of production has unfortunately not persuaded liberal thinkers who have followed him to try to identify the logic of the capitalist mode of production and the values that support this system, nor has it led Mill's commentators to focus on his ideas on the issues that comprise the ‘social question’.
