John Stuart Mill's Political Economy: Educational Means to Moral Progress

Abstract

The interrelation between John Stuart Mill's political economy and his social philosophy is often neglected by economists, even though social and moral progress is the aim and focus of Mill's work as scholarship on Mill has made clear in past decades. This paper aims to show how Mill's political economy fits his framework of progress. It is argued that Mill characterized his economics in accordance with his theory of (individual) development, which explained how people could be induced to change patterns of behavior that prevented progress, enabling “a tendency towards a better and happier state.” Mapping out how to overcome the Malthusian trap of poverty, the most serious stumbling block to man's material and moral improvement, Mill brought economics into action as an instrument for progress.

Keywords:

• mill
• progress
• poverty
• political economy
• population

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2004 World Congress of the Association for Social Economics in Albertville, France and at a seminar held at the University of Amsterdam, autumn 2004. I would like to thank the discussants at both meetings for their helpful suggestions as well as to acknowledge, with gratitude, the comments made by both anonymous referees.

Notes

1 See Schwartz (1972: Appendix I) for a short historical survey on opinions of Mill as an economist, De Marchi's (1988) assessment of interpretations of Mill, as well as Skorupski's (1998) more general account of the vicissitudes of Mill's reputation.

2 All page references to the writings of Mill are to “The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill,” John M. Robson (general editor), with the exception of Mill's Autobiography. References are given as CW II: 90, for Collected Works, Volume II: p. 90.

3 For these and other details on Mill's life and works, see Capaldi's excellent biography. Anyway, for decades to come the issue of birth control remained unmentionable. Having to overcome many obstacles, the Malthusian League succeeded only with difficulty in making the issue of birth control and the use of contraceptives to limit population growth a subject of discussion in the last quarter of the 19th century (see D'Arcy 1977; McLaren 1978).

4 To arrive at a proper definition, Mill first classes political economy among the moral sciences. Dealing with the laws of mind, the moral sciences may be distinguished from the physical sciences, which deal with the laws of matter. Although the phenomena under investigation in political economy are produced by the joint operation of laws of mind and laws of matter, political economy takes the physical part of the process for granted and inquires into the effects that follow from the laws of human nature on the production and distribution of wealth. Mill continues by pointing out that different branches may be distinguished within the moral sciences, given that man, the subject-matter of all the moral sciences, may be studied under different hypotheses. We may inquire into man “as a mere individual,” “man into contact with other individuals” and “man as living in a state of society.” Mill terms this last branch of (moral) science social economy or speculative politics, which deals with those principles of human nature which are connected “with the ideas and feelings generated in man by living in a state of society, that is, by forming part of a union or aggregation of human beings for a common purpose or purposes” (CW IV: 320). In line with common understanding of the term, political economy is a branch of social economy in that it assumes economic phenomena as flowing solely from the desire of wealth.

5 At this point the method a posteriori, the inductive method of establishing generalizations from facts or “specific experience,” may be applied in aid of the method a priori, “not as a means of discovering truth, but by verifying it” (CW IV: 331).

6 The phrase refers to Mill's argument developed in his chapter on liberty and necessity in The Logic of the Moral Sciences, where he states: “When we say that all human actions take place of necessity, we only mean that they will certainly happen if nothing prevents” (CW VIII: 839).