John Stuart Mill

7 min readMay 20, 2022

**Location**- **Dhananjayarao Gadgil Library, GIPE, Pune**

John Stuart Mill was the eldest son of famous Historian, Economist, and Philosopher James Mill, who earned fame after his famous book “The history of British India”. He was born on May 20th, 1806 in London, and during his lifetime, he has contributed some prominent work in the field of economics and philosophy.

Autobiography

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

The first four chapters of his autobiography focus on Mill’s education, which he started at a very early age. At the age of three, he started learning Greek and by the time he was seven, he started Latin lessons and which, he used to teach his younger siblings. James Mill was a strict father, he kept John out of the reach of the outer world in his early years and homeschooled him. He was given books to read and then on walks with his father he had to review what he read. Later he was asked to write a review of the works he had read along with his views on them. These chapters are filled with the name of books he has read in the order he has read them all these years. He used to feel that he was an average child for his age. Through his father, John had the privilege to meet all the prominent economists of his time including David Ricardo, Jean Baptiste Say, Jeremy Bentham, and many more. Many of them became his inspiration later when he started writing and he even criticized them. Bentham particularly was his ideal and he extended and made changes in his theory of utilitarianism in his book Principles of Political Economy which was published in the year 1848.

He joined East India Company at the age of 16 and worked there for 38 years. He continued his studies, his reading and writing along with his job. During this time he wrote his most prominent works. His first major work “Essays on some unsettled questions of Political Economy” was published in 1829–30, when he was mere 23 years old.

In his autobiography he talks about his wife too, Harriot Taylor Mill a philosopher and women’s rights activist, whom he married in 1951, two years after her husband died. He mentioned her influence and contribution in his writings, particularly in “Principles of Political Economy”, “the subjection of women” and “On Liberty”. He even dedicated his most prominent work of all times “Principles of Political Economy” to her. They lived together for seven and a half years before her death in France and worked together on many articles together. After her death, her daughter Helen assisted John Stuart Mill with his works. Towards the end of this book, he has talked about his days as a member of parliament for the City of Westminster for the Liberal Party. In 1866 he was the first member of Parliament to raise the issue of women voting. After his party was dissolved, he returned to writing and even started giving public speeches on Women’s Rights.

Utilitarianism (Bentham vs Mill)

“The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.”

Utilitarianism is a subset of consequentialism (actions should be judged right or wrong based on their consequences) in the study of ethics. While considering the interest of all human beings equally, it suggests that actions that result in the happiness of the greatest number of people in society are correct. Although the roots of utilitarianism are found back in ancient Greek, the credit for systematic compilation and interpretation is given to Jeremy Bentham. Later, John Stuart Mill improvised the theory and gave it a political and qualitative aspect.

Jeremy Bentham was a lawyer, and thus most of his work in utilitarianism collides with the rule of state and law. He rejected the concept of Natural Rights(rights granted to all people by nature or God that cannot be denied or restricted by any government or individual.). He supported the greatest good for the greatest number. He believed in Law and men made rights and the state as the law-making body. According to him, people obey the law for security, substance, abundance, and equality. Mere morality is not sufficient, the law should punish the people who increase pain and infuse pleasure on the ones against which injustice happened. But with this, the interest of the government and the people who are being governed should collide. He listed the factors that influence pain and pleasure along dimensions and quantitative aspects of them. The critics said that there the quantitative method for his concept of utilitarianism is absurd, the solution for which is provided by John Stuart Mill.

John Stuart Mill combined Utilitarianism with Individualism and he was in favor of the idea that social well-being is a result of individual well-being. He categorized pain and pleasure and ranked them according to their intensity. He was a classical at heart as he wanted minimum state intervention but promoted governance in property rights which was quite opposite to that of Bentham. He rejected the view that quantitative values can be given to happiness and sadness or any emotion for that matter. In 1863, He came up with the book, “Utilitarianism” and defended the concept, starting from the basics of Ethics.

On Economics

John Stuart Mill came up with his theories when people started doubting the teachings of the classical. He not only studied the economic phenomenon of production and distribution of wealth but also included suggestions to make society better as he wanted the field of economics to be more practical.

Production

He states that production is a by-product of labour and a natural agent, where the Labour apply its physical and mental efforts. The function of labour is to create utility and for that, he distinguishes productive labour from unproductive labour and listed down how they can be indirectly employed not just the direct application.

Mill gave a secondary place to Capital, which according to him is used to reproduce employment because when capital increases it expands the industry and provides more employment. It does not have any productive power and is used only to feed and maintain Labours, the major factor of production.

Distribution and Wages

The distribution of wealth according to Mill depends on the laws and customs of the society. Wages according to him are determined by supply and demand and they depend on the relative amount of Capital and Population. Here he agrees with Malthus, that limitation in population is better to get better wages and for that, he favoured a decrease in the birth rate. He says that the state and wealthy people must employ the poor so that they could sustain themselves. Also, plots should be allotted to them and proper education should be provided to their children to secure their future.

Socialist or a Classical?

“What is characteristic of Socialism is the joint ownership by all the members of the community of the instruments and means of production; which carries with it the consequence that the division of the produce among the body of owners must be a public act, performed according to rules laid down by the community.”

Some call him a socialist and others a classical. Towards the start of his career, he was a classical owing to the people he had read, followed and interacted with, but in the latter part of his life, he criticised many theories and beliefs of the Classical. He favoured the law of self-interest and made it a basis for his theory of utilitarianism, he was in favour of free competition and he agreed with the theories of rent, supply and demand, wages, population, and free trade. But his views were different when classical called economics a science and not an art and he approved government interventions to maximise happiness.

On education

“Education is one of the subjects which most essentially require to be considered by various minds, and from a variety of points of view. For, of all many-sided subjects, it is the one which has the greatest number of sides.”

Mill became a supporter of reform in education, not only as regards popular education, state-supported, as well as education in general, which Mill looked upon as either scientific or moral. He was aware of the deplorable social, moral and intellectual condition of the bulk of the population, and conscious of the inevitable plunge by the government into a more democratic outlook, Mill believed education is the key to the progress of minds and, consequently, to the progress of the country. This belief also support the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

On Women’s Rights

“The equality of married persons before the law, is not only the sole mode in which that particular relation can be made consistent with justice to both sides, and conductive to the happiness of both, but it is the only means of rendering the daily life of mankind, in any high sense, a school or moral cultivation.”

Mill wrote an essay titled, “ The Subjection of Women” to express his views on equality which was published in 1869. It is considered the most fundamental text on Feminism. At the time it came out, women did not have the basic rights, were not treated as a separate entity from their husbands, and were not even allowed to cast a vote. Mill was in the favour of giving more rights and individuality to women as this will increase happiness in a larger proportion of people. He said an individual who is born a woman is treated as a slave in a married relationship, they are not free to get an education, are not able to earn and thus they rely on their husbands for basic income and stay this way their entire life. He suggested equality in a married relationship for the maximum welfare of society.

John Stuart Mill has inspired not only economists but feminists around the globe. In the 19th century, when things were changing after the Industrial revolution around the globe, Mill not only focus on the concept of happiness as a measure of wealth and wellbeing but also stood against the social evils despite the criticism.