Neoclassical Altruism

When utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham first articulated their guiding principle—to seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number—it seemed to contravene religious values. It presumed that men could exercise virtually divine judgment, and elided concerns for salvation or eternal life.

Could happiness itself be meaningfully measured? One man (especially a man of wealth, education, and refinement) might have a great deal more capacity for happiness than another (especially one raised in poverty, ignorance, and squalor). In this case, taking a dollar from a rich man redistributed to a poor one might lower the sum total of human happiness. This was a fascinating possibility. Francis Edgeworth (later the editor of the prestigious Economic Journal) spelled out its implications for gender inequality when he observed in 1881 that women have less capacity for happiness than men.¹⁸

Continental scholars such as Leon Walras and Wilfredo Pareto made important contributions to the emerging theory, but within Anglo-American circles, William Stanley Jevons gained attention as an innovator. His Theory of Political Economy, published in 1871, stripped Bentham's utilitarianism of its subversive emphasis on redistribution, arguing that the true essence of political economy lay in the study of individual choice.¹⁹ What some have called a scientific revolution initiated a new era of mathematization.²⁰ The notion that individuals were pleasure-seeking machines suggested the kind of predictability that engineers aspired to: ‘‘In its action on the body,'' explained Jevons, ‘‘the mind must follow a simple and universal law of seeking the most pleasure, and follow it as implicitly as the railway train follows the curves and turns of the line upon which it is running.''²¹

Jevons's early life was not pleasurable.

His letters to his sister Henrietta describe the personal conflict he experi­enced: ‘‘I have often entered into sorts of long mental discussions as to what the word (of all the most disagreeable) ‘selfish’ means.”²² Jevons was attracted to the accommodation that the Smithian view offered: Self-interest was not necessarily selfish, because individuals could derive pleasure from the happiness of others, through sympathy. He took great pleasure from Richard Whateley’s lectures on Political Economy, reassured by the notion that God as well as Nature might sanction the pursuit of self-interest.²³

These letters urged his sister to begin supporting herself as a teacher. She should make the best of things, he explained, despite the obstacles she faced. Nor should she make excuses: ‘‘A woman’s field of action and her available means are considerably less than those of a man, but she has no reason to complain and remain idle, so long as the field is really so little occupied and still so wide, and while all her disadvantages are fully recognized and allowed for.’’²⁴ Jevons himself reached for success. After completing his studies in Political Economy, he published a well-received essay on the economics of coal mining and won a professorship at Owens College of Manchester. Favorable reception of his Theory of Political Economy won him an appointment to University College, London. His younger brother also achieved prosperity.

Jevons’s own theory offered something of an explanation: ‘‘Every mind is thus inscrutable to every other mind, and no common denominator of feeling seems to be possible.’’²⁶ Adam Smith had emphasized the powers of sympathy; Jevons seemed to deny these. There is no way, he emphasized, to compare the quantity or intensity of feelings between two individuals. It follows that no man could be expected to think about what was best for anyone but himself. Of course, the basis for ascertaining the greatest good for the greatest number had always been vague. But as a principle, it had, at the very least, required its proponents to consider the impact of their actions upon others. The more formal aspects of Jevons’s theory implied that such considerations were futile.

Jevons’s individualism was tempered by his willingness to invoke moral principles and common sense in support of some specific social reforms. He was sympathetic to the advantages of industrial cooperation, and suggested that profit-sharing might have a salutary effect on the productivity of labor.²⁷ Where mothers and children were concerned, he was explicitly opposed to laissez faire. Expressing horror at the high levels of infant mortality and child neglect in factory towns, he recommended that mothers of children under the age of three be excluded from factories and work­shops, with the possible exception of establishments that provided nurseries with medical supervision.²⁸ His statistical analysis of the causes of infant mortality was cursory, but his philosophy was clear: Maternal responsibil­ities for children were sacred, and therefore lay within the purview of state regulation and control.²⁹ He anticipated and dismissed the individualistic rebuttal to this argument:

The objection may no doubt be made, that the exclusion of child­bearing women from works in public factories would be a new and extreme case of interference with the natural liberty of the individual.

Morality itself dictated restrictions on mothers.³¹ Yet Jevons expressed little concern regarding the enforcement of fathers' responsibilities toward young children. Several women interlocutors challenged him on this point, forcing him into a revealing dialogue. Most systematic in her criticisms was a Mrs. Bright, who noted that the problem might be ameliorated by granting women the right to vote. Jevons agreed, but insisted this was a separate issue. Mrs. Bright then protested that wives lacked any legal claim on their husbands' earnings unless they enrolled themselves as paupers, and were therefore often forced to work for wages. Jevons agreed this legal defect required some remedy.

Several correspondents objected that the problem lay with drunken fathers rather than wage-earning mothers. In response, Jevons explained that women were at fault for that as well. ‘‘I answer that nothing can possibly tend more to drive a husband to the public-house than to have a wife coming home tired from the factory, and beginning perhaps to do the housework and prepare the meal, when she ought to have all things comfortable and cheerful for him.”³² Apparently, she ought to have all things comfortable and cheerful for him, whether this was in her self-interest or not.

Jevons’s allegiance to appropriate gender roles softened his otherwise pro­market views. Yet his focus on individual decisions had profoundly conser­vative implications, deflecting attention from the distribution of wealth and the formation of individual preferences. Jevons believed human nature to be variable but largely fixed, a view consistent with and perhaps influenced by scientific racism.³³ Men, like trains, could only start and stop on tracks that they could never change.