How can a paradigmatic liberal call himself a socialist? The case of John Stuart Mill

Abstract

This article examines the puzzle that while Mill called himself an advanced liberal and a socialist, most 20th century commentators have thought that he was not a socialist and could not be because the two ideologies conflict. It argues that the refusal to take Mill at his word is anachronistic, and contests the view that he retreated from socialism in his last years. It compares him with major varieties of socialist ideology, concluding that he combines ‘utopian’ and ‘market’ socialism, fusing, as it were, horizons of the early 19th and late 20th centuries. It shows that he interprets the core ideas and values of liberalism, and elaborates policy proposals from them, in a way which does not preclude socialism. He is also committed to socialist core values, and to policies which he thought, given the constraints of economic efficiency, would realize them.