Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)

English philosopher and economist who wrote Principles of Political Economy (1848), On Liberty (1859), and Utilitarianism (1863), which promoted a version of the ‘greatest happiness for the greatest number’ principle in ethics.

Throughout the last half of the 19th century, right up to the publication of English economist Alfred Marshall's Principles (1890), Mill's Principles of Political Economy was the leading economic textbook of the English-speaking world. It drew its enormous appeal from its extensive coverage of contemporary economic issues, from its judicious blending of economic analysis and historical illustrations, from its radical tone contained within an orthodox framework, and from the reputation of Mill as a logician, philosopher, political theorist, and literary critic. Here was no mere economist but a ‘saint of liberalism’, and a figure that towered over the intellectuals of his time in almost every area of debate.

Mill's Principles of Political Economy is, like Marshall's Principles, so well written that its original features do not stand out, as a result of which the book is often dismissed as ‘Ricardo all over again’. Although Mill presented himself as a pious disciple of Ricardo, the book is full of genuine theoretical innovations, of which the most lasting was the extension of Ricardo's doctrine of comparative costs to take account of the effects of reciprocal demand on the terms of trade in international exchange. In addition, he qualified Adam Smith's theory of relative wages by the introduction of the concept of non-competing groups in labour markets, he restated the ‘law of demand and supply’ as an algebraic equation rather than an identity, he recognized the problems that joint production created for a labour theory of value, he showed awareness that all costs are essentially the costs of opportunities forgone, and he noted the appearance of economies in scale in manufacturing. The list of new insights such as these might be extended almost indefinitely. But even more startling were the policy implications which he drew from what remained an essentially Ricardian framework of economic ideas. He was a vigorous advocate of inheritance taxation, peasant proprietorship, profit-sharing, and producers' and consumers' co-operatives. In an early chapter entitled ‘Of Property’, he gave a surprisingly sympathetic account of socialist doctrines (he showed no awareness then or later of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, whose Communist Manifesto had also appeared in 1848 in an English translation), and in later chapters on the proper scope of government action he endorsed protectionism in favour of infant industries, the regulation of hours of work in factories, and compulsory education (but not compulsory schooling) for children, coupled with a state system of examinations to verify that a minimum level of competence had been achieved.

In one important respect, however, Mill's Principles is hopelessly dated: namely, the relentless insistence that every conceivable policy measure must be judged in terms of its effect on the rate of growth of population. Mill was an ardent defender of the Malthusian theory of population, the theory that population is always tending to outstrip the food supply. But he escaped almost all the gloomy implications of the Malthusian doctrine by an optimistic belief, so different from Malthus's own, in birth control, particularly for poor working-class families.

Mill was born in London, the eldest son of James Mill, himself a leading disciple and friend of both David Ricardo and Jeremy Bentham. His education at the hands of his father was designed to exemplify Bentham's radical ideas about education, whereas it really illustrated the fact that Mill was an infant prodigy. He soon became a convinced Benthamite. However, by the time he was 20 years old, having followed his father into the service of the East India Company, he began to have doubts about Benthamism. Unable to shake off a severe mental depression, he turned to the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge and emerged by the age of around 25 as a qualified critic of Bentham.

Mill's first major work was A System of Logic (1843). The Principles of Political Economy was followed by his most famous contribution, a slim book entitled On Liberty (1859), which gave full vent to one of his major themes: the growth of mass conformism in social conventions and political opinions which tended increasingly to stifle the freedom of the individual. Further works on political theory appeared in 1861, namely, Considerations on Representative Government and Utilitarianism, followed by The Subjection of Women (1869), a remarkable early tract on feminism, and the Autobiography (1873), a moving account of his upbringing and marriage to Harriet Taylor for whom he had waited for 20 years before she become a widow.