The all-too-common tinkling of broken glass, the blares of sirens, the oppressive smell of tear gas, and the thumps of police truncheons, followed by the inevitable Twitter-storms, remind us that the popular mood in the contemporary democratic world is not a little disenchanted. This disenchantment has thrown into stark relief the easy assumptions that have driven much public policy in the post-Soviet period. Where many political leaders had simply assumed that the fall of the Berlin Wall would usher in a new age of peace and plenty, many citizens have found that their expectations, instead, have been dashed by stagnant wages and grinding poverty. Moreover, those who have fled oppression and poverty, who risked their lives only to wash up on strange shores, have discovered that the promises were ever empty. Where once liberal democracy made easy advances in a world replete with the empty shells of autocracy, autocracy is back in vogue, and not merely among a few well-placed technocrats.

Professor Chris Barker's timely book reminds us of the central role that education plays in establishing a free and democratic world. As he states in the ‘Acknowledgments’,

Barker argues that ‘Mill wants above all to educate society. But through the experience of reading and debating with less moderate authors, he learns that education is a power, and that educative power cannot be permitted to direct society at the expense of individual agency’ (p. 1). Mill's goal is ‘[e]ducating without imposing first principles’, and without relying on tradition, although he notes that Mill does concede that every society needs an agreed upon core set of political norms (ibid.). This education must be consistent with respect for the individual. The purpose of education is to enhance the individual's mental independence. Diversity is crucial for society, but this diversity must be based on individual awareness and capacities, and not on domination, for example of men over women, and owners/employers over workers and of majorities over minorities (pp. 1–15).

Barker focuses his study on the five key topics of Millian political thought: gender, class, technocracy, politics, and religion. Central to his argument are Mill's On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy and the lesser-known Lectures on Socialism and the Three Lectures on Religion, with many references to his System of Logic and Autobiography. Mill's intellectual debt to his father, James, and Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism is acknowledged and considered, yet Barker highlights Mill's distinctive contributions both to utilitarianism, narrowly understood, and to liberalism more broadly. Mill's very human break with a dogmatically instilled set of ideas and the emergence of a more dialectical, more open-ended worldview is emphasized, as are the changes wrought to his thinking through his friendship with and later marriage to Harriet Taylor. Her salient contributions to Mill's thought are also highlighted.

In the first chapter, Barker argues that, for Mill, the manifold disabilities attached to the female gender, both within and outside marriage, are examples of unearned power. Ultimately, they undermine the freedom not just of women, but also in the long run of men. Barker notes that British liberalism historically has not considered very deeply gender relations, and that British jurisprudence, most notably in the works of Blackstone, sought to protect women by subordinating them to men, with the result that women's freedom was radically compromised. He observes that the issue of gender equality arose prominently in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, and that Mill's prominent public advocacy of women's rights made him the founder of the first wave of feminism.

Barker outlines Mill's advocacy for legal reforms to the institution of marriage. These would transform it from one based on ‘coverture’ in which the husband assumed the rights and responsibilities, and hence the power, on behalf of the wife to one of enlightened friendship, or ‘companionate’ marriage, in which power, rights and responsibilities are shared as agreed between husband and wife. Reproduced by Barker are some of the reported horrific tragedies of marriages that failed to live up to any reasonable measure of decency or fairness, and which Mill and Harriet Taylor exposed to encourage reform. Mill believed that companionate marriage was the ideal form of marriage and that the redressing of power imbalance meant educated self-restraint. Friendship was the basis of the marriage relationship and the state was to have little if any influence within the household (pp. 16–49).

In the second chapter, Barker considers Mill's ideas concerning relations between workers and business owners and managers, the reforms of which he believed would reinforce the reforms envisaged in gender relations. Once again, the issue concerns the removal of unearned power imbalances. For Barker, Mill was primarily a social and political thinker, and secondarily an economist. Mill's focus was the intellectual and moral development of the working class, as well as the improvement in the mores of the owners and managers. Barker observes that Mill's political economic ideas do not fall strictly within any of the standard economic doctrines, then or now. Mill, he argues, envisaged a future in which workers and owners/managers cooperated on the central tasks of production. The development of the individual's liberal character and capacity for freedom in the sphere of production rather than pure material growth was the point of economic activity (pp. 50–82).

In the third chapter, Barker considers the role of the intelligentsia and technocrats in Mill's thought, or as he clumsily describes them, the ‘expertocracy’. Since Barker's book is about ‘educating liberty’, there is clearly no surprise that intellectuals should play a crucial role in reforming society, yet Barker notes Mill's abiding concern that these educative opportunities will allow those who wish to accumulate undeserved power to do so. This question is one of the perennial questions of political thought, and according to Barker, Mill is as confident as his predecessors were about the potential role of the intelligentsia, although he is more willing to concede the potential for abuse.

Barker observes Mill's break with Bentham's belief in the omnicompetence of the single legislator; in contrast, he notes that Mill advocated an informed consideration among his legislators of the issues before them. Enlightened despotism and superintendence has its place among barbarians and children, though nowhere else. Mill remained committed to the arts and sciences and believed that they had an important role in human liberty, yet he remained unconvinced by scientific utopianism. At the heart of sound education for Mill was the combination of the Socratic dialectic and logic; knowledge should flow upward and downward (pp. 83–115).

In chapter 4, Barker guides the reader through the intricacies of Mill's political thought, that is, his theory of representative government. He observes at various points that some of Mill's ideas sound rather unusual to the contemporary ear.

Nevertheless, Barker places his political thought in the context of his utilitarian predecessors’ debates, as well as the ideas put forward by Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America. The popular tide was raising the democratic standard while lowering the aristocratic one. Yet Mill was concerned about the consequences of an uninformed majority taking power.

Barker argues that:

This political system, Barker believes, will comprise a bridge between his project to educate public opinion and his reformist aspirations concerning the family, the workplace and science.

Barker observes that while Mill's political thought does not fit easily within the liberal/conservative framework, Mill himself believed that conservative opinion was an integral part of the democratic process. He notes Mill's occasional derogatory scorn toward conservatives, yet he believes that Mill's rejection of absolute equality and the secret ballot points to his own conservatism.

In the light of the many and varied topics that Mill discusses, often in some detail, in the Considerations, Barker restricts his discussion to seven topics, four of which relate to popular participation and three to institutional design, concerning the education of character. The first four topics relate to: (1) Thomas Hare's proposal for transferable votes, a mechanism to improve the representation of minorities; (2) plural voting, in which all adults have at least one vote, but where voters who are more informed have additional votes; (3) the replacement of the secret ballot with public voting; and (4) the rejection of pledges that may prevent representatives from making informed decisions. The last three topics include: (5) a Commission of Codification whose role is to give legislation professional form; (6) the indirect election of presidents with a view to encouraging distinguished rather than popular leadership; and (7) a legislature that is either unicameral, or a mediating bicameral legislature, or a legislative body created by the devolution to the local level of some decision-making. In Barker's opinion, Mill's conception of representative democracy resolves the problems of majority control while allowing minorities, especially an elite cadre of intellectuals, to guide policy and to educate the masses. He observes that contemporary democracies such as the United States have not been too concerned about not electing intellectuals to public office (pp. 116–54).

In relation to religion, Barker argues in the fifth chapter that Mill's posthumously published Three Essays on Religion envisage a role for Christianity as a civic religion in his liberal society. He observes that Mill's ideas concerning the role of religion have been controversial, both when they were published and in more contemporary times, when Christianity's role in society has been radically challenged. For Mill, religion continued to have an important role in the education of the individual and in educating liberty. Teaching utilitarianism as a religion, however, might have direct benefits, yet it runs the risks of creating dependency and of ‘principling’ (pp. 193–202).

Barker in his conclusion makes a number of interesting points in relation to Mill's conception of the role of education in his theory of liberty. Rather than interpreting Mill's theory as a closed theoretical system, he has chosen to examine his writings as a body of coherent reflections on some key topics of modern political thought. Mill's limitations as a theorist are acknowledged and no attempt is made to justify policy suggestions that are clearly erroneous or superseded. For Barker, there is no doubt that ‘Mill's theory of liberalism depends on education. Without education, the mind is merely left to unanswerable questions’ (p. 193). As important as scientists and the clergy are, participatory politics and small-scale association remain salient. The goal of education is ‘Restraining and retraining, not complete transformation’ (p. 194).

Barker notes that Mill's analysis moves between the sphere of principles and the sphere of practical affairs. He observes that ‘This book has presented Mill as a questioner in the spirit of Plato, a social scientist in the frame of Aristotle, Bacon, Bentham and Comte and a moderate in the spirit of Aristotle’ (p. 198). On the other hand, Barker believes that Mill ‘evades’ the question of the aim and scope of a moderate liberal democratic government, though he does observe that ‘Mill's liberalism is clearly not laissez-faire liberal individualism’ (p. 199). Barker cites from Mill's Principles of Political Economy a comprehensive conception of liberalism, that

For Barker, moderation in the application of principles to situations and respect for the individual's mental independence and the public's reasoning ability are most important in Mill's defense against majority tyranny.

Professor Barker's study of Mill's notion of educated liberty is comprehensive and well argued. He addresses many of the enduring criticisms of Mill's thought, acknowledging some of Mill's inconsistencies, errors and lacunae, while highlighting points of contemporary relevance. That there is a correlation between forms of education and regime type is a truism. Mill and his followers argue for a democratic form of education that enhances individual freedom. Barker's study illuminates those specific areas of society whose reform through education Mill believes will contribute most to individual freedom. Reforms through education concerning gender relations and relations of production, as well as the institutional protection of minority opinion, are central to Mill's political thought, yet Barker recognizes the shortcomings of some of Mill's arguments, such as his advocacy of plural voting.

The recent reprise of interest in material inequality by researchers such as Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-first Century (2014) has raised questions concerning the substance of the norms of political freedom and equality enshrined in the constitutions and political cultures of the advanced liberal democracies. Professors and pundits across the political spectrum point to the deleterious consequences for political institutions, no less than political freedom and political order, that may result from the significant degree of concentration of wealth and income to be found worldwide. Such concerns are not new. For Mill, wealth may enhance liberty; it may also undermine it.

Reading Mill in the early twenty-first century can be quite inspirational and quite disheartening, simultaneously. Inspirational, because in a sense his commitment to education as an instrument of social reform was crucial in focusing our awareness on what needed reform and the means to bring about reform; disheartening, because despite how far we have come since Mill's day, there is still such a long way to go, at a time and against a tide that sees things quite differently.