The point of this? I mean, does it undermine the message of of On Liberty, a generally wonderful if somewhat overly utilitarian (though considering the source what would you expect?) defense of freedom of speech and freedom of different ways of living to note that Mill had a number of prejudices that we on this list don't share? Mill was an imperialist agent by way of a livelihood. He revered genius and thought that most people are herd animals, although he did think that they should be free and enfranchised. He believed in plural voting with more votes for the better educated. He opposed revolutionary socialism. On the other hand, he became a socialist, breaking with the free-market pieties of his father and Bentham; he was an ardent feminist, and he was a champion of liberty and democracy at a time when it was neither popullar nor profitable. And all of this is more or less irrelevant to the merits of On Liberty. --jks
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Justin points us beyond Locke to Mill's On Liberty
Mehta writes:
Mill's "The Govt of Dependencies by a Free State" is a 'revealing document
on the increasing relevance of cultural, civilizational, linguistic, and
racial categories in defining the constituency of Mill's liberalism.' p. 75
Seems something worth following up on in the exploration of liberalism. I
once took a seminar on Mill's political and social writings and the Indian
question never came up *once*; however, there are a few books specifically
John Stuart Mill's writings on India.
Oh yes Mill's urging workers to back down in 1865, which had the
consequence that universal adult male franchise would not be introduced for
twenty more years, was also not even mentioned. Or as Mill himself bragged:
"And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particular juncture,
by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at that that moment the
necessary influence for restraining the working class." From JS Mill's
autobiography, quoted in Guy Routh The Origin of Economic Ideas, p. 181.
Well at least we did discuss his essay with Harriet Taylor on women's
emancipation.
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