John Stuart Mill . British economist, logician and philosopher; representative of bourgeois ideology, prominent figure of positivism. Son of the also economist James Mill, he was exclusively educated by him according to the strict principles of Emilio de Rousseau . Gifted with extraordinary intelligence, at the age of ten he was well versed in Greek and Latin and possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the classics. At the age of thirteen, his father introduced him to the principles of logic and political economy, focusing in this area on the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 2 Works
- 3 Economic thinking
- 1 Laissez faire
- 2 The future of society
- 4 Contributions
- 5 Quotes
- 6 References
- 7 External link
- 8 Sources
Biographical synthesis
In 1823 he entered the East India Company, where he would come to occupy the position of head of the Office for Relations with the Indian States. Politically active in defense of the abolitionist cause during the American civil war, since 1865 and for three years he held a seat in the House of Commons, where he would be the subject of constant controversy because of his determined support for the measures in favor of the classes. less privileged and equal rights for women. His first writings appeared published in the pages of the newspapers The Traveler and The Morning Chronicle, and he dealt primarily with the defense of free expression. In 1824, The appearance of The Westminster Review, organ of transmission of the radical philosophical ideas, provided to Mill a privileged atrium from which to spread his liberal ideology.
In the field of ethics, Mill defended a kind of nuanced utilitarianism in which Bentham’s influences can be glimpsed and in which he introduced a constant concern to include in the usual concept of “utility” the satisfactions derived from the free exercise of imagination and critical consciousness. On the main philosophical tendencies of his time, Mill was in favor of Comtian positivism and contrary to Hamilton’s intuitionism.
Politically he always showed great enthusiasm for the democratic form of government tempered by pessimism about the real impact on social welfare of its practice. His works on logic and methodology of science were of great importance in his time, mainly through his constant search for a valid principle for the inference of general laws; Following Hume’s footsteps, Mill defined causality as a falsifiable empirical process which he called “induction by enumeration.”
In his role as an economist, Mill was historically regarded as a late representative of the English classical school; some later authors, such as Marx , discussed this affiliation and highlighted its departure from the notion of labor-value. His main work in the field of political economy appeared in 1848 under the title of Principles of Political Economy, in which three different parts can be distinguished.
In the first, Mill elaborated a complete analysis of the wage formation process, which he understood to be determined by the interaction between the supply of labor and the demand for it in the form of the wage fund. He considered profit as capital income and made it dependent on the general price level.
In his theory of exchange, he introduced utility as a determining factor of the exchange value of a good, along with its cost of production. In the field of international economics, the introduction of the term “terms of trade” is due to him.
In the second part he dealt with questions of statics and dynamics and presented his idea of an evolution towards stagnation of the entire capitalist system due to an irreversible tendency to reduce profits, a concept that would be recovered by Marx . The third part is the one that best reflects his reformist spirit and deals with the necessary measures to favor a more just distribution of income, among which Mill proposed the limitation of inheritance, worker and inter-territorial cooperation and the promotion of small property peasant.
Plays
Between 1830 and 1840 , he published several articles that contained manifest signs of his change of point of view. Of particular note are, among others, the series entitled “The Spirit of the Age” (1831), the essay “Civilization” ( 1836 ) and his studies on Bentham (1838) and Coleridge (1840). His judgment of Bentham is especially interesting, as some vital differences that were to distinguish Bentham from his educators manifested in him. He praised Bentham’s contribution to the philosophy of lawand his work for the reform of legal institutions, admired its methodological principle, but rejected a conception of man, which, as he said, offers no place for the achievement of spiritual perfection as an end in itself. Furthermore, Bentham’s theory of government, according to Mill, ignores the dangers that can arise from despotic public opinion and the importance of establishing a system of checks to the will of the majority. Mill’s new attitude to these closely related issues was solidly confirmed by a careful reading of Tocqueville’s book , “Democracy in America .”
His works include “System of Logic”, which was published in 1843 and “Principles of political economy”, published in 1848 . With these two works, Mill’s fame as a great thinker of his time was firmly established. The following editions of “Economic Policy” showed a more pronounced sympathy in favor of socialism and the demands of the working class. “On Liberty” ( 1859) came to light the year after his wife’s death and he insisted that it was a joint work. Regarding the political issue, his main work was “Considerations on representative government”, which appeared in 1861, the same year that he wrote for the magazine “Fraser’s Magazine” a series of essays on moral philosophy that became a book, “Utilitarianism “, In 1863. The most notable of his other works are:” Auguste Comte and Positivism “(1865),” The servitudes of women “( 1869 ).
Economic thinking
Laissez faire
One of Mill’s main books is On Liberty, which became a source of Liberalism, and is where he exposes the absolute principle that should govern the relations between the Society and its members. This principle consists in the non-intervention of the authority, since people are sovereign in their Actions. As an example, Mill pointed out that the state cannot prevent a person from crossing a bridge in poor condition in consideration of his own good. You can only advise, warn or even plead, but in no case force someone to do something – or stop doing it – for their own good. This example is projected to the vast majority of social events and, of course, to economic ones. Here is inscribed his fierce defense of Laissez Faire “In Mill’s opinion, when the State intervenes,
However, this author was not dogmatic and with the passage of time he introduced a series of exceptions to his doctrine of the non-intervention of the State in the economic field. He argued that once they had fulfilled their police duties, the authority could do much, directly or indirectly, to help improve the material well-being of the people. One of the most famous exceptions to laissez faire that Stuart Mill mentions is the case of reduced working hours. For him, the only way to shorten the working day was by law, since to achieve this it was necessary for all workers to organize, which was very unlikely (it should be remembered that at that time, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, work hours Work lasted many times more than sixteen hours a day).
While the incongruity of John Stuart Mill can be criticized, many of his exceptions to laissez faire, over time, were transformed into laws adopted in different countries. Therefore, the fact that he assumed that Laissez Faire should be the rule, and any deviation from it should be done only when there was no alternative left; it is not that far from the principle of subsidiarity so common today. Introduced his exceptions, Mill went so far as to affirm the now famous dichotomy between the laws. On the one hand, there were the Economic Laws of production, which were governed by immutable laws that had to be followed. On the other, there were the social laws of Distribution, which were not determined only by economic forces. According to Mill,
The future of society
Regarding the future of the Society, Mill had a conception similar to that of David Ricardo , according to which at some point economic growth would stop, and the Society would enter a stationary state. This would occur due to a sum of different causes: technical progress, the Law of Decreasing Returns, the accumulation of Capital and the increase in the competition of companies. These components would combine and result in Producer Profits decreasing and Land Rent increasing. In this way, the economy would at some point go from growing to stagnating.
The curious thing is that Mill, unlike the pessimism of other authors such as Malthus, looked with complacency at this transition from a progressive state to a stationary state. In the latter, the problems of equity in Distribution could be evaluated and social reforms could be carried out quickly, provided that there was a strict birth control, since its absence, Mill argued, was one of the main causes of Poverty. The stationary state became, for this author, a kind of utopia in which, having achieved opulence, the state could solve the problems that really mattered, that is, the equality of wealth and opportunities.
Contributions
It can be said that, in general, Mill accepted Smith’s arguments and the idea that competitive adjustment tends to equalize net advantages for different occupations and individuals. However, he also made some original contributions. These refer fundamentally to the importance of non-competitive factors as generators of wage differences and to the interpretation of some wage differences as differential income. Mill fully admitted Smith’s explanations of three of the five determinants of wage differences that have been pointed out in the previous section: the disutility of different jobs, extreme uncertainty of the returns of some types of employment. Regarding responsibility as a factor that entails a higher salary, Mill’s argument introduced, as previously indicated, the interpretation that considers it a special quality of workers. For Mill the responsibility(or degree of integrity) that is required in some jobs is a condition that very few workers possess. In this context, Mill was able to see that the concept of rent did not have to be restricted to land and that it could be applied to any other factor, including work. The responsible worker was nothing more than a productive factor with a specific job. The salary difference obtained by responsible workers can be interpreted as a differential income that remunerates a productive factor above its opportunity cost .
Regarding human capital differences as a determinant of wage differences, Mill shared Smith’s argument. Education costs and the cost of learning a trade represent an investment that leads to quality differences between some workers and others. The difference in salary between a qualified and an unskilled occupation should therefore reflect the cost of the investment made. But Mill added some new ideas regarding the roleof education in the generation and maintenance of salary differences. Mill saw that lack of education isolated workers in some professions from competition. At least part of the difference in remuneration obtained by educated individuals has its origin, according to Mill, in some type of institutional barrier that prevents individuals from accessing education. Mill considered that the simple ascription to a certain social class functioned as the main institutional barrier to the mobility of work. For this reason, he expressed himself in the following terms: “In reality, up to now the separation has been so complete, so violent the line of demarcation between the different classes of workers, that it is almost equivalent to a hereditary distinction of caste, almost always recruiting those who they have to fill each office among the children of those who already belong to it, or others of the same social category […]. Consequently the wages of each class have hitherto been regulated by the increase of its own population,[1]
Quotes
“Originality is the only thing whose usefulness vulgar spirits cannot understand.”
“Anything that stifles individuality, whatever name is given to it, is despotism.”
“As a social force, an individual with an idea is worth ninety-nine with a single interest.”
“Laws would never be improved if there were not many people whose moral sentiments are better than existing laws.”
“There is no better test of the progress of a civilization than that of the progress of cooperation.”
“A disciple from whom nothing is ever asked that he cannot do, never does all that he can.”
“Ask yourself if you are happy and will you stop being so.”
“It is better to be a dissatisfied human being than a satisfied pig.”
“The genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.”
“The deep conviction of a man removes him from the attacks of ridicule.
