Page 258 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes Mill believed that citizens developed intellectual qualities of reason and judgement only through
political participation. “Civil participation enhances autonomy and altruism : autonomy from self-
government; altruism from judging the interests of the community” (Heater 1990: 199). This enabled
the participant to attain moral maturity, for when an individual undertook a public action, he felt
that “not only the common weal is his weal, but that it partly depends on his exertions”. People
had to be free to be able to participate in the government of their country, the management of their
workplace and to act as bulwarks against the autocracy of modern day bureaucracy. This feeling
of belonging to a community could only come about if all were granted the right to vote. He did
worry about the consequences of absolute equality that universal adult franchise entailed, namely
the trampling of a wise and educated minority by the mass of people. He recommended compulsory
elementary education, for that would make individual citizens wise, competent and independent
judges. In On Liberty Mill recommended education to be established and controlled by the state. In
the nineteenth century liberal thinkers relied on state intervention to reduce the dominance of the
church and to protect the right to education of children against their own parents but also warned
against the dangers of too much state involvement in education. He always emphasized that
representative democracy was only possible in a state that was small and homogeneous, an assertion
that has been nullified by the success of plural democracies like India.
Through the rights of citizenship an individual became a social person. He acquired both political
freedom and responsibility. It was for this concern with the public realm that Mill defended
women’s civil and political rights. It also constituted one of his major contributions, considering
that the argument for the public domain became central to Rawls’ theory in Political Liberalism
(1993).

14.2 Economy and State

Mill deviated from the classical economic theory of laissez faire and advocated “optional” areas of
interference. Other than gender equality, Mill tried to accommodate the other major intellectual
streams in Europe within Liberalism, namely Socialism. He realized that unless Liberalism adapted
itself to changing times, it would not be able to sustain itself. It was to Mill’s credit that he brought
about this change without giving up the fundamentals of Liberalism. Interestingly, his Principles
were published in the same year as Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848).
The Principles reiterated the principles of Ricardian political economy. In the process, Mill simplified
Ricardian economics, making it less deterministic. Second, he preferred laissez faire, as a principle,
to state intervention in matters of social and economic policy. Third, his acceptance of socialism
was within the overall framework of a market economy .

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

The shift in Mill’s position was prompted by revolutions in Europe in the 1840s, the Irish famine
and the efforts of working men’s organizations to improve their wages and conditions of work in
the 1870s. Mill viewed the Irish famine and the emigration of population as a result of the systems
of hereditary ownership and absentee landlord farming. Hence, he proposed curtailment of the
normal right of inheritance and compulsory redistribution of large holdings from absentee landlords
to local peasants, for they would then become efficient cultivators. He recommended interference
in the market not with the purpose of overruling “the judgement of individuals but to give effect
to it” (Mill 1902: 560). He also supported limiting of working hours, state control of monopolies
and factory legislation for children.

252 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY