The political economy of progress : John Stuart Mill and modern radicalism

273 Pages·2016·1.93 MB·English

by  Mill

The Political Economy of Progress
OXFORD STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ECONOMICS
Series Editor: Steven G. Medema, University of Colorado, Denver
This series publishes leading- edge scholarship by historians of econom-
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the discipline and to the policy realm and broader publics. This enlarged
scope affords the possibility of looking anew at the intellectual, social,
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continued development.
The Political Economy
of Progress
John Stuart Mill and Modern Radicalism
xwx
Joseph Persky
1
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: Modern Radicalism and Mill xi
PART I: The Utilitarian Reading of Accumulation
1. Antecedents 3
2. The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number 26
3. Bentham’s Liberal Triumphalism 42
4. Utilitarian Perspectives on Private Property 55
5. Mill’s Radical Case for Laissez- Faire Capitalism 72
PART II: Progress and Radical Reform
6. Inheritance and Land 91
7. Poverty, the Poor Laws, and the Family 109
8. The Education of the Working Classes 122
9. Cooperatives, Unions, and Economic Democracy 133
PART III: Echoes
10. Marx and Mill 155
11. The Fabians, Early and Late 169
12. Rawls and the Means of Production 184
13. Radical Luck 199
Mill’s Vision 217
Bibliography 221
Index 233
( vii )

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Various parts of this work have benefited greatly from comments by
colleagues. A warm acknowledgment goes to the regular members of
the informal Chicago History of Economics group: John Berdell, Steve
Engelmann, Sam Fleischacker, and Deirdre McCloskey. I have gained
much from their insightful discussions of several chapters. Core chapters
have also benefited from comments by participants in the last several
History of Economics Society annual meetings, including Charalampos
Konstantinidis and Margaret Schabas. Two chapters here reflect the sub-
stantial input of Tim Taylor, who puts in yeoman service as the managing
editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and institutional guardian of
the Retrospectives feature there. The entire manuscript has been carefully
read by Steve Medema, who went well beyond the duties of a series editor
in helping me digest various arguments, including several with which he
surely doesn’t agree. And, thanks to Scott Parris who, as economics edi-
tor for Oxford University Press, allowed me— indeed, encouraged me— to
move past Mill as a nineteenth- century figure and to consider his continu-
ing influence in modern political economy and political philosophy.
Five of the following chapters are based on earlier publications, although
in several cases with substantial rethinking. Chapter 7, “Poverty, the Poor
Laws, and the Family,” draws on “Classical Family Values: Ending the Poor
Laws as They Knew Them,” in the Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, no. 1
(1997). Chapter 3 on Bentham first appeared as “From Usury to Interest,”
also in the Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 1 (2007). Chapter 4,
“Utilitarian Perspectives on Private Property,” was published with a
somewhat different thesis as “On the Thinness of Utilitarian Defenses of
Private Property,” in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought 32, no.
1 (2010). Chapter 12, “Rawls and the Means of Production,” grows out of
“Rawls’s Thin (Millean) Defense of Private Property,” in Utilitas 22, no.
2 (2010). Finally, c hapter 13, “Radical Luck,” first saw the light of day as
“Utilitarianism and Luck,” in History of Political Economy 45, no. 2 (2013).
( ix )