In doing the research for my book on classical political economy and primitive accumulation, I found that the leading thinkers fell into two groups. One group spoke and acted like unrepentant thugs. For them, labor would only respond to force or the threat of starvation. The other group was more nuanced. They supported much the same policies as the first group, but they expressed humanitarian sentiments.
Certainly, John Stuart Mill expressed more humanitarian sentiments more frequently than than other political economists. Even so, you can find much the same values in Alfred Marshall, who also declared himself to be a socialist of sorts, but still called for the total defeat of the engineers union.
When you look a little bit more deeply behind the humanitarian rhetoric, these bourgeois socialists really mean that they look forward to the day when all workers will share their middle-class values. Till then, they have no choice but to support capital against labor.
The book is supposed to come out in a couple months. --
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901