John Stuart Mill: market socialist?

ABSTRACT

Compared to other elements of his political and economic thought, John Stuart Mill’s claim to be ‘under the general designation of Socialist’ has largely been ignored. Where it has been acknowledged, it has generally been denied. One exception to this rule has been to link Mill with ‘market socialism’, primarily because of his commitments to worker-cooperatives and competition. These are both elements of Mill's socialism, but when we examine his position on production, distribution and exchange more carefully, it becomes much less clear that Mill endorses anything like a ‘market’ in his socialism. This paper offers a critical assessment of Mill’s status as ‘market socialist’, considering, in particular, the ‘ethos’ he proposed for socialist organization of production and exchange, which is at odds with a profit-seeking motivation.

KEYWORDS:

• Market socialism
• J.S. Mill

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, for instance, Bain (1882, p. 90), Capaldi (2012, pp. 125–144), Fredman and Gordon (1967, pp. 3–7), Hainds (1946, pp. 103–112), Losman (1971, pp. 84–104), Schapiro (1943, pp. 127–160), Flew (1975), Duncan (1973), Hollander (1985, p. 179), Macpherson (1977, pp. 44–64), Reeves (2007, p. 213), Schwartz (1972, pp. 165–192), Thomas (1985, p. 190), Winch (2009, pp. 49–53).

2 I think we should read Mill as being consistently socialist (though with some changes to the precise content of is view) from around 1845, for reasons which are much too lengthy to go into here (though I explore them in detail elsewhere, particularly John Stuart Mill: Socialist (forthcoming, McGill-Queens University Press)). However, my argument in this article still runs even if people read Mill as withdrawing from socialism towards the end of his life (e.g. in Chapters on Socialism), so long as people accept he did have some interest in, and a view of a legitimate form of, socialism. For more on not reading Chapters as a withdrawal from socialism, see Stafford (1998).

3 Mill denies that any legitimate argument which justifies holding private property can justify holding private property in land (Mill, 1965, p. 227). In Principles he lists a variety of potentially just institutions for land-owning, recognizing that ‘the use of land in agriculture must … for the time being, be of necessity exclusive; the same person who has ploughed and sown must be permitted to reap’ (Mill, 1965). These include occupying land for only one season; periodically re-dividing land ownership as the population increased; or the State acting as ‘universal landlord, and the cultivators tenants under it’ (Mill, 1965). In later life, Mill was very involved in questions of Land Tenure Reform, chairing the Land Tenure Reform Association. Here, he was concerned with expediency more than ideal theory or historical practice, and resisted efforts to call for nationalization of land (Claeys, 2013, p. 159; Mill, 1967c, 1972). He was concerned both with the injustice (or at least inexpediency) of nationalization plans which did not involve compensation for land-owners (and thought radical limits on inheritance could achieve the same outcomes, if slightly more slowly, at least more expediently), and with whether state agencies were yet capable of administering land in an efficient and uncorrupt way (Mill, 1972). This is not to say, however, that he would not have favored state ownership of land which was achieved in and expedient fashion, and well-administered; certainly he does not rule it out on the grounds of justice in Principles.

4 For more on this see Baum (1998, 1999, 2000, 2007).

5 For more on this, see Persky (2016).

6 See, for instance, Arneson (1987), Bergon (1967), Schleifer and Vishny (1994), Ghosh (1995), Miller (1977, 1989), Keren (1993), Roosevelt (1969), Yunker (1974, 1975, 1986, 1988, 2001).

7 Bladon (1965, p. liii) notes, ‘[t]he essential notion of elasticity of demand, present in Adam Smith, was clarified in Mill and only waited to be christened by Marshall’.

8 Bergon (1967), following Ward, argues that even a cooperative model would be inefficient. The cases he has in mind are not precisely akin to Mill’s (where cooperatives do not pay a tax to the State for the use of communal property – the property is collectively owned by the members of the cooperative, not by every member of society with the State acting as agent), but there might still be problems Mill did not foresee with his cooperative socialist plans.

9 Profit-sharing, on Mill’s view, is a good way of maximising people’s motivation to work for their own interests (both capitalists, and workers): but cooperation involves an ability to work for a more collective good, even if it is – in general – true that the more one works individually in a cooperative, the better one will do (because the better the concern will do), though this is also affected by the principle of justice on which distribution in the cooperative is founded (from piece-work – which does relate to self-interest – to ‘from each according to their capacities, to each according to their needs’, which does not).

10 Minting money is one of the legitimate ‘authoritative’ interferences Mill accords to government, and it seems reasonable that he sees producer- and consumer-cooperatives as using money as a useful token of value for exchange.

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Helen McCabe

Helen McCabe is Assistant Professor in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham. Most of her research has focused on John Stuart Mill's claim to be ‘under the general designation of Socialist’: her book John Stuart Mill: Socialist is forthcoming with McGill-Queens University Press. Since January 2020 she has been an AHRC Leadership Fellow, working on a project looking at the connection between forced marriage and modern slavery with the Rights Lab, a University of Nottingham Beacon of Research Excellence.