Notes
1 John Stuart Mill (1866), Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 183, col. 1592 (31 May).
2 Alas, this is as well the position of several, if not most, contemporary mainstream economists.
This is but one of the several destructive criticisms by Roncaglia against mainstream economics (on which see, e.g., Roncaglia 2010) and a major reason for studying classical authors in search of a different, more useful, path of economic thought.3 Thus, for example JSM explains several forms of behavior that may at first glance look like hypocrisy, as in fact instances of cognitive dissonance: “[a]ll Christians believe that the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are ill-used by the world; [...] that if they would be perfect, they should sell all that they have and give it to the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. [.] But in the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them” (OL, 249; emphasis added).
4 Referring to James Mill’s essay on Government, he writes, “[m]y father’s premises were really too narrow [.]. Identity of interest between the governing body and the community at large, is not, in any practical sense which can be attached to it, the only thing on which good government depends” (JSM 1873, 165).
5 Notice that, as shown by fads and fashions, this does not imply immobility of tastes and habits; however, “when there is change it shall be for change’s sake, and not from any idea of beauty or convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the world at the same moment [.]. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against” (OL, 273).
6 JSM makes a specific point of great topicality in the context of today’s debate on social media: “in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of ‘the world' in general.
And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact” (OL, 230).7 JSM mentions the fate of most religions as a relevant example, but his own experience may be more telling. In his Autobiography he informs the reader that, at the height of his productive years, the gestation of his Principles of Logic had been especially difficult. However, in a later chapter he adds, “during the rewriting of Logic, Dr. Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences made its appearance; a circumstance fortunate to me, as it gave me what I greatly desired, a full treatment of the subject by an antagonist, and enabled me to present my ideas with greater clearness and emphasis as well as fuller and more varied development” (JSM 1873, 231).
8 Indeed, he writes that James Mill “wrote on no subject which he did not enrich with valuable thought, and excepting the Elements of Political Economy, a very useful book when first written, but which has now for some time finished its work, it will be long before any of his books will be wholly superseded” (JSM 1873, 213).
9 “Our opinions were now far more heretical than mine had been in the days of my most extreme Benthamism. In those days [...] the notion that it was possible to get rid in any considerable degree of the flagrant injustice involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I reckoned chimerical; and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat but not the least of a Socialist. We were now less democrats than I had formerly been, [. and] our ideal of future improvement was such as would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists” (JSM 1873, 239).
10 Incidentally, it is worth recalling that in The Subjection of Women JSM does not deny that in his time women were often considered to be generally more selfish than men, an accusation often put forward by opponents to the extension of suffrage.
Rather, he explained this tendency with the obligation imposed on them since infancy, to only consider and care for their most inner circle of affections and nothing else (D'Ippoliti, 2011).11 Some of his predictions in such a situation seem especially foresighted: “the absorption of all the principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal, sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body itself. [.] The official body are under the constant temptation of sinking into indolent routine, or, [. to the opposite] of rushing into some halfexamined crudity which has struck the fancy of some leading member of the corps” (OL, 308). For a relevant example, one could think of Italy's agency for the evaluation of universities and research.
12 Of course, not entirely. See, for example, the following passage, in which JSM defends “[t]he position [he] took up, vindicating the high educational value alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, [.] and insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teaching which makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies” (1873, 287).