Philosophy of history and philosophical anthropology in J.S. Mill's views on colonialism

Abstract

The article aims to bring to light the philosophical background of J.S. Mill's views of colonialism. His philosophy of history and his philosophical anthropology are strongly connected to his theory of democracy in this area of Mill's social theory. Although he was undoubtedly radical according to the standards of his day, Mill adopts the anti-democratic logic of the capitalist mode of production and uses it as a gauge of cultural development. For the first time, this article aims to show that behind Mill's adoption of a Eurocentric logic lies a fear of democracy that is ultimately based on the fact that, for Mill, private property, enterprise, industry, accumulation of wealth and the work ethic are the main pillars of capitalism and are used by Mill as the essential determinants of cultural progress. Even the key tenet of his philosophy, utility, bears a meaning that is determined by these values. The article attempts to prove that Mill's ethical philosophy was formed on the basis of the social logic of capitalism and set the framework for Mill's analysis of the hierarchy of civilizations, since his utilitarianism was not applicable to those who did not abide by the values of the industrial ethic.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following people: the two anonymous reviewers of the journal who approached my interpretation with an open mind: Professor Emmanuel Angelidis, a member of my PhD supervisory committee, for his support and suggestions and my copy editor, Soren Aspinal, whose contribution to this article went beyond that expected of a copy editor and was in fact more akin to that of a reviewer.

Notes

^1. An analysis that focuses directly on J.S. Mill's theory of democracy and which complements this article can be found in V. Grollios, ‘J. S. Mill's views on democracy after 1848’, Critical Sociology, 37(6) (2011), pp. 871–887. For readers who wish to familiarize themselves with my argument to a greater degree, I encourage them to read this study also.

^2. John Stuart Mill, Collected Works, 33 Vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–1991); here Vol. 6, p. 216.

^3. Mill, ibid.

^4. Mill, ibid., Vol. 12, p. 365.

^5. Mill, ibid., Vol. 24, p. 888.

^6. Mill, ibid., p. 889.

^7. B. Kinzer, England's Disgrace? J.S. Mill and the Irish Question (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 27.

^8. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 24, p. 891.

^9. Mill, ibid., p. 892.

^10. Mill, ibid., p. 888.

^11. Mill, ibid., p. 896.

^12. Mill, ibid., p. 898.

^13. Mill, ibid., p. 913.

^14. Mill, ibid., p. 916.

^15. There is insufficient space in this article to analyse the anti-democratic character of Mill's political philosophy in other areas besides his philosophy of history. For more on this, see Grollios, ‘J. S. Mill's views’, op. cit., Ref. 1.

^16. K. Marx, ‘Capital, volume 1’, in K. Marx and F. Engels (Eds) Collected Works, Vol. 35 (Moscow: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996), p. 186. For a greater understanding of the value-laden meaning of Marx's use of the term ‘democracy’, see V. Grollios, ‘Marx and Engels's critique of democracy: the materialist character of their concept of autonomy’, Critique: A Journal of Socialist Theory, 39(1) (2011), pp. 9–26.

^17. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 24, p. 943.

^18. Mill, ibid., Vol. 13, p. 717.

^19. Mill, ibid., Vol. 24, pp. 1071–1072.

^20. Marx's theory of democracy was a possible radical understanding of the concept that Mill feared.

^21. Mill, Collected Works,op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 17, p. 1650.

^22. See editor's comment in Mill, ibid.

^23. Editor's comment in K. Marx, ‘Address of the land and labour league to the working men and women of Great Britain and Ireland’, in K. Marx and F. Engels (Eds) Collected Works, Vol. 21 (Moscow: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), p. 527.

^24. Marx, ibid., pp. 404–405.

^25. Marx, ibid., p. 405.

^26. Mill, Collected Works,op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 17, p. 1651.

^27. Mill, ibid., p. 1659.

^28. Mill, ibid., p. 1848.

^29. Mill, ibid., Vol. 24, p. 890.

^30. Mill, ibid., Vol. 30, p. 94.

^31. Mill, ibid., p. 102. For an interpretation of the role of property in India close to my own, see R. Kurfirst, ‘J. S. Mill on oriental despotism, including its British variant’, Utilitas, 8(1) (1996), pp. 73–87.

^32. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 30, p. 105.

^33. Mill, ibid., p. 224.

^34. Mill, ibid., Vol. 17, p. 1538.

^35. Mill, ibid., p. 1560.

^36. Mill, ibid., Vol. 30, p. 111.

^37. P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 (London/New York: Longman, 1993), p. 326.

^38. I. Habib, Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. 277–278.

^39. Habib, ibid., p. 279.

^40. Habib, ibid., p. 281.

^41. D. Kumar, Colonialism, Property and the State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 300.

^42. Kumar, ibid., p. 302.

^43. Kumar, ibid., p. 309.

^44. Habib, Essays in Indian History, op. cit., Ref. 38, p. 289.

^45. Habib, ibid., p. 293.

^46. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, op. cit., Ref. 37, pp. 332–333.

^47. T. Raychaudhuri, ‘British rule in India: an assessment’, in P.J. Marshall (Ed.) The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 360.

^48. L. Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 125.

^49. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 30, p. 63.

^50. J. Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 139–140.

^51. Pitts, ibid., p. 160.

^52. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 20, p. 383.

^53. Mill, ibid., Vol. 13, p. 404.

^54. Mill, ibid., Vol. 12, p. 329.

^55. Mill, ibid., Vol. 21, p. 91.

^56. Mill, ibid.

^57. Mill, ibid.

^58. Mill, ibid., Vol. 20, p. 235.

^59. Mill, ibid., Vol. 8, p. 869.

^60. Mill, ibid., Vol. 17, p. 1563.

^61. Mill, ibid., Vol. 2, p. 319.

^62. To my knowledge, the only study that accuses Mill of cultural racism is David Theo Goldberg's ‘Liberalism's limits: Carlyle and Mill on “the negro question”’, in K.J Ward and T.L. Lott (Eds) Philosophers on Race. Critical Essays (Great Britain: Blackwell, 2002), p. 202. However, he makes no effort to connect the content of the notion of culture in Mill to the values that the capitalist mode of production needs in order to survive, something that I attempt in this article.

^63. J.M. Blaut, ‘The theory of cultural racism’, Antipode, 24(4) (1992), p. 293.

^64. Blaut, ibid., p. 294.

^65. Blaut, ibid., p. 293.

^66. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 19, p. 323.

^67. G. Varouxakis, ‘Empire, race, euro-centrism: John Stuart Mill and his critics’, in B. Schultz and G. Varouxakis (Eds) Utilitarianism and Empire (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), pp. 137–154 (p. 139).

^68. Varouxakis, ibid. In a similar vein to Varouxakis, see K. Mantena, ‘Mill and the imperial predicament’, in N. Urbinati and A. Zakaras (Eds) J.S. Mill's Political Thought, a Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 308.

^69. Varouxakis, ‘Empire, race, euro-centrism’, op. cit., Ref. 67, p. 139.

^70. U.S. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, NY: The University of Chicago Press, 1999).

^71. Mehta, ibid., p. 104.

^72. Mehta, ibid., p. 102.

^73. Pitts, A Turn to Empire, op. cit., Ref. 50, p. 139.

^74. Pitts, ibid., p. 142.

^75. Pitts, ibid., p. 145.

^76. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 230.

^77. Mill, ibid., p. 347.

^78. Mill, ibid., Vol. 21, p. 118.

^79. Mill, ibid.

^80. Mill, ibid., Vol. 10, pp. 395–396.

^81. Mill, ibid., Vol. 21, pp. 118–119.

^82. Mill, ibid., Vol. 27, p. 647.

^83. Mill, ibid.

^84. For an interpretation contrary to mine, see B. Parekh, ‘Liberalism and colonialism: a critique of Locke and Mill’, in Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh (Eds) The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power (London/Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1995), pp. 81–98 (p. 95).

^85. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 17, p. 1687.

^86. Mill, ibid., Vol. 19, p. 376.

^87. Mill, ibid., p. 377.

^88. Mill, ibid.

^89. Mill, ibid., p. 403.

^90. Mill, ibid., p. 377.

^91. Mill, ibid., pp. 385–386.

^92. Mill, ibid., p. 394.

^93. Mill, ibid.

^94. Mill, ibid., p. 385–386.

^95. Mill, ibid., Vol. 18, p. 120.

^96. Mill, ibid., Vol. 19, p. 304.

^97. Mill, ibid., p. 395.

^98. Mill, ibid., p. 396.

^99. Mill, ibid., Vol. 23, p. 734.

^100. Mill, ibid., Vol. 24, p. 914.

^101. The same idea can be encountered also in Mill, ibid., p. 788.

^102. Mill, ibid., Vol. 23, p. 742.

^103. Mill, ibid.

^104. Mill, ibid., p. 740.

^105. K. Marx, ‘Capital, volume 3’, in K. Marx and F. Engels (Eds) Collected Works, Vol. 37 (Moscow: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998), p. 817.

^106. K. Marx, ‘Capital, volume 1’, in K. Marx and F. Engels (Eds) Collected Works, Vol. 35 (Moscow: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996), p. 756, p. 760.

^107. Marx, ibid., pp. 760–761.

^108. Two of the three are: M. Tunick, ‘Tolerant imperialism: John Stuart Mill's defense of British rule in India’, The Review of Politics, 68(4) (2006), pp. 568–611; M. Kohn and D.I. O'Neil, ‘A tale of two Indias. Burke and Mill on empire and slavery in the West Indies and America’, Political Theory, 34(2) (2006), pp. 192–228.

^109. For more on this, see Grollios, ‘J. S. Mill's views’, op. cit., Ref. 1.

^110. I. Marwah, ‘Complicating barbarism and civilization: Mill's complex sociology of human development’, History of Political Thought, 32(2) (2011), pp. 345–366 (p. 362).

^111. Marwah, ibid., p. 346.

^112. Marwah, ibid.; Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 19, pp. 402–403.

^113. Marwah, ibid., p. 562.

^114. Marwah, ibid., p. 563.

^115. Marwah, ibid., p. 565.

^116. Marwah, ibid., Vol. 10, p. 255.

^117. Marwah, ibid., p. 257.

^118. Marwah, ibid., p. 258.

^119. This is a notion that is also presented in Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 10, p. 259.

^120. See Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 19, p. 323.

^121. B. Schultz, ‘Mill and Sidgwick, imperialism and racism’, Utilitas, 19(1) (2007), p. 117.

^122. Mill, Collected Works, op. cit., Ref. 2, Vol. 2, p. 104.

^123. Mill, ibid., p. 105.

^124. Mill, ibid., Vol. 10, p. 237.

^125. Mill, ibid., Vol. 3, p. 755.

^126. For a stimulating study of Mill's ‘stationary state’ in relation to ecological economics, see G. Dale, ‘Critiques of growth in classical political economy: Mill's stationary state and a Marxian response’, New Political Economy, 18(3) (2013), pp. 431–457.

^127. In his very stimulating book J.S. Mill on Civilization and Barbarism (New York: Routledge, 2004), Michael Levin successfully underlines Mill's reservations about democracy. His study is one of the very few Marxist readings of Mill's thought. However, Levin does not seriously attempt to spell out Mill's adoption of capitalistic values in his theory of civilization. This is the challenge that my article attempts to address.